A Conflict's Toll on South Brooklyn
Venue: The Point
I learned more about Putin’s aggression from my nail lady than the news. I’ve conceptualized the geography of Eastern Europe better through my barber’s explanation than my teachers’. The residents of Sheepshead Bay are all well-versed in the political tensions that have left scars across Ukraine like pox—invisible from a distance, aside from the occasional flare-up when they resurface and threaten to spread.
That’s because these people haven’t just read about this land in history textbooks; at one point, they had called it their own. So when there were whispers of a looming Russian invasion on the news, the wind in South Brooklyn was already howling in panic. Everybody from Sheepshead Bay has at least one relative or friend from or in Ukraine. Before, we’d listen in on late-night WhatsApp calls to hear loved ones describe a harsh reality our parents made sure we’d never know. Anybody could tell you how guilt feels, but we know what it sounds like: Russian words crippled by the weight of an English intonation.
Now, the residents of Sheepshead Bay don’t just mock Russian authorities over blini and kanyak. It’s not enough, anymore, to boo at the Russian soccer team whenever they’re on screen. Now, the people of Sheepshead Bay pray for peace. They no longer pray for their relatives' livelihood, but for their lives. And when they’re alone, shrouded by darkness, they thank G-d, silently and shamefully, that they had decided to leave all those years ago.
Interestingly enough, the tensions brewing across the globe are somehow inflaming congruent tensions in Southern Brooklyn. Sheepshead Bay is a smorgasbord of ex-refugees from every single Eastern European country, including (but certainly not limited to) Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, Moldova, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Most have been calling America home for decades; others are recent arrivals, the wound from the severed tendon linking their heart to their country still fresh.
Thus, a survey of the population reveals varying degrees of assimilation. Some Sheepshead Bay residents have managed to shed their Soviet identities entirely, from softening their accents to foregoing their traditions. Others have clung desperately to the past, resolute in instilling the same cultural values they were raised with in their children.
But the reigning majority, when asked, will almost always identify themselves as an American before anything else. There’s an unspoken understanding that the sins committed by the old country illuminated a path to the West; that a shared experience of persecution, economic hardship, and food insecurity bonded the souls of those who made the daunting trek to America, regardless of their nationality. No one in Sheepshead Bay is allegiant to their old country. Proud, sure, maybe even nationalistic. But years of lavishing on Western freedoms have washed away any sort of true devotion to the country that had scorned them in the past.
The world is currently in a state of great uncertainty. The time for unity and compatriotism from those with ties to the conflict, as well as access to American wealth and resources that could aid the Ukrainian war effort, is now. So why is it that a renewed sense of nationalism among Ukrainian-Americans has also ushered in a wave of hostility toward their Russian-American counterparts? Why is it that, at a moment when we should be bonding together to defeat a common enemy, many are instead choosing to paint one another as the enemy?
On February 23, 2022, I had a nail appointment in Sheepshead Bay. Katya, my technician, hails from Moscow. She spent the entirety of our appointment describing how nervous she was about the eventuality that Putin would attack Ukraine, making it so that she wouldn’t be able to visit her family. She didn’t think the Ukrainian people deserved to be the collateral damage of a dictator’s egotistic predilections. I assured her that Putin’s threats have been empty for as long as I could remember. On February 24, 2022, Russian troops invaded Kyiv.
By the time my next nail appointment rolled around, Putin had already sunk his tendrils into Kharkiv and Odesa. Katya wasn’t as talkative as usual. She told me she’d lost clients. One girl cursed her out over the phone, saying that she couldn’t spend hours sitting opposite a fascist, blood-thirsty Russian. Another stopped replying to Katya’s texts altogether. She had changed her Instagram description from “Professional Russian Gel Manicure” to “Professional Gel Manicure.” When I got home from the salon, my grandmother was sitting two feet from the television screen with tears in her eyes. Silently, she watched as Putin’s troops dropped bombs on the town where she went to university.
Since then, tensions have only heightened. Many are boycotting Russian-owned businesses and restaurants serving Russian cuisine. A man was stabbed for speaking Russian in the same restaurant where I had my Bat Mitzvah. My mother reported that multiple Soviet immigrant-serving Facebook groups she’s a part of have mandated that all posts be written in Ukrainian. A famous novelty store in the heart of Sheepshead Bay has been forced to rebrand, changing its name from “Taste of Russia” to something entirely different.
None of these changes make sense. More importantly, none of these petty attacks on the Russian-speaking population of Southern Brooklyn are going to win the war. However, they’re more likely to prolong it, causing a long-lasting rift between the two populations that would have otherwise benefited from getting along.
Some individuals, such as myself, have found themselves in a particularly confusing position. My mother hails from Ukraine, whereas my father was raised in a little town not far from Moscow. Both of my parents, however, speak Russian, and are, in my opinion, culturally indistinguishable. A couple of weeks ago, I was having dinner with my dad when he told me that he started identifying as Ukrainian to avoid confrontation. The other day, he was speaking to a man in a cafe, when he was forced to reach for this misshapen lie.
“Oh, Ukraine,” the man replied. “I’m from there, too! Which town?”
“Chirnaftsi,” my father said. Chirnaftsi is the gorod (town) where my mother was raised, and also the only name that came to my father’s head. To his dismay, the man lit up.
“That’s my town! Which street?” he asked excitedly.
“What did you reply to that?” I wondered.
“I just said Lenin Street,” my dad shrugged. “Every city had one.”
I had laughed at my father’s anecdote at the moment, but later that day, I began to feel uneasy. Why did my father have to lie about his cultural identity? Hell, he’s married to a Ukrainian. For as long as I could remember, my father hated Putin more than Satan. He’d left Russia because he was fed up with the unjust bureaucracy, the anti-semitism, and the hatred that was so deeply ingrained in the political dogma. My father has nothing in common with a Russian sympathizer aside from that they speak the same tongue. My father, who donated to many fundraisers for Ukraine and shipped thirty pounds of clothing to refugees, should not be made an enemy in this fight.
In his poem, “The Hollow Men,” T.S. Eliot describes a dream-like world populated by empty, broken people. Eliot speaks of a sort of life after death that’s more reminiscent of purgatory than hell. The souls floating around the underworld aren’t condemned; they’re lost, bled dry of hope and humanity.
Eliot wrote this piece following World War I to reflect on how years of violence and cultural deterioration had robbed a generation of their faith in religion and love. He argues that conflict leaves men simultaneously “hollow” of spirit and “stuffed” with trivial knowledge like war protocols. Though this poem was written nearly one hundred years ago, it still has frightening implications for what will happen if the conflict in Ukraine drags on.
The men Eliot describes in his poem are made of straw, and thus, they are barren and cannot lean “together.” “The Hollow Men” entails that civilization will crumble if its population doesn’t value compassion and culture. In the same way that Eliot’s men became lifeless once they lost respect for one another, the Russo-Ukrainian war will not have a favorable outcome if those disposed to aid the war effort are fighting among themselves. To Sheepshead Bay and all other similar communities: we should not be deepening the lines between our old cultural identities, but rather, standing together as Americans to win this war.
By Mia Gindis
Illustrations were done in collaboration with the New Media Artspace at Baruch College. The New Media Artspace is a teaching exhibition space in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at Baruch College. Housed in the Newman Library, the New Media Artspace showcases curated experimental media and interdisciplinary artworks by international artists, students, alumni, and faculty. Special thanks to docent Maya Hilbert for creating artwork for this piece.
Check the New Media Artspace out at http://www.newmediartspace.info/