Ukraine is my homeland. I don’t call it my home country because I grew up in Hungary, and this is where I come back to, “like a stone tossed into the air.” Moving to Paris was a dream come true, yet I decided I had to work for a better world here at home; this is where I’ll find the father of my children. And so it was; I found my path. It’s winding, sometimes leading over the precipice, but it’s mine.
The fact that I’ve been helping women for 23 years is largely due to the strong female role models I brought with me from my Russian-speaking maternal family, the contrasting experiences, and the women’s fates I observed among my Hungarian ancestors—and, of course, the fact that I have three wonderful daughters.
My family in Kyiv emigrated back in 1990, and they took my roots with them. Through them, I experienced what it means to pack your entire life up into a suitcase, to lose the home where generations had grown up, to leave behind memories, landscapes, culture, work, and everyone who had accompanied you until then. My family was able to say goodbye to their friends, they left in peace, and they knew where they were going. Most of those fleeing now have not been granted this.
Kyiv, like much of Ukraine, now lies in ruins. This time, it’s not just the children who are missing, as it was after Chernobyl. Almost only the elderly chose to stay—those who spent the defining part of their lives in the Soviet Union, and for whom it is surely unbearable that Russia is encroaching on their lives. They don’t want to go anywhere anymore.
My mother and her sister are arguing over who is right: the aggressor, dictator, and war criminal Putin, or the Ukrainians who are building their national identity and independent state.
As I write these lines, the two Russian-speaking twins living with me (whose mother is in Crimea) are planning to flee to Germany with one of them and her 3-year-old son. Meanwhile, Kyiv could fall under Russian occupation within the next day or two, just as it did in 1941, when my grandmother gave birth to my great-aunt on a ship under bombardment. The sisters say that if they are able to return from the West, they may head to the up-and-coming Uzbekistan, where they have just launched a family business. Right there, where my relatives survived World War II, and where a significant portion of women still have no income of their own, where, even as the technological revolution rages on, the millionaire’s wife still walks around in a robe.
For me, the circle seems to be closing.
Today is the day I’m starting this blog. Today, when, as a civil society expert working with female opposition politicians as a member of a newly formed joint women’s issues working group, I was able to help draft a joint statement of solidarity, and when we’re launching the Women of Music Hungary Give Peace a Chance! campaign. I’ve put this off for a long time, and although I don’t yet know what will come of it, I feel I can’t wait any longer; I have to stand up for myself and take a personal stand, even if it’s just this. After all, this is what I’ve always talked about in my work so far.
Two or three years ago, I wrote an article about Putin’s Russia; I’ll share it now, and I’ll gradually share my other writings as well. It’s a bit long, but extremely relevant. We are part of the world’s destiny. A lot rests on us, and a lot depends on us—on women. Today, Viktor Orbán wished women strength and health. Thanks.
