Our identities are never just for us to share and form. They are shaped much more by others, their knowledge, their prejudice or ideas they have about the labels you use to identify by.
A nationality or ethnicity is never just that - but a complex layer of archetypes, associations and symbols linked to it.
Can one be Russian with no consequences in the world of today? What is expected of one holding a Russian passport? Or one born there many years ago?
I have many identity labels - Belgian, Flemish, Cuban, Russian, Ukrainian, Siberian, Muscovite.. some stronger than others, some rooted, some born, some chosen, but all mine, belonging to me.
What I fill and place into each of these identities is, in theoretical principle, up to me, but on closer inspection, is perpetually challenged by the outside world. Am I Russian because I was born there, because I speak the language, because I love the cuisine and literature, or because the politics of it haunt me?
Where does my nationality, my identity end and politics begin and how can I extract these from myself? Not be ashamed to say where I was born - a simple wish, but so difficult to achieve today.
I find myself wondering about various conflicts throughout history, those standing on the sidelines without any power to change anything, yet still bound by association to conflict they wanted no part of. It becomes a fundamental part of their being, and of that of the future generations to come.
“We don’t speak Russian in public spaces anymore” – my father living in Canada says.
You might wonder what Tchaikovsky has done to anyone, except for creating great music more than a century ago and be largely dead now, but today even his name is too vile and full of heaviness to be used for a music school.
I have no answers, only questions, sitting here listening, reading, looking at the stories unraveling around me. I can only say one thing with certainty - that Belgium is surely not the worst place to be Russian today.
