My Silent Ukrainian Identity
I was an adult when I informally learned of the Holodomor. During the 1930s, the Soviets, under Communist Party leader Joseph Stalin, systematically starved and killed millions of Ukrainians. That horrid history lesson was absent from the social studies classes I attended as a youth. My Ukrainian grandfather never spoke of the genocide, and I think I know why. In 1933, my grandfather was the tenth of ten children born to Ukrainian immigrants. Had my great-grandparents decided to stay in the motherland instead of departing for Canada in 1907, the Ukrainian branch of my family tree may have never existed.
Our surname caused my grandfather grief. Throughout his later life, I heard my grandfather recount the attempts some made to discredit his ethnicity. His acquaintances would say that “Kondro” isn’t a Ukrainian name. It doesn’t end in “ski,” they’d say. You don’t have a proper Ukrainian name, they’d say. You’re not Ukrainian, they’d say. Nonetheless, my grandfather always identified with his Ukrainian ethnicity; he appreciated the food and the ethnic sense of humour.
My Ukrainian family members have performed extensive genealogical work. We can now accurately trace our own ancestry back to the mid-eighteenth century. However, there was an emotional and ethnic existential cost for our ancestral knowledge. Our Ukrainian family has ties to Poland; an uncle to my grandfather has Polish birth records. My grandfather was deeply troubled when he learned that he could be Polish. I remember him saying, “I don’t want to be Polish.”
What was more troubling was my grandfather’s uncle was placed in an internment camp in Banff, Alberta, during World War I; he was deemed an enemy alien and forced to perform manual labour. Various documents show he escaped in exile, first to Saskatchewan and then to the United States. The uncle left for Russia in 1920. After 1937, he wasn’t heard from again.
I wasn’t sure of how I should feel when I learned of the interned relative and the genocide. I never saw myself as a Ukrainian like my grandfather and his immediate family saw themselves. Though my white identity is not threatened with starvation or unjust internment, I silently identify with the Ukrainian portion of my ethnic genes. I was always the closest to my Ukrainian grandfather.
The horrid history lesson of the Holodomor gave my silent Ukrainian identity a new emotional identity. It was a bad time for Ukrainians, but my family was simply lucky. When some stayed, others took a chance on Canada. Their gamble is paying dividends to their descendants. The sadness I feel for my distant relatives is silent. My white privilege consciously mutes it.
Now that my grandfather is dead, I expend more thinking than I ever have before on his life and his immigrant parents’ lives. I took for granted that my grandfather was uniquely Ukrainian and though he spoke sparingly of the attempts to discredit his ethnicity, I never recognized the full implications of his family’s immigration to Canada.
Originally published in John Steckley’s Elements of Sociology: A Critical Canadian Intro., fifth ed.
