Two years now since Putin invaded Ukraine. Spring, 2022. My granddaughters were having their after-school snack. Chocolate chip cookies. I asked about their day.
“The fifth grade put up a Ukrainian flag,” the nine-year-old said. “What’s happening in Ukraine?”
At first I deflected the question, unsure what her parents had shared, but her seven-year-old sister raised the topic again five minutes later. “Grandma, you were going to tell us about Ukraine.”
So, I told them Russia had invaded a neighboring country. I didn’t use the word genocide. I didn’t speak about the civilians being killed. I probably said there was a war going on. The card game was the only “War” the little girls knew. Mostly, I concentrated on the refugees whom they may have glimpsed on television, since my husband often watches world news. I described a woman with a backpack shown on CNN. She had crafted pouches for her two cats and was fleeing with her dog on a leash and a wheeled suitcase. And I spoke about how European countries have opened their borders to refugees.
“Mom said your dad was a refugee,” the seven-year-old piped up.
He was. Dad escaped at the Bolshevik Revolution. His family fled to Southern Russia, hoping to wait out “the events.” Even back then, Soviet Russia’s leader had an evil glint in his eye and a boundless imagination when it came to exterminating a class of people. Aristocrats in 1917. Ukrainians in 2022.
Putin’s juggernaut is devastating to me on a personal level. I’m still proud of my heritage and cringe at realizing how most people now view my father’s country after two years of aggression. The government policies may originate at the Kremlin, and more specifically, in Putin’s office, but the news media often refers to “Russia” as the offender, as if the whole nation were responsible for the missiles raining down on Ukraine.
In Aleksandr Rogozhkin’s 1992 film The Chekist, an official from Russia’s secret police lines up random aristocrats in a basement and executes them. My gentle, French-literature-loving scholar uncle was stoned to death and thrown in a Petrograd canal. In his memoir, my dad recalled seeing dead bodies “piled up like logs,” before his father accepted the idea of leaving Petrograd. My grandmother lived through two world wars and the loss of her country. I wonder what she would have said if I had asked about her experiences when I was a child.
How many grandparents are at a loss to explain what’s going on in Ukraine? We feel revulsion at what Putin has done. The emotion was “palpable” at the United Nations during debate early in the war, according to Secretary of State Blinken. Men shot in the back of the head. Women raped. Cluster bombs exploding. Terrified human beings hiding in basements as kamikaze drones flew overhead. Town officials tortured. Tongues ripped out. Orphaned children. Ukrainians fleeing in cars and targeted by soldiers in tanks, hiding in nearby woods. Naked women crushed by tanks. None of this should be happening today. None can be shared with children. Or, can it? Is it better to protect children and gloss over evil?
My parents chose to shelter me by not revealing the horrors of war. I learned about Hiroshima in high school. I managed to remain ignorant of the Holocaust until the 1978 television series sent me to history books. I learned about the Vietnam War when my boyfriend was drafted to fight against Communism.
Google advises, Give kids basic, age-appropriate information about the war and talk together about safety.
Unsatisfied by this suggestion, I asked my therapist neighbor what she would have said. Laurel responded, “What I would think of is to share that there is a man in power, the leader of a big country, Russia, and his wish is to have more land. His wish was so big that he thought he could go in and just take the neighboring country. He is very bad at sharing. He convinced a lot of people to join him in this terrible idea. He is so powerful and they were scared not to obey him. And so they began a war. That means bringing in military trucks and fighting to take over a country. Sadly some people trying to protect their country died. That is what we are all sad about. It will take much to heal from this war.”
I don’t think Putin’s war is understandable to children because it makes absolutely no sense to adults. We have experienced relative world peace for so long that no one thought such horror could happen again. A lot of Russians do not support Putin, but he is a dictator and, as such, free to wage war. Fortunately, here in America, we still live in a democracy. If I were having this conversation with my granddaughters today, I’d say world leaders are trying to figure out how to stop future war so that we can all live in peace. I’d also mention that my refugee father fled his country. I’d add that many Russians do not support Putin. I’d explain what a dictator is and also tell them democracy is extremely fragile. That here in the United States, we need to work to preserve it.
