Meet the Muscovites: A Review of “My Perestroika”

By Kelly Raftery

In my lifetime there have been enormous sweeps of history, most notably the Collapse of the Soviet Union, which I wrote about in a previous post. A number of years ago, I used to torture my undergraduate students by pretending that all the work they had done in class was being thrown out and a new teacher would be arriving with an entirely new syllabus and would be assigning them new grades based on completely different material. Once we got through the shouts of “No fair!” and “We will protest!” I asked them to write how that exercise made them feel. Then we started our unit on the end of the Soviet Union. 

How I wish I could have shown them “My Perestroika,” a documentary film about five classmates from Moscow School Number 57, who came of age in the waning days of the Soviet Union. Intimate interviews of each of the film’s subjects trace their histories from idyllic young childhoods to adulthoods in a nation on the cusp of change and to their lives today, over twenty years after the Soviet Union ceased to exist. The film is, at its essence, the sweep of history told through the lives of five people who were childhood friends.

Mikhail Gorbachev, last leader
of the Soviet Union

We are first introduced to Lyudmila (Lyuba) and Boris (Borya) Meyerson and their young son, Mark, in the small Soviet-style apartment where Boris was raised. The Meyersons are both history teachers at the school they attended as children and are thoughtful and philosophical about their own histories in relation to the political change that their country has seen. What is most striking at the start of the film is Lyudmila saying that as child she would watch the news from America, see the shootings, the violence and think to herself, “Oh my God, I am so lucky I live in the Soviet Union!”  You know at this moment that this film is going to make you see the other side in a very real way. 

Boris Yeltsin in an iconic photo during the Moscow Coup.
image by www.kremlin.ru

Boris’s best friend Ruslan was anti-establishment as a young man, forming a punk band, and today is a bohemian musician who lives outside the system, teaching and playing music for cash. Olga, the “prettiest girl in school” had her life turned upside down when the banker she was supposed to marry was killed via car bomb. Olga was left with her young child homeless, jobless, and with no resources. Today she lives with her sister in their childhood home and services automatic vending machine style pool tables for a living. Andrei was the true believer as a child, wanting to be a border guard when he grew up, until he was refused membership in the Community Party (the only way to gain success under the old system) on the grounds that he “might commit a crime” after they admitted him, and that would be bad. It was at that moment that he understood how corrupt and ridiculous the system was. Today, Andrei is the owner of a chain of prestigious clothing shops that sell imported shirts and ties from France. 

While the portraits of the lives lived against a backdrop of dramatic historic events are fascinating, what is more compelling about the film are the home movies and archival footage from the Soviet era that are constantly juxtaposed against the footage of Russia today. The end of the film features modern footage of young Mark Meyerson playing badminton alongside home movies of his father doing the same. The images cut back and forth as the birdie sails across the net in different eras, a game seemingly being played between father and son.

The Soviet footage shows a Moscow devoid of advertising, with limited traffic, whereas Moscow today is awash in billboards and neon, and Olga opines that her dream is to have someone else do the driving for her. Whereas all the children started from essentially the same equally Soviet place, the economic divide of today’s Russia is evident in the apartments shown in the film, from Andrei’s spacious, modern Western-style apartment to the Meyersons’ small but comfortable living room, which also doubles as a bedroom. 

There is so much for Americans to learn from this single simple understated film about the last twenty years in Russia that I cannot recommend it highly enough. Take the time to sit down and watch the fascinating stories of these five people who lived through some of the most dramatic moments of history of the 20^th century, you won’t regret it. 

Watch “My Perestroika” on Netflix, or visit the website at www.myperestroika.com to find out if there will be a screening near you soon.

Who You Are and Where You Live

By Kelly Raftery

My post today is a follow up to Saturday's post in which I provide an overview of the independent countries of the former Soviet Union, to help readers make sense of the recent media reports regarding the bombings at the Boston Marathon. Specifically, the two suspects in that crime are ethnic Chechens who were partly raised in Kyrgyzstan, with one of them being born there. The media's reporting on their cultural heritage has been a mixed bag, and in many cases, erroneous.

One of the comments I received in response to that post was from one of my fellow bloggers:

“... even after reading your post, I’m still puzzled as far as why these kids would/did not identify more with Kyrgyz culture, even despite the complicated geo-political history in that region. They were born and raised there (at least one of them), presumably went to school there, learned the language, mingled with the locals, etc. And it wasn’t the brutality of the Kyrgyz that forced Chechens to relocate there but that of the Soviets, right? Seems like there are plenty of governments that wronged various countries (the British in India, for example) but now there is cross-immigration between the people of both cultures and the past is the past, the subsequent generations are less bothered by what came before. Why is it so different in Kyrgyzstan, do you think?”

I will preface this by saying I am not an expert nor would I claim to be about the Caucasus. That area is complex and full of nuances of which I am completely ignorant. I have traveled in the area, but never been anything more than a tourist. 

A Dagestani Man from Historic Photos

So instead I will respond to you about ethnicity and identity in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Union, because I think that is really the essence of your questions above. You ask, “Why is it so different in Kyrgyzstan?”  It is not a situation limited to Kyrgyzstan; these dynamics play out throughout the former Soviet Union and are not exclusive to any one country or area.

One’s ethnic identity in the Soviet Union was (and is) a very concrete, non-malleable thing. Here in America, at some point, the immigrant children or grandchildren identify more closely with being “American” than to their heritage of origin. I am three generations removed from my immigrant roots and the degree to which I identify with the Irish-American community (for example) is my choice. Until my son took up dancing, my involvement with that community was limited to green beer on St. Patrick’s Day. 

Russian Girls

When I lived in Russia, people would identify me as American, and then when they heard my Russian language skills they would begin to probe where my family was from, because of course I had to have some sort of roots in the Russian speaking world, with such a facility for the language, such understanding of the culture and people. I told them that my father’s family was from Ireland and my mother’s family left Pinsk, Belorus, but both families had immigrated to America over 100 years previously. Most Russians would then say, “Ah ha! We knew you had roots here!” and be satisfied.

What I did not say was that my mother’s grandparents were fleeing the Pogroms (and other anti-Semitic policies) against Jews. Why did I not say that?  Because I knew that self-identifying as Jewish in Russia would then create a local identity for me that came with its own baggage, one that I did not want to carry, apply a stereotype I resisted and would transform me from being “an American” to being “a Jew.” I have it very easy; after all, I am an American who can conveniently hide behind a very Irish name.

Kyrgyz Family

But the people who were born and raised in the Soviet Union cannot pick and choose how to self-identify. Their ethnicity (and, by the way, there Jewish is an ethnicity, not a religious choice) is stamped in their passports, can be heard in their names and seen on their faces. The moment I heard the names of the bombers, saw their faces, I understood that they were from the Caucasus region, as did every single person from the former Soviet Union. And, every single person from this area has a set of ideas and stereotypes about Chechens and Dagestanis (the accused bombers' mother is Dagestani ethnically, and the parents are currently living in Dagestan, a small area of Russia that borders Chechnya) that were then applied to these two young men, based on their ethnicity.

A friend of mine once told me that despite the fact that she is half Russian on her mother’s side and her passport reads “Russian” as ethnicity, her name reflected her non-Russian heritage and identified her as a minority ethnicity, because Russian names are formed thusly; first name, patronymic (derived from one’s father’s first name), last name. So, as an example, a typical Russian name would be Oleg Vasilievich Ivanov. This person’s sister’s name might be Anna Vasilievna Ivanova. Those middle names mean that their father’s name is/was Vasili. A formal name in the Soviet Union included these three names; this was and is one’s legal name. If one is introduced for the first time in a formal setting, one's full name would be used, including the patryonimic.

Central Asian Jews

Say that one’s mother is Russian, and one’s father is not–-not only would your last name remain identifiably not Russian, but your middle name would also show that your father was not Russian as well. And, being of a non-Russian ethnicity in Russia, you would be subject to teasing, harassment and pressure to assimilate (particularly for those who are half Russian), leaving behind all vestiges of your “non-Russianness” behind. In short, other ethnicities had to be more Russian than the ethnic Russians themselves. And, that assumes that you could pull off “looking Russian” in the first place.

The ethnicities of the former Soviet Union are extremely diverse–-the Russians, Belorusians, Ukrainians, and others are caucasians with European features. Others, primarily from the Caucasus region are typically dark haired, dark eyed and more similar to Italians or Greeks. Central Asians look Asian with their dark hair, darker skin, and eye folds, though perhaps not as Asian as what we Americans typically think of as Chinese or Japanese. I included some photos of the various ethnicities in this post. More historic photos of various ethnic groups of the Russian Empire taken before the turn of the last century can be found in the Prokudin-Gorski Collection at the Library of Congress. In the former Soviet space, you are immediately identifiable when someone looks at you or your passport, or even by the sounds of your name or your accent. Stereotypes and ideas about each of these ethnicities are part of the collective consciousness and how people order the world they live in.  These are not just Russian stereotypes but more or less universal stereotypes about the peoples of the former Soviet Union.  Kyrgyz or Uzbeks or Georgians have set ideas about Tajiks, Turkmens or Armenians as well as Russians, Ukrainians, et al. 

Russian Settlers to the Caucasus

For these reasons, asking a Kyrgyz why the Chechens in Kyrgyzstan did not and do not identify with Kyrgyz culture is an absurd notion. My husband’s response is, “Of course Chechens (or Russians or Volga Germans) in Kyrgyzstan don’t identify with Kyrgyz culture--they are not Kyrgyz.”  Nor would a Kyrgyz in Russia identify with Russian culture, despite the fact that he might be a citizen of the Russian Federation. As I noted in my last post, I used to ask all non-Kyrgyz I met in Bishkek a question:  “Who sent you here, the Tsars or the Soviets?”  I knew who to ask because I could tell who was ethnically Kyrgyz and who was not. I had a friend in Bishkek named Oleg whose family had been exiled to Kyrgyzstan under the Tsars more than a hundred years ago. Were I to ask him if he was Kyrgyz, or identified with Kyrgyz culture, he would laugh, look at me and say something along the lines of, “Look at me, can't you see? I am Russian, not Kyrgyz.”  I never knew a non-ethnic Kyrgyz person who actually spoke the Kyrgyz language, or identified with the Kyrgyz culture no matter how long his family had been there. Kyrgyz have expressed appreciation to me for my very elementary Kyrgyz language skills because “Russians never bothered.”   

The Emir of Bukhara - identified as Uzbek

Keep in mind, too, that the dominant culture of the Soviet Union was "Soviet culture," not local or ethnic culture, with a heavy influence of Russia thrown in. So, the culture that the parents of these young men in Boston were born into and brought up under (at least until 1991) was Soviet culture, their grandparents were Soviets, but also Chechens. Then, all of a sudden, there was no Soviet Union, Soviet culture and history was rejected as false. Their family looked (as did all the peoples of the Soviet Union) to their ethnic roots, their heritage. So, they went back to their ancestral homeland of Chechnya, and war brought violence and bloodshed. To escape those horrors, they returned to safer and more stable Kyrgyzstan for a while, where a new and equally foreign Kyrgyz culture was starting to reassert itself, before finally going to Dagestan for a short while then on to America.

I don’t know whether these young men identified themselves as American, Chechen, Dagestani, or “from Kyrgyzstan.” (Though I am sure that they would not identify themselves as Kyrgyz, as has been reported by the media.) I am not sure these boys themselves knew with whom to identify or whether they felt like they belonged anywhere.

And maybe that is the root of the issue–-that entirely human desire to want to belong to something, to someone, to a group, to a people, to a place and how elusive that sense of belonging seemed to these young men.

Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down!

By Kelly Raftery

The last Romanov Rulers,
Nicholas II and Alexandra
at a fancy dress ball.

Today, there is a place called the Russian Federation. Before the Russian Federation, there was a place called the USSR and before there was the USSR, there was something called the Russian Empire. I know, super confusing. It gets worse when you realize that cities, towns, and other geographic features were renamed along with the political changes. To start at the beginning, the Russian Empire was ruled by a royal family, the Romanovs. These rulers of Russia were called Tsars or occasionally, Tsarinas (female rulers). Russian society was comprised of a small stratum of wealthy individuals and a huge mass of the very poor. Tens of millions of Russians were essentially enslaved to wealthy property owners to work the land, under a system called serfdom, which was only abolished in 1861. Former serfs migrated from the country into the cities, where they took up factory jobs. These new industrial workers (like many others worldwide during the Industrial Revolution) worked long days in deplorable conditions with no protections under the law. In labor disputes, it was the Tsar’s army that came to quell workers’ strikes with rifles and sabers. Urban poverty grew, Russia entered World War I and the situation was ripe for revolution.

No one monolithic organization overthrew the Russian Empire. In fact, even after Tsar Nikolai II was deposed in February 1917, his government remained at least partially in power, trying by half-measures to stem the rising tide of rebellion. Ultimately, a coalition of various Socialist factions united and took power in what was referred to as the “Great October Socialist Revolution.”  (To make things even more confusing, today the anniversary of the Revolution is celebrated on November 7^th.)  The Civil War followed hard on the heels of the Revolution and lasted for half a decade more. Reds (Socialists) battled Whites (Tsarist supporters) throughout the Empire from Ukraine to the Russian Far East, Novgorod to Bukhara. In Central Asia, a resistance group called the basmachi was not completely put down until 1934; seventeen years after the Revolution had begun on the streets of St. Petersburg. 

Let’s please take a moment to discuss definitions. The Soviet Union was never a Communist country, though it was ruled by an organization called the Communist Party. “Communism” and “Socialism” were theoretical stages of evolutionary economic development as outlined by Karl Marx, but whose theoretical roots lay further back with thinkers such as Thomas Moore in the 16^th Century England and Jean Jacques Rousseau in 18^th Century France. In theory, Communism was a more evolved form of society in which the means of production and distribution (e.g. land, factories, shops, etc.) were placed in workers’ hands. This more equitable distribution of resources would then eliminate poverty and industrial abuses. Socialism was the middle stage between Capitalism and Communism. The Soviet Union never “achieved Communism” but always strived towards it as a Socialist state. 

Propaganda poster reading,
"Long Live Equal Rights for Women of the USSR!"

Many of the men and women of the Revolution were idealists, dreamers who sought to bring about a more just, fair society for all citizens. Among the articles of the 1936 Soviet Constitution were: equal rights for women, the right to non-discrimination on the basis of race or nationality, the right to an education free of charge, the right to a workplace, the right to a limited hour workday and annual paid vacation time, the right to maintenance in old age, sickness or loss of capacity to work, free medical care and the guarantee of freedom of speech, press, assembly and protest.

Then, at some point along the way, the idealistic goals and heady dreams of the revolution–fair distribution of wealth and resources, equal rights for all citizens, collective ownership of farms, factories and shops and a better life for everyone got perverted. Some say that the entire theory is erroneous; some say it was Lenin’s (the first leader of the USSR) fault. Many more point to the Stalin era (1928-53) as the point at which the ideals of the revolution were warped by a tyrant who was willing to claw his way to the top of a towering pile of corpses to achieve his goals. 

"We live more happily with each day!"

At the end of Stalin’s time in power, the central government (not the workers) had control of all means of production and property, any opposition (real or imagined) was forcibly silenced and the Soviet Union was a modern, multicultural state. Tens of millions of men, women and children were killed under Stalin either through direct means like a bullet to the back of the head in the basement of KGB headquarters, or indirect methods such as starving to death as the result of harsh policies to wrest private farms away from “wealthy” peasants.  I wrote a bit about this time in "A Soviet Secret."

Double-headed eagles take the place of
USSR after 1991.

Under Socialism a person was born in a state-run hospital, educated in a state-run school, grew up and worked at a state-owned job and when he retired, he was provided with a pension from the state as well. Salaries were steady and adequate; the Soviet ruble was never floated on the international currency markets, thus did not suffer from value fluctuations or inflation. For thirty years, between 1961 and 1991, a ride on the metro cost 5 kopecks. It was not the workers’ paradise that had been promised, but there was no unemployment, no hunger, no homelessness and everyone had enough to live. There were no great upheavals, life was predictable. A person could plan for the future, save money for special occasions and provide for his children.     

When I taught Russian Pop Culture of the 20^th Century, I did an exercise with my students. Sometime about two-thirds of the way through the semester, I entered the room and put index cards on each desk. As my students filed in, I looked at them quite sadly. I then informed them that the Department of Foreign Languages had decided that they were not pleased with how I was running the class and therefore were terminating me immediately. The entire course would be restructured, all the work they had done to that point was no longer valid and a new instructor would arrive shortly and give them a new syllabus, texts and assignments. I reemphasized that everything they had done to this point was worthless and would be discarded. They would need to meet their new instructor and start all over again.

Once the hubbub died down, I asked my students to write on one side of the index card I had placed on their desks how that announcement made them feel. I then asked them to turn the index card over and write on the other side how they would feel if that happened to their country.

It has been over twenty years since the Collapse of the Soviet Union when one country became fifteen and the U.S. “won” the Cold War. A whole generation of children has grown up never knowing the Soviet Union at all. But, take a minute today and think about that time when everything people had known was destroyed – their currency, their government, even their belief system was negated, what they believed to be true, all plans for the future rent asunder and before them stood a great abyss of uncertainty and chaos.

Now how does that make you feel?   How would you feel if that was your country?

A Soviet Secret

 By Kelly Raftery

It was the fall of 1994, not too long after the collapse of the Soviet Union. I had just signed on with a small company out of Washington, D.C., that had landed its first Russia contract. I was hired as the project’s country and language specialist, a hardened and tested post-Soviet veteran of two years at the ripe old age of 24. After two years of living in hyper-inflation, lawlessness and general societal chaos had not led me to be overly trusting of businesses or individuals, so I bypassed the lodging that was suggested to me and arranged for my own apartment until I could get my bearings.

After too many hours of flying, I remember being greeted at the door by a woman who seemed very old to my twenty-four year old eyes, but who I realize now was more likely in her late 50s or perhaps early 60s. Walking straight upright, her grey hair in a bun at the nape of her neck, she led me into her apartment, which was dark and close, but impeccably clean. The landlady showed me to the den, which would serve as my lodgings for the week. A fold-out sofa shared space with a wall of glass-fronted bookcases and a grand piano covered in intricate doilies. Large windows with orange velvet curtains let in great streams of light that highlighted the honey-colored parquet flooring.  

Before this job, I recruited personnel for a multinational corporation just getting started in the former Soviet Union and the rule was do not interview anyone over forty years old, because they simply would not be able to make the mental and professional transition from a Soviet mindset to a western capitalist one. Anyone over forty was simply a lost cause, according to the corporate gurus. My landlady still worked at her government job, but her salary amounted to nothing in those days of hyperinflation, when salaries remained the same but the money was worth less and cost of everything else increased by leaps and bounds daily. On the day before I was to depart the apartment and take up my long-term lodgings, I made a shopping trip and stocked her refrigerator and stacked her counters high with non-perishable goods. I suppose it was guilt that drove me to do it, knowing that I had paid hundreds of dollars more than she had ultimately received for use of her room, knowing that I had turned down desperate job applicants as lost causes because they were deemed too old, hoping that maybe if I helped one woman in this small way, it would make some difference.  I was idealistic.  

Stalin-Era Gulag,a likely destination for an Enemy of the People

When it came time to leave, I paced a bit waiting for the car and driver; my bags stacked in the narrow hallway, my landlady waiting for me lock the apartment door. I nonchalantly mentioned to her that my new lodgings came with a café that would serve us meals, so I was leaving all the food in the kitchen behind.  Tears showed in the corners of her eyes. Urgently and in complete silence, she grabbed at my sleeve and pulled me into a small space between doors, outside of the apartment, but not quite fully into the hallway. She stooped down low and motioned to me to do the same, bringing our faces within an inch of each other. She drew my hair aside gently and whispered to me, “There is something I must tell you. I have never told another living soul. But you are different, a foreigner.”  The silence stretched out as she gathered her courage and breathed into my ear, “My father. He was an Enemy of the People. They came and took him away when I was just a child. I never saw him again. I lived with this my whole life. Please don’t tell anyone.”  She straightened, turned and went into her apartment, puttering around as if nothing had happened. 

An Enemy of the People. I knew from my graduate studies what had probably happened to her father--picked up, maybe tried, either executed or sent to Siberia along with millions of others who likely had committed no crime at all.  Stalin was arbitrary and horrible like that. The Soviet Union had collapsed, the archives thrown open, and yet she still believed that the system that punished her father would come back to life and exact revenge on her. My landlady’s fear was real and palpable. I don’t know why she told me her secret that day, perhaps she had just carried the truth inside for too long, perhaps she thought her secret would be safe with me, or that I would not hold her father’s “crimes” against her.

A memorial outside of Moscow to the millions killed during the Stalin-era repression.

The driver knocked at the door and took my bags down to the car.  I said good-bye and thank you to my landlady. I never saw that woman again, but I never forgot her, either. For the first time in my life, history reached out and touched me viscerally with a tug on my shirtsleeve and a puff of air brushing past my ear.  Twenty years later, I still remember that moment, though I have forgotten which city it was or even what job I had been sent to Russia to do.  I still wonder about her story and all those years she lived with that secret.

    

Off The Beaten Track: Kyrgyzstan—The View From The Roof Of The World

Woman looking over the Tien Shen Mountains

Our guest this week is Kelly Raftery, who grew up in the Midwest with an abiding passion for the Russian language and culture. A summer studying in Leningrad ignited a life-long passion for the world behind the Iron Curtain. After graduate school, she spent five years in the wild world of Soviet collapse bringing capitalism to the masses as a small business consultant in locales as far-flung as Russia’s “Venice of the North” and the Silk Road’s “Gem of the East.” Kelly has taught Russian language and Soviet Pop Culture to eager undergrads and worked as a freelance interpreter/translator. She currently lives with her family in Colorado’s Front Range.

Close your eyes and picture yourself at the top of the world. Mountains surround the nation’s capital, soaring towards the sky like the buttresses of a medieval cathedral. The Apostle Matthew is rumored to be buried in a monastery on the shore of a high-altitude, sapphire blue lake. Going to the south, you find a city three thousand years old, protected by a sacred mountain named for King Solomon. Do you know where you are yet? Any guesses?

Yurt nestled in the mountains

I will tell you. You are in the Kyrgyz Republic, a small country nestled between China and Russia along the fabled Silk Road. I first visited and fell in love with the Kyrgyz Republic (and not coincidentally, my Kyrgyz husband) well over a decade ago, when the country was undergoing the initial growing pains of its separation from the Soviet Union. Until the collapse, the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic, as it was then known, was officially closed to foreigners, mostly due to its role as a center for military research and development. My middle-aged husband remembers the day the first American arrived in his home country, remembers the first American he ever saw in person, it was that significant an event for his people.

Now he is an American himself and his country has continued to endure sweeping changes—two revolutions, the installation of American and Russian military bases and a profound outmigration that calls to mind the Irish fleeing the Potato Famine. At the end of the Soviet period, the Kyrgyz Republic boasted a population of just over five million people. Today, over one million Kyrgyz live abroad. I am of two minds about this; part of me is deeply saddened, knowing that the reason for this vast departure is both economic and political. The Kyrgyz Republic is a poor country and very few people see any opportunity for advancement at home. The other part of me is wryly amused, because until the Soviets forced them into collective farms and factories, the vast majority of Kyrgyz were nomadic, this most recent immigration just seems to bring their heritage into the 21^st century.

Lake Issyk-Kul, where it is rumored that the Apostle Matthew
is buried in an Armenian Monastery on the northern shore.

The Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek has been home to several major settlements dating back to the 6^th century, but the city as it exists today was established by Russian Army engineers in the late 1880s. I smiled when I read that in the first official census in 1882, the city had a population of 2,135 people. Six were Kyrgyz. The history of the Kyrgyz is not written in cities or monuments, their culture developed on horseback, in yurts, in clans and tribes. Summers were spent in the mountains with their flocks, winters in the valleys. Their cultural knowledge was not found in books, but in song. Longest epic poem known to man? It’s Kyrgyz. A half a million poetic lines learned by heart and sung at special occasions. My wedding celebration featured part of the poem sung by my brother-in-law and his young son. Afterwards, he came up to me, deeply concerned that I had been frightened by the intensity and content of his retelling of Manas. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that all I heard was a very rhythmic, “Blah, blah, blah! Blah, blah, blah!” You can see a version of Manas being sung here.

I did not know when I married my husband fifteen years ago that I also married into the entire family of Kyrgyz people, for in their tradition when a man takes a bride, she becomes a member of his tribe. While my utterly modern computer programmer husband brushes off being a member of the White Deer tribe, I still remember an occasion when I had been asked to be an interpreter for a high-level Kyrgyz government official at a lecture. I had never met this man, an adviser to their President, and when we were introduced, I was presented not with my professional credentials, but as a Kyrgyz wife. 

Yurt with family at a traditional gathering.
Photo: Tracing Tea/Shutterstock.com

Towards the end of the afternoon, I was mortified when an eminent scholar in the audience stood up and challenged how I had interpreted part of the talk into English. The President’s man replied that I had, in fact, correctly interpreted what he had meant to say. Afterwards, as we said good-byes, he pulled me close, laid a gentle kiss just beneath my hairline and said, “Thank you, daughter.” It was that day that I realized what it meant to be part of my husband’s tribe, my husband’s people.

Many years have gone by since that gentle encouragement from that man, but I have never forgotten it. Today, I live a dual life, one of my own making – that of an independent and outspoken American woman and one that I was adopted into, that of a Kyrgyz wife. So, while you may see a typical suburban housewife dressed in sweats, ponytail swinging, I know that I am the adopted daughter of a very special people who live on the Roof the World. 

Wild horses in front of the Tien Shien Mountains