Sasha Vasilyuk: Putin's war on Ukraine has forced me to confront my Russian identity. - NBCNewsTHINK
ByWhen I emigrated from Moscow to California as a 12-year-old in 1996, I swore that one day I would return to live in Russia. My mother had won a green card in the U.S. immigration lottery, happy to escape the turbulence of the 1990s, but I liked my life in Moscow and dreamed of witnessing my country coming into its own.
Though half of my family lived in Ukraine, I identified as Russian — even more so once I became an immigrant. Being Russian distinguished me not only from the American kids at school, but also from other immigrants from the former USSR. Most of them came at a younger age and no longer spoke their mother tongue, whereas I planned to hold on to the Russian language as long as I could. At 15, I even started a national magazine in Russian to try to inspire love for the language among my peers.
I also had a difficult time relating to Russians. I didn’t know the ins and outs of their politics, just as I didn’t know who their trendiest musicians or most popular authors were. Even their language had changed. Modern Russian was full of new slang words I wasn’t versed in. I felt like an outdated Russian of a certain vintage — and realized that, unbeknownst to me, I had become more American than I thought. My Moscow sojourn lasted only a few months. When I returned to the U.S.
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