Life is too important to be taken seriously - O.Wilde
Kristina's blog
Sunday, September 18, 2005
Update
It is not in my habit to write postings about my own life, but when things change so dramatically, it makes sense to make a little exception and update my friends on what is going on with me.
Now, I can say with confidence that I have happily settled in Edinburgh. Within the next few days I’ll get my bank account and the new UK phone number, and my transition will be complete.
I love Edinburgh - the city is beautiful, absolutely gorgeous. I am thrilled about the university and my course, which is going to start on Tuesday, sounds fantastic. My apartment is amazing – everything is brand-new, I have a view of the castle from my bedroom, we have a huge kitchen, a fire-place in the living room, and my 15-minute walk to the campus goes through the meadows, overlooking the castle on one side, and Arthur’s Seat on the other side.
I have already met lots of fun and interesting people and I have not had a quiet moment. We meet for lunch and coffee, go out to a bar or a jazz event, take trips together and it feels like we have been friends forever. Such a refreshing experience for a lonely postgrad in a big city. (Some of the "social life" pictures are here and here).
In October, Vishen will come to visit me... and we’ll visit Estonia.
So much for the little joys of my new life. Next week is the beginning of the academic year – I have the feeling that I am going to love it.
Only one circumstance unites my Estonian and Belarusian families - communist execution.
My great grandfather’s family in Belarus was deported by the communists in the 1930s, because they were rich – while his wife and two children escaped, my great grandfather was shot dead in the woods and his grave was lost. My great grandfather and great grandmother in Estonia were taken to the woods near their house by the communists in the 1940s and shot dead, because they were rich – their graves were lost.
My dad’s family had a big meeting this summer in our historic family house on Hiiumaa island. Many people came down from all around Estonia and even USA and Australia. Nearly 100 people crammed into a 200-year-old house to look at a family tree dating as far back as the beginning of the 1700s. Today, we keep track of almost every person in the many branches of the original Mänd family. The last piece of a puzzle is our lost relatives in South Africa, but even here, we have good chances to finally trace them down. The few members of my mom’s close family hardly meet, although most of them live in the same city. We don’t know anything about and have never met our remote family in Poland or Yugoslavia. We were told to forget our great-grandparents and we have never been told of our distant cousins.
No need to blame the people, though – we are all curious and want to know where we come from. But my dad’s family is Estonian, and my mom’s family is Belarusian.
Belarus was the founding member of the Soviet Union since 1922. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, and a brief attempt to liberalize and democratize, Belarus embraced communist ideals once again. The country got two idols – an autocratic, populist, insane present leader Lukashenko, and an evil idol of the past, Lenin, whose statues adorn every town and village in the country. Belarus closed its doors and windows, proclaimed supremacy of its national values and deemed the rest of the world as evil enemies.
Estonia was annexed to the Soviet Union in 1941 and fully joined in 1945. In the 1980s, Estonia, together with Latvia and Lithuania, was the first to rock the communist USSR-boat, and on August 20th, 1991, it was the first to proclaim its independence from the Soviet Union. Ever since, it has been paving its way back to Europe and joined the EU in May 2004.
Obviously, my Estonian family has had a better chance to keep track of their ancestry and even get back in touch with all the distant relatives. On the other side, my Belarusian family was forced to erase their memories and subdue curiosity. Of course, the states have dictated how much of family history could have been preserved.
I see yet another family-state connection, though. The countries, in which families are so ruthlessly destroyed and in which memories are erased, have no power to break the iron fist of the state– whether it is Soviet power or the new autocratic regime. Destroy individual people, and you destroy the whole nation. Cut the roots, and the stem will die.
I have another tale to tell – a tale of two beautiful medieval cities. Tallinn was preserved intact and is flourishing today. Narva was brutally destroyed - its beautiful Baroque buildings were bombed and their remnants were removed with bulldozers. Ugly faceless Soviet dwellings were erected in the historic heart of Narva, people lost the symbols of Narva’s glorious past. Instead, they were given new symbols of the new Soviet power. Today, Narva is a sore city with the highest level of social problems and an unhealthy society. It gives the country pain, conflicts and hard-to-resolve problems. And this is much because its people lost their roots, forgot their past and were robbed of their true identity.
My great grandmother Elizabeth was born in the end of the 19th century. She lived a long life and died in the 1980s at the age of 90. When people loose their identity, they become weak – the Soviets knew that and had many ways to destroy people and whole nations. In Soviet times, it was safer not to know where you come from, it was better to forget who your ancestors were and even give up your parents.
My mom’s family has vague idea of their ancestry – they used to be rich and any memories of them were hushed down. Therefore, I don’t know dates, names or exact facts. But miraculously, some stories have survived. (On the picture - my great grandmother, my grandfather, and my mom in the 1970s.)
My great grandmother Elizabeth, or as we call her - Liza, was married twice. Nobody knows who her first husband was and what happened to him. She had a child with her first husband who must have died by now. Right before the communist revolution spread to Belarus, my great grandmother Liza met her second husband Vladys on a market in her native town of Davyd Gorodok. She left her family behind and moved with Vladys to his native village Yurovichi, near Gomel. There, Vladys had a wife and two kids of his own and for some time they all must have lived together. Later, Vladys’ two sons from his first wife, who were officers in royal army, were killed in the communist revolution. His first wife, probably, moved out.
In the 1920s two sons were born to Vladys and Liza – my grandfather Nikolai and his younger brother Dmitri. A while later, the communist campaign against the rich spread to Belarus villages. Liza and Vladys were working hard, so they were well off – they had a good house with lots of land and cattle. They even had two Chinese laborers to help them in the fields and with the household. That would not be tolerated by the Soviet.
Liza knew that neither she nor her two little sons would be spared, and she knew that she had no chance to escape. But she did not want to give up either. Feeling the inevitable, Liza burned down her house and damaged her cattle, leaving just one cow, which she hid in the woods to have milk for her kids.
It wasn’t long before Vladys, Liza and their two little sons were arrested and set to be deported. On their way to Siberia or god knows whichever remote and wild place, Liza was advised to alienate from her husband. Thinking of her two sons, Liza yielded – she gave up her husband and, very likely, also her abundant golden jewelry. This bought Liza and her kids freedom. They came back to Yurovichi, to find their lands and remnants of their fairly earned riches taken by the Soviet state. Her husband Vladys faced the predictable fate – he was shot dead somewhere on the way to Siberia and his grave was lost.
My great grandmother Elizabeth started her life anew – she worked on her land and milked her own cows for someone else. Regardless, she built up a new house and brought up her kids to be well educated, successful and well-respected - a doctor and a military officer.
What a mysterious and strong woman! She came from Gdansk in Poland, her brother was a catholic priest – yet, she survived the liquidation of the rich by the communists and managed to get herself out of deportation. Her husband was killed when she was young – yet, she managed to bring up her two sons. Her house and property were destroyed – yet, she managed to rebuild everything.
Liza had a hardened heart and no weaknesses. I almost don’t remember her – but I admire her nevertheless.
If you are looking for Kristina from Estonia, who studied in Tallinn Humanitarian School, Tallinn Technical University, worked for AIESEC in Estonia and Norway, then in Harju County Government, then was stuck in New York for a year, then worked for CARAM Asia in Malaysia, and finally ended up studying international politics in the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and writing a research project for Oxfam in Oxford, then here I am. I have a husband Vishen, who is an entrepreneur, and a son Hayden, who is a sleepy-hungry newborn baby.
