{"id":415881,"date":"2022-03-14T01:33:56","date_gmt":"2022-03-13T22:33:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/think-twice-before-you-punish-a-russian-over-putins-horrible-war\/"},"modified":"2022-03-14T01:33:56","modified_gmt":"2022-03-13T22:33:56","slug":"think-twice-before-you-punish-a-russian-over-putins-horrible-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/think-twice-before-you-punish-a-russian-over-putins-horrible-war\/","title":{"rendered":"#Think twice before you punish a &#8216;Russian&#8217; over Putin\u2019s horrible war"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_85 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a3e0558a5944\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a3e0558a5944\" checked aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-1'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/think-twice-before-you-punish-a-russian-over-putins-horrible-war\/#%E2%80%9CThink_twice_before_you_punish_a_%E2%80%98Russian_over_Putins_horrible_war%E2%80%9D\" >&#8220;Think twice before you punish a &#8216;Russian&#8217; over Putin\u2019s horrible war&#8221;<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h1><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"%E2%80%9CThink_twice_before_you_punish_a_%E2%80%98Russian_over_Putins_horrible_war%E2%80%9D\"><\/span>&#8220;Think twice before you punish a &#8216;Russian&#8217; over Putin\u2019s horrible war&#8221;<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h1>\n<div>\n<aside class=\"single__inline-module alignleft\">\n<div class=\"inline-module inline-module--columnist inline-module--author\">\n<div class=\"inline-module--author__img\">\n            <img decoding=\"async\" width=\"76\" height=\"69\" src=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2013\/08\/karol-markowicz.png?w=76&amp;h=69&amp;crop=1\" class=\"attachment-nyp_columnist size-nyp_columnist\" alt=\"Karol Markowicz\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2013\/08\/karol-markowicz.png 76w, https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2013\/08\/karol-markowicz.png?w=38 38w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 76px) 100vw, 76px\"\/>       <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>It\u2019s a tough time to be Russian in America. Even if you\u2019re not <em>actually<\/em> Russian.<\/p>\n<p>I was raised in Brooklyn\u2019s Russian community, but nearly no one was really from Russia. Most are Jews from the former Soviet Union. I was born in Russia, but that\u2019s rare. My parents had met in Turkmenistan. <\/p>\n<p>Most people I knew were from Ukraine, as was my father, or Belarus, like my grandmother. Others were from Latvia, Moldova, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and so on. Yet because we spoke the Russian language amongst ourselves, we used \u201cRussian\u201d as a shorthand for self-de<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">script<\/a>ion.<\/p>\n<p>It wasn\u2019t an exact fit, but it beat the alternative of complicated explanations of a country that no longer exists, changed borders, cities whose names were amended long ago and the way Jews were always kept separate in Soviet society. Today Ukraine\u2019s president is Jewish and very much Ukrainian, though he too grew up speaking Russian.<\/p>\n<p>There are non-Jews from the former Soviet states in \u201cRussian\u201d areas like south Brooklyn too. We weren\u2019t all the same, but we were similar enough to form a tight-knit community.<\/p>\n<p>Today it\u2019s more complicated. Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s invasion has discombobulated the delicate system.<\/p>\n<p>American-based <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/social-mediaa\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"1\" title=\"Social Media\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Facebook<\/a> groups are changing \u201cRussian\u201d in their titles to a more fitting \u201cRussian-speaking.\u201d It makes sense to drop the shorthand, but it\u2019s also a safety measure.<\/p>\n<p>Facebook has made \u201ca temporary change to its hate speech policy\u201d allowing \u201cusers in some countries to call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine invasion,\u201d according to Reuters. If Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, imagines hate speech will remain \u201cin context,\u201d it should spend more time on social media.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not like being \u201cRussian\u201d in America has ever been easy. The 1980s weren\u2019t great, what with the threat of nuclear war and Ivan Drago killing Apollo Creed in \u201cRocky IV.\u201d A brief period starting in the 1990s was OK. Then the left imagined Russia had somehow installed Donald Trump as president and wouldn\u2019t let go of this misbegotten belief no matter how evidence-free it was. It formed a \u201cresistance\u201d to him whereby it succumbed to every ridiculous conspiracy theory, the more Russian the better. And now Putin\u2019s despicable invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"682\" src=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/03\/russian-community-901.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;w=1024\" alt=\"A protest against the Russian invasion of Ukraine in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn on March 6, 2021.\" class=\"wp-image-21515017\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/03\/russian-community-901.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;w=1535 1536w, https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/03\/russian-community-901.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all 1024w, https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/03\/russian-community-901.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;w=512 512w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\"\/><figcaption>A protest against the Russian invasion of Ukraine in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn on March 6, 2021.<\/figcaption><figcaption><span class=\"credit\">Photo by Michael M. Santiago\/Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>But even in the worst times, when kids called me Commie or when members of the \u201cresistance\u201d told me on Twitter to \u201cgo back\u201d to where I came from, we didn\u2019t have Carnegie Hall disinviting Russian conductors, as it recently did to Valery Gergiev, or the Metropolitan Opera canceling singer Anna Netrebko, who denounced the war but not strongly enough to please management.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not just happening in America. In Germany, the Munich Philharmonic fired Gergiev as chief conductor for not denouncing Putin. Even in Soviet times, Americans were able to separate the people of Russia from their government. We understood they are not free like us, that they can\u2019t speak up like free people can.<\/p>\n<p>Nor is it only living Russians on the chopping block.<\/p>\n<p>The Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra canceled performances of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky\u2019s music, and Italy\u2019s University of Milano-Bicocca considered pulling the plug on a course focused on Fyodor Dostoevsky\u2019s work.<\/p>\n<p>Russians in America are sitting up and taking notice. On one hand, we came here to be American and leave the old world behind. On the other, our insular ways, our language, our food, make us a target now.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"682\" src=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/03\/Valery-Gergiev.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;w=1024\" alt=\"Carnegie Hall cancelled a performance with Russian conductor Valery Gergiev.\" class=\"wp-image-21515031\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/03\/Valery-Gergiev.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;w=1535 1536w, https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/03\/Valery-Gergiev.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all 1024w, https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/03\/Valery-Gergiev.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;w=512 512w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\"\/><figcaption>Carnegie Hall cancelled a performance with Russian conductor Valery Gergiev.<\/figcaption><figcaption><span class=\"credit\">Photo by GEORG HOCHMUTH\/POOL\/AFP via Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Russian is bad. People post pictures on Facebook of \u201cRussian cucumbers\u201d for sale on Brighton Beach, which are not actually from Russia but are the kind area \u201cRussians\u201d use for pickling, and suggest a name change is in order. In the same neighborhood, a rumor spread that the Taste of Russia market was changing its name to Taste of Ukraine. That turned out to be false, but \u201cRussians\u201d debated the name change online with many finding it absurd. Russian restaurants are seeing declining reservation numbers.<\/p>\n<p>And worse. Tatiana Varzar opened her eponymous Brighton Beach restaurant Tatiana in the 1990s and expanded to Hallandale Beach, Fla., 17 years ago. Varzar serves a variety of Eastern European food: khachapuri from Georgia, salo from Ukraine, lamb chops \u201cpa karski\u201d from Armenia, pelmeni from Russia and so on.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"single__inline-module alignright\">\n    <\/aside>\n<p>Varzar told me the Hallandale restaurant has been getting anonymous calls that include threats. She forwarded a voicemail to me in which the caller refers to Russians as assassins and says, menacingly, that she should change the cuisine of the restaurant.<\/p>\n<p>Varzar is from Odessa. That\u2019s in Ukraine. She left in 1978. \u201cWe left an oppressive state and it followed us here,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s the culture of \u201cDo something,\u201d even if the something is stupid and wrong, that causes the cancellation of Russian artists and ultimately the threatening phone calls to restaurants. We don\u2019t always need to act, to virtue signal how deeply we care and to display our commitment to canceling the bad people. <\/p>\n<p>The not-actually-Russian community is traumatized by what\u2019s happening in Ukraine, with many people, including me, still having family in both Russia and Ukraine. And yet the community is more united than ever. Putin\u2019s actions might be black and white, but for the rest of the world there is still a lot of gray.<\/p>\n<p><em>Twitter: @Karol<\/em>\n                        <\/div>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMLG0nwswvr63Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">For forums sites go to <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.buradabiliyorum.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/news\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"2\" title=\"News\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">News<\/a> articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/news\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">News category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2022\/03\/13\/think-twice-before-you-punish-a-russian-over-putins-horrible-war\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Think twice before you punish a &#8216;Russian&#8217; over Putin\u2019s horrible war&#8221; It\u2019s a tough time to be Russian in America. Even if you\u2019re not actually Russian. I was raised in Brooklyn\u2019s Russian community, but nearly no one was really from Russia. Most are Jews from the former Soviet Union. I was born in Russia, but&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":415882,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/03\/russian-community-900.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1024","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[126723,4950,100685,88208,126128,73234],"class_list":["post-415881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-3-13-22","tag-brooklyn","tag-russians","tag-soviet-union","tag-ukraine-war","tag-vladimir-putin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415881\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}