BOWING MY HEAD STILL

The hangover from dictatorship

For 25 years, Volodymyr Buhayenko was my doctor, of an alternative sort. Some of the medicine he practiced was considered standard in Ukraine but not in America, i.e. acupuncture, but he was ever researching, learning, trying things out until his death from COVID in 2020. Too many sick patients and a weak heart inherited from his mother finally overwhelmed him. I join a cohort who still mourn his passing.

He cured me of many ills, but also taught me about life.

His grandparents, teachers both, were taken away by the Soviets to concentration camps and never seen again. His country suffered a famine in the 1930s which killed millions, and the Second World War had ravaged their country. Volodymyr wasn’t Jewish; there was plenty of suffering to go around. As a result of the chronic political stranglehold Russia had on Ukraine, his mother told him, “Keep your head down. Don’t attract attention.” As a successful businessman and doctor, he attracted harassment from the Society-style mob that was then in charge of Ukraine. He moved to Poland, then came to the United States when he was in his early 40s.

He started from scratch, driving limousines, learning English, and becoming a citizen when he could. I was amazed how proud he was to change his name from the Russian-inflected Vladimir Bougenko to the Ukranian Volodymyr Buhayenko. America was changing him in other ways as well. “When I go back to Kyiv, people in the street ask me for money, as if I was a tourist.” “Why?” I asked. “Is it because of the clothes you wear?” “No.” He stopped to give weight to his next words. “I look like I have hope.”

He’d been in America for maybe a decade when his wife arranged a surprise party for his 60th birthday in a local restaurant, attended by admiring patients and friends. And yet, when he walked into the restaurant to find a hundred people looking straight at him, cheering and celebrating, he was terrified. “I know this will be hard for you to understand,” he told me, “but I was so afraid.”

This is the hangover from living in a dictatorship run by remorseless thugs. The fear stays for a lifetime, even when the knee is lifted from your neck.

America is not like Ukraine. Our grandparents were not taken and killed, we have not been worn down by wars on our soil, famine, poverty, and erasure as voters. We have instead a history of speaking up, demonstrating, burning draft cards, marching on Washington. Our strength has not yet been sapped. It was much harder for the Ukranians to overthrow the Russian thugs; surely we can take control of our country and avoid living where fear and dread are lodged inside us for a lifetime.