Memoir often breaches the topic of war. Sometimes the author has a very personal view or experience of war as they live in area that is at war, or were sent to fight in a war. Sometimes the world itself seems to be at war because a war anywhere in the world sends information into the air, land, and water of the Earth. The media bombards us with coverage of certain wars and not about others. Though I live a third of a world away, the war in Ukraine seems like it is happening very close to home. Some of that is media. Some of it is because, for some reason I remember a woman I worked with in the Financial Aid Office my first year at Purdue. She spoke of the Balkans, The Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and the other states that had been pushed and pulled between Russian and European entities through the early 20th Century powers and then the Soviet Union. She had family that lived near beautiful beaches where her parents had played as children. Her family obvious still had strong connections to South-eastern Europe. I had never met anyone with such strong ties to countries that had been swallowed up by the Soviet Union. Kiev in my mind was much like Prague. They were both cities I would most likely never see.
I grew up with the Cold War, proxy wars in SE Asia, and a very real fear of a nuke starting WWIII. I loved history. In my mental maps of place and family, I can point out a person who volunteered and served in a war in every generation of my family back through the Civil War.
Bronze Age War
I will write about more of my personal connection to a war tomorrow. For now I want talk about why I feel women need to write about their views of what is happening in the world. For too long men, and in my county and most of Europe, white men have fought over land, boundaries, ownership, and resources. This is not anything new. Women were not writing memoir 3,000 years ago to give a different perspective on what caused ancient battles.
In the Tollense Valley in Pomerania (Poland / eastern Germany) is thought to be the site of one of the earliest and deadliest battles or massacres in the ancient world. Somewhere from 400 to 1400 people were killed, approximately 1300–1250 BCE, 3300 years ago, in some sort of major, violent event. There was a well designed and constructed bridge near the sight of the massive battle. This was around the same time as the battle of Troy, and when the Hittites were under siege from the Sea Peoples. The Mediterranean and what became Northen Europe apparently were not peaceful Bronze-age people as the old archeological stereotype depicts them to be. The people who live in this area today are not peaceful either. So old white men have been battling Euopre for thousands of years.
I wish we had journals of what the women of 3,000 years ago thought of the escalating violence and whether they saw other options besides slaughter.
The Ukraine
We do have diaries of Ukrainian girls from 2022. If everyone whose heart hurts for the Ukrainian people would write a bit about their understanding of the problems that lead to Putin’s attack on the Ukraine, and of the war perhaps these data points, if preserved, might help us understand how “regular” people’s reactions fed into support to disagreement with their government’s actions, and how different or earlier action might have swayed people and governments.
Holodomor and Poltava
But how far back do we try to discern causation and places where peace might have been possible. What about the Holodomor of 1932-33 when Stalin starved Ukrainians. No one should forget this. Perhaps we should turn off our media streams and write about what our parents told us about the wars and genocides of the early mid 20th century. Or should we go back to to Battle of Poltava in The Ukraine (with The included it means borderlands and makes it a region between other places with no autonomy) which is where Peter the Great and Charles the XII of Sweden fought for dominance in the early 1700s. Peter the Great won control over the region and pushed Sweden out of much of eastern Europe. Eventually the Swedish navy was crushed too.
I suppose this is what Putin refers to as The Ukraine being Russian. The Battle of Poltava in Russian Historical Memory paints a different picture in which the worsening of relations between Russia and the Ukraine brought Poltava back into the Russian people’s minds with governmental and media coverage taking advantage of the 300th anniversary of the battle.
Women and Nuanced Stories of War
We can tell stories of how we women pay attention to stories of war and conquest and how history can be rewritten to serve political positioning to move us toward war.
I am writing about this and an example of how people alive today can record their views of events in journals, memoirs, and family histories. That is one of the reasons I write about such things. If Putin steps foot into a NATO country all of Europe will erupt into battle. The NATO treaty demands all signatory countries come to the defense of any violated NATO borders. My take on current events in my future memoir that discusses this time period is firm in the support of how Putin has to be stopped from taking Ukraine so we (the U.S.) do not have to send troops to fight in Europe.
I have seen members of my family ruined by being sent to faraway lands to wage war. Every one of us needs to find family history and personal reasons to take up the pen to fight and politically pressure rational negotiations and agreements at all costs so as to save our sons and daughters. Perhaps then our memoirs can become less about reflections on war.
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