UKRAINIAN MONSTER
AN AMERICAN STORY
Viktoriya Volkov
A memoir of exile, rebellion, and the search for freedom in a fractured America.
I am not afraid of a blade.
I am afraid of silence when my people are dying.
—Lina Kostenko
You have to make your own legends now.
It isn’t easy.
—Mary Crow Dog
. . .
The Ice Cream Truck
Ukraine
“We want to sing with you!”
America
Too Real to Touch
Freedom
Ukrainian Monster
The Ice Cream Truck
When I was three, at the park with my sister and my
Babushka Nadya, I heard the unmistakable,
rollicking music of the ice cream truck, I bolted
across a busy two-way street to catch it—
I didn’t have any money,
(I didn’t even know money existed!)
I caught the truck—
but didn’t get any ice cream.
My grandmother told the story for many years—
almost laughing with terror and total disbelief that
she had anything to do with producing me.
She’d cry out,
“And just like that, you’re gone—gone! I look across
the street—cars swish past—and there you are—
on the other side!
And when did you, fast one, even have time?”
Her humor would quickly turn to grief,
“The cars could have hit you. Anyone could have
snatched you up. Oy, oy, oy...
somehow I got to the other side...
and led you back...
Oy...”
And soon, she’d be both delighted and horrified all
over again, asking me again—
“How did you get to the other side?”
When I was six, she sat me down on the couch and
told me stories of her home in Ukraine.
Yellow sunlight
streamed through the window, catching the gold
threads in her flowered headscarf, and the steel
buried in her mournful blue eyes.
She never said why she told me these stories.
But I always suspected it had something to do with
my run after the ice-cream truck.
Ukraine
When she was a little girl,
Communist officers stormed her selo—[1]
pointed rifles at people’s heads—
and seized the entire winter supply
of food and livestock.
Her father, Vladimir Vashchenko, took what he
could—just one barrel of grain—and buried it in the
ground beneath the cow manure.
The officers raided homes, barns, and stores—
jabbing bayonets into the walls and ceilings
to find anything hidden.
They didn’t think to look under the cow manure.
That barrel of grain and the apples from a single
surviving tree were all that my babushka’s[2] family
had to live on through the entire winter.
❧
Joseph Stalin laid claim to Ukraine.
He targeted the small farms and selos—knowing most
Ukrainians were bound to the land.
Ukraine responded—Long live Ukraine!
Prikaz!—
Anyone refusing to give up property, weapons, or
arms—Shoot on sight
Refusing to denounce faith?—Shoot on sight
Any Ukrainian... intellectual, artist, or teacher...
anyone that even so dares identify as Ukrainian—
arrest and transport!
Anyone running from their village—anyone at the
borders—drag them back—let them rot!
Millions of Ukrainians were held at gunpoint in
their own homes and villages as they starved to death
in the Holodomor.[3] Millions more were imprisoned,
tortured, or shot dead.
The Communists demanded everyone give the Oath
of Allegiance[4] to this regime.
No one in my family gave it.
❧
In 1941 the Nazis invaded Ukraine—
seizing land and hunting Jewish people for execution.
And even as World War Two tore through the land—
the Communists kept slaughtering anyone who
dissented from their rule.
Great-Grandfather Vashchenko hid people in his own
home from both Communists and Nazis.
As German soldiers stormed past his windows
in the mornings,
and the Soviets pushed back by evening,
my great-grandfather fed the fugitives from the
family’s own rations, and trained my grandmother
to walk
tiho, tiho—
to move so quietly she wouldn’t scare them
and to not let a single muscle betray them
when officers came to search.
A short time later, the Soviets came to conscript him
to fight the Nazis.
Great-Grandfather Vashchenko stitched his
now-forbidden Bible into the inner lining of his coat
over his heart and went to the frontlines.
Over ten million Slavic soldiers perished as they
defeated the Nazis.
My great-grandfather came home with the Bible still
covering his heart.
❧
At home, the carnage did not stop.
The physically disabled and mentally ill were taken
out to sea and drowned.
Political dissidents were diagnosed as insane and
locked in psychiatric hospitals.
Killings, rapes, kidnappings, and sex slavery rings
were systematic and went unpunished—
you were killed simply for mentioning it.
And people were still being arrested
on charges of offense to brotherhood and justice
and sent off to labor camps for Communist
industrialization projects.
Spirits died, and soon, bodies too.
Babushka Nadya got up from the couch and brought a
loaf of bread from the kitchen.
She traced a line across it and pointed to the larger
side, “This is two thirds,” she said.
Her eyes dropped and went still.
“Стільки погибло.”
(This much perished.)
[1] Selo means village. Selos in pre-revolutionary Ukraine were
self-sustaining, independent communities built on shared labor and
mutual reliance.
[2] Babushka means grandmother. In the West, it's often
mispronounced. The stress falls not on the “u,” but on the first “a.”
It’s a crisp, dignified sound (not found in the English language)—
ba-bush-ka.
[3] Holodomor—from the Ukrainian, “to kill by starvation.” A man
made famine in 1932–33.
[4] The Soviet “Oath of Allegiance” was required of all citizens,
pledging unquestioned loyalty to the regime, its ideology, and its
future.
In Soviet Slavic phrasing, one gives the oath—not takes it. Because
under Communism, allegiance was not yours to choose. It was
extracted and surrendered.
“We want to sing with you!”
It wasn’t until I was much older that my father,
Dmitri, told me about Soviet Ukraine.
As he spoke in his native Russian, his blue eyes
went far away, glimpsing a home he never even had a
chance to lose—a home that, for him, never even
existed.
He was born in the Eastern Ukrainian border city of
Donetsk, under the rule of a slowly weakening empire.
By now, the slogans softened and civility took hold—
But the rules remained the same—
“Everyone just got better at working around them.”
And now, joining the Party was a choice—
Though the result of either choice was still decided
for you.
Any belief, opinion, or action outside the party line
was still a punishable crime.
Homes of suspected dissenters, including my father's,
were wired for surveillance.
Reports came from anywhere: neighbors, coworkers—
sometimes even relatives would turn you in—
And one wrong word, action, or even a shadow
of suspicion still brought the agents.
They'd slam your fingers with the door—
drag you into a van—
and take you to the police station where they beat you
until you broke.
If you were a believer, you never broke.
No matter the cost.
Three instances of dissent meant children were
taken as wards of the state.
Everyone else was shipped to the gulag[5] to dig
tunnels under rivers and build apartment complexes in
the freezing temperatures of Siberia with nothing to
eat and nothing but rags for coats.
My father lit up as he sang the last song of the
condemned—
“We have twelve months of winter—
and the rest is summer!”
❧
At school, neither of my parents joined the
Komsomol.[6]
As a result, they were ostracized and bullied for their
faith by students and teachers alike.
Every day they faced mockery, humiliation, violence,
and grade deflation.
My father looked far away again, his spirit resigned to
endurance.
“None of it mattered to us. We knew there was no
knowledge at school—
only training of the future citizen.”
Because my parents did not take the presyaga
(the Oath), they were denied admission to university
and segregated into secretarial and trade positions.
It didn't matter how hard they worked—
they were barred from all leadership roles.
But professional advancement didn’t matter to them
either. Not if it also meant indoctrination into the
Party.
Still, my father—the only open Christian in his city—
would tear into his songs of faith on his guitar on the
subway.
My dad beamed,
laughing as though sunlight broke after a storm—
He himself couldn't believe it.
“Sometimes even Party members would come up,
crying out,
We want to sing with you!”
[5] Gulag is a Russian acronym for “Main Directorate of
Corrective Labor Camps.” In reality, it meant exploitation,
starvation, and death for millions. Being sent to the gulag
effectively meant being sent to a slow death.
[6] Komsomol was the youth division of the Communist Party,
designed to prepare students for eventual Party membership.
America
When the Soviet Union collapsed, both economy
and society crumbled.
All of my father's siblings came to America in search
of a better life.
“I would have stayed in Ukraine,” my father said,
“But all my rodniye (my family, my close ones) left.
Where was I supposed to go?
If they didn’t go—we would not have gone—”
My parents applied for immigration. Because they
had never joined the Party, we were granted entry to
America as religious refugees.
Those with any Communist affiliation were not given
that chance.
My parents, my older sister Anastasiya, and I stepped
off the plane in Portland, Oregon, in 1993.
I was only eleven months old, but I can still
remember it—
falling in love with America
as she beckoned me to run headlong into freedom,
whispering,
“You can be anyone and do anything.”
❧
Once here, America became not just a new country
for my parents either.
She vindicated the beliefs they had risked their lives
to defend in Ukraine.
And America promised that their hard work ethic
would finally pay off and they could provide for our
family. We started with nothing.
My parents worked at any job they could find,
even as they didn’t speak any English.
My father painted houses and installed gutters.
Within a few short years, he started his own gutter
company. My mother sewed clothes and cleaned
houses to help provide for our family.
At home, my mother preserved the traditional
Ukrainian way of life and saved money wherever she
could—
like survival depended on it, because it did.
She washed our clothes by hand instead of going to
the laundromat. We went to food pantries for help
with groceries. We picked blackberries along the
city's public bike trails.
Soon we began renting a small, quiet house in the
then-middle-class Lents neighborhood.
My mother had five more children and became a
full-time hazaika[7] (homeowner)—or, as she defines
it, with that sharp light in her eyes—the one you don't
argue with,
“a nurse, teacher, chauffeur, home remodel specialist,
cook, gardener, and cleaner.”
She also took on the financial accounting for my
father's business.
That still was not enough.
When all her children got older, she also began to
work as a professional caregiver to help make ends
meet.
I remember my parents' belief in America and their
devotion to the promise she made them.
We visited sites in the Pacific Northwest together
with all of our relatives,
my dad spoke of owning his business with a proud
gleam in his eye,
my mom took us to Russian school and piano
lessons. (Learning to read and write in Russian was
practical, not political—more people around the
world spoke it.)
But they found nothing higher to identify with. So
they began to hold tighter to the only thing familiar
to them—
the traditional Pentacostal church community that had
defied and survived the Soviet regime in Ukraine
with hymns older than borders
and rules older than choice.
Girls were to be obedient to elders,
wear head coverings and skirts, never wear make-up,
and never date. They married—at 17 or 18,
and sometimes as early as 16—only if the pastor
allowed it, and only within the church. And they had
children—
as many as God planned.
Everything outside of church—riches, politics,
earthly power itself—was merzkoie (worldly)—
spoken of as though the smallest slip would curse you
and your entire bloodline.
Our church in particular was
“not of this world.”
[7] Hazaika means homeowner. In the Slavic tradition, the hazaika
keeps the household alive—its order, its provision, its survival—
therefore, she is the homeowner.
Too Real to Touch
I could never obey.
As I got older, I felt more at home at school than at
my actual home.
There I learned about America and her emancipation
and civil rights movements—how African Americans
risked everything—
lost their lives, fought, and suffered not just to be free,
but to call this country—home.
I didn’t see Slavic people in the history books.
But that didn’t matter because I learned—
when America fights anything or anyone in the way
of freedom (including the Russians)
she will win—we will win.
And after school every day, I came home to a Soviet
religious dissident, Russian-speaking,
Ukrainian family that taught us to outwit empires to
obey God—and survive.
Little by little, the worlds clashed—and over time,
came to treat each other as unwitting enemies.
How could I make sense of this?
I couldn’t. I had to forge my own way.
At seven, I started sneaking out to my friends’ houses
to hang out—and hiding at home from my mom just
to read the books I wanted.
By ten, I was skipping church and playing with the
radio dial.
That’s when I found hip hop—
the stories of creating something out of nothing—
the struggle—the triumph—the pulse of America
I decided to become a gangster rapper.
At fifteen, I began to write bars—do drugs—skate—
party—run away from home—pray to Eminem—
“You don't feel it? Then it must be too real to touch.”
I knew where I'd end up.
I would be excluded from the church until I was
ready to obey.
I would not come back.
So, I would thus be banished from heaven.
And upon my death,
burn in hell.
But I could not—and would not—be saved.
Not in church, at least.
So I banished myself and kept following the whisper,
You will only find yourself through freedom.
Freedom
In the summer of 2001, my parents fulfilled their
American dream—they bought a home.
We moved to the outer edge of Portland, near 82nd
Avenue—
a commercial thoroughfare lined with trailer parks,
dive bars, strip clubs, peep show houses, and
cheap motels.
At the time, my parents didn’t know this was Felony
Flats—where felons were brought after serving time.
The streets were kept clean, businesses thrived,
and kids played outside.
We found out over the years as our streets filled with
the homeless, addicted, passed out, dead, and sold.
My family didn't understand how anyone who
knows English ends up on the street.
They protected us with more rules, more church, and
more work.
Then, my brother Mark ended up on the street.
I first noticed something was wrong when I’d talk to
my brother, but I could not reach him.
He became more and more jumbled, closed off—
only to be overtaken by awe,
self-conviction, and an openness to the world that
looked more like terror.
He started to sit on the porch all day, catatonic,
watching cars and people going past.
He stopped showering and refused all personal
hygiene.
His once neat blonde hair grew long—hiding his face,
hiding reality, hiding the voices.
Then, a switch flipped
He began leaving home for days at a time—
challenging himself to see how long he could
survive on the streets.
I asked my brother, "Why are you running away?"
Mark turned away and answered—
“Freedom.”
I begged my mom to take my brother to the doctor
for a psychological evaluation.
My mother responded, “Only God can heal him.
We need to fast and pray so God can forgive our
sins.”
Mark left home for good in a T-shirt and basketball
shorts in the middle of a frigid winter in 2022.
During the day, he kept warm at the public library,
watching prankster and car-racing videos on the
computers.
At night, he slept on sidewalks or next to the highway
on a piece of cardboard.
Sometimes, he won the lottery at the Portland Rescue
Mission and slept on a plastic mat on the floor,
beneath the large Christian wooden cross.
I kept looking for my brother everywhere.
When I'd find him he'd look at me
with wide wild blue eyes, explaining,
“I talk to everyone, because I need information.
I need to understand how everything works,”
and he’d pivot,
and walk away, back onto the streets.
I could do nothing to stop him.
I kept searching for him.
When I finally found him at Central Library,
I convinced him to let me take him to Providence
St. Vincent's hospital. They diagnosed him with
schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type, with acute
exacerbation,[8] and committed him to the psychiatric
ward. When I visited him, my brother didn't even
understand that he was ill.
After a week, the hospital released him back onto the
streets—alone, with nothing but the clothes on his
back and a bus ticket.
The professionals didn’t even call our family—
my brother asked them not to.
I asked for help for my brother everywhere I possibly
could—the shelters, affordable housing, work
programs for the disabled, the police.
No one would help him unless he chose to be helped.
Mark chose to keep searching for himself on the
streets.
He got a job at Fred Meyer[9] pushing carts and
studied how to become a professional accountant and
get rich by stock trading at the library.
He dreamed of making at least enough money to rent
a jet ski and ride down the Willamette River—
passing downtown Portland—
with his hair rippling in the wind
“like a god.”
His reality was hunger, loneliness, infections, stolen
belongings, getting check-scammed, and working
just to pay off the scam debt.
He swallowed hunger like breath.
He made friends with loneliness.
He learned to sleep in Portland’s violent,
bed-bug infested shelters with his belongings
under his body.
Sometimes he had a phone.
Sometimes he answered when I called.
Sometimes he let me visit him on the streets.
Each time, I tried to get him to a doctor.
And each time, he refused.
Still, Mark said, “I got rich anyway, because I figured
out how everything works.”
My father was asked once if he was happy he had
immigrated to America.
He exhaled and leaned against his truck, taking the
weight off after a long day of installing gutters.
Twenty-five years in America reflected in his eyes
as he flicked his head side to side as though weighing
the scales.
Then, firming his shoulders, he replied with a
glimmering smile,
“Fifty/fifty.”
[8] Schizoaffective disorder combines psychotic symptoms—
hallucinations, delusions—with a mood disorder such as bipolar or
depressive disorder.
Bipolar type refers to the presence of manic episodes (periods of
extreme energy, impulsivity, or euphoria), often alternating with
episodes of depression.
Acute exacerbation refers to a sudden and significant worsening of
symptoms—when psychotic and/or mood symptoms become more
intense or frequent than usual.
[9] Fred Meyer is a Pacific Northwest-based chain of
“one–stop shopping” stores.