Editor’s note: This commentary is by Andrew Haig, MD, who practices physical medicine and rehabilitation in Williston and Middlebury. He is professor emeritus at the University of Michigan and this year’s recipient of the prestigious Haim Ring Award for championing rehabilitation throughout the world from the International Society for Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine.
Ukraine is only a tank of gas and an airplane ticket away from the West Addison General Store. When I agreed to give lectures at their national traumatology and neurology conferences I knew that that the Russians had started a war with Ukraine. I had no clue that Ukraine would also be on the news every day back home in Vermont. I got off the plane thinking I was stepping into a war zone as a Not-So-Great-Again American fool. A few weeks ago their president had to either tell the world our president wasn’t an extortionist or risk the safety of his people.
Kyiv, the capital, wasn’t exactly a war zone. It was Boston. My friendly host picked me up at the airport in her Mercedes. We drove along an immaculate well-lit freeway through a city of wide streets and tall buildings to the old center, where my hotel overlooked Parliament and a few golden-roofed churches. There were no soldiers with semi-automatic weapons on the corners. Instead I looked out at McDonalds, Starbucks, and local taprooms with Cyrillic signs I couldn’t read. Not a war zone.
The next morning my host arranged for her young colleague to give me a tour of the city. A young, bubbly mother of blonde little 2- and 4-year-old girls, she was married to an architect and told me she enjoyed the club scene before the girls were born. Chatting about nerves and muscles, we wandered through parks, crossed a glass-bottomed bridge, took a funicular ride up the hillside, and dined on borscht and fried fish as she pointed out all of the lively places young people inhabit. Boston but with ancient monasteries.
We walked across the central square. Without breaking her stride, she almost offhandedly remarked, “This is where they all died.” We walked a bit further to a monastery. “To keep the injured out of the government’s hands my friends made a hospital here.” The street was lined with pictures of 100 who died, surrounded by flowers, photos of fire fights, guns, clubs, and gas masks. I noticed they were wearing the same clothes my kids wear. Only five years ago in this version of Boston, the young people fought and died to stop a corrupt president from bringing them into the grips of a Russian dictator. The young people of Boston did this 250 years ago.
We kept on walking. We turned a corner and she showed me a street lined with artists selling their paintings.
That night we celebrated the chief of trauma’s 60th birthday with about 50 of his colleagues. It was a white tablecloth affair at a four-star hotel. The eight-course dinner with caviar, shrimp and beef, was accompanied by wine, vodka, and more vodka. A violin and guitar played in the background. There was toast after toast, gift after gift laden on the beloved leader. He’d trained many of the trauma surgeons in the country.
Trauma surgeons in Ukraine. Russian tanks and guns in Crimea. I didn’t want to ask the obvious. They didn’t want to talk about it, either.
We left Kyiv on a night train to Ivano-Frankovsk, a university town much like Burlington in the foothills of the Caucus mountains. My bunkmate didn’t speak English. After a few efforts at sign language, there was a long silence. He pulled out his phone and Google-Translated to me, “It’s not all good here in Ukraine.” I looked in his eyes and had nothing to say. The next day I asked my medical student guide where he would work after graduation. “Out of Ukraine” was his answer. He could never go home because he was a Russian speaker attending school on the wrong side of the battle when the Russians invaded. His Russian-speaking neighbors see him as the enemy.
The final day back in Kyiv, my senior neurologist colleague took me on another walking tour of the city: Here was a memorial to the millions starved by the Soviets. Over there was a building still filled with bullet holes of the Germans who shot tens of thousands. And once again we found ourselves at the makeshift memorial She had been there. Blood running in the streets. Protesters rushing hopelessly dead bodies to her tent. We had three shots of vodka for lunch.
Kyiv is a lot like Boston. Ivano-Frankovsk is like Burlington. The mountains are Vermont. And the people are just like us. Except the young people of our region have not been called on to violently rise up against a despot for a few centuries. Yet as we face constitutional crisis after crisis, our young people are no less passionate about freedom, justice, and equality. They have no less tolerance for corruption than the Ukranians and they can smell it out. Like the Ukrainian young people, they will fight if things get bad enough.
The older generation still has time to stop this. We are the ones who have the power to make changes without violence. We have money, influential networks, and years of experience. We must fight corruption, injustice, and demagoguery with old people’s tools, or in time our children will be compelled to use the only tools they have.
