I love to speak Russian. But I've learned there are times to hold my tongue

This First Person column is written by Anna Rumin, a Montreal-born allophone who spoke only Russian for the first five years of her life. It was originally published in May 2022. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.

"Are you rooting for Russia or Canada?"

I'm nine years old and I've arrived at my Montreal school, ready for a multiplication tables game that I know I will win, thanks to the Saturday morning Russian classes where my memory skills are sharpened by the weekly poem that must be learned and recited by heart. 

I'm not sure what is going on. Normally the boys pay no attention to me but today there's a group waiting for my response. Clearly, they know I speak Russian at home. 

"Canada," I say, because I know that is the right answer.

"Good thing, commie," the leader says, and they turn and leave. 

It's September 1972 and everyone is eagerly awaiting the final game of the Summit Series when Canada will anchor its status as a hockey giant with its 6-5 win over the Russians.

Only it isn't Russia. It's the Soviet Union, which I have been brought up to despise.

In my first year of university in Montreal, I discover that being a communist is hip. I meet Bill who wears a red scarf and teaches himself Mandarin. The editor of our university newspaper is a communist. And my father is outraged by the popularity of a Soviet style restaurant that has opened in the city. After all, his grandfather and two uncles were executed by the Bolsheviks.  

In 1986, I graduate and finally make my first visit to the Soviet Union where I naively expect to feel at home, to feel my roots. It never happens. It doesn't matter that I speak Russian, it doesn't matter that I visit the building where my grandmother lived and the cathedral where my grandfather served as a priest. I never feel like I belong. 

Later that year, I spend a month in what was still Yugoslavia. I arrive and begin speaking Russian but within a few hours my host quietly suggests that I stop as it is associated with communist insurgency.  

Visiting the past

I visit Russia again in 1994 with my husband and meet my father's extended family, who my grandmother was convinced had perished or been tortured under Stalin. We have a photograph of that family taken before the Bolshevik Revolution. In it, my grandmother is surrounded by her eight siblings, her dark hair in a chignon, wearing a white dress and dark stockings. She stares out into the world, unaware of the atrocities awaiting her father and brothers, unaware that she will raise her own family in exile on the edge of the Sahara Desert and eventually die in Toronto. 

In 2008, I again visit St. Petersburg, this time with my husband and children. We go to the Kazan Cathedral where my great-grandfather was rector before his execution; he has since been canonized and even though I have more or less lost my religion, I tear up in front of his icon. I speak Russian in the stores, and we are welcomed into the homes of our extended family members where we sit around crammed tables and I speak Russian, finally grateful to my parents for having forced me to do so when I was growing up. 

Yesterday, I called my mother. 

We talked about the war in Ukraine. About the bodies and bombed buildings, about our relatives, about her tailor who is now making Ukrainian flags, about the Montreal nurse she knows whose parents are missing in Mariupol, about my cousin whose daughter lives in Poland and is worried about her boyfriend in Ukraine.

How, Anna? How is this happening again? She tells me that she was standing in line at the grocery store and overheard two women speaking in Russian about how their children were being bullied for speaking Russian.

This morning, I ran into Lyuba, a Russian-speaking woman I know. So seldom do I have the opportunity to speak the language of my childhood that I happily let loose my dormant Russian tongue. 

As I waved goodbye, my nine-year-old-self reminded me that I've learned the dance between knowing when and when not to speak Russian. 

Now is not that time.

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