A Passport to Hell
The Cosmopolitan Globalists help Vladislav burn his Russian passport
We have a lot of good reading coming up for you this weekend, so this will be a brief. I was taken out of action yesterday by an errand: to wit, I was at the Russian Embassy in Paris with Cosmopolitan Globalists Sophie Weisenfeld, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Vladislav Davidzon, Regina Maryanovska-Davidzon, and a Chechen cameraman who should not be named for security reasons, where we went to burn Vladislav’s Russian passport in protest. And burn it we did. I filmed it, but I’m sure the Chechen did a better job of capturing the moment, so for now, I’ll just attach a few photos.
We had conceived the idea of doing this the night before, over dinner, when Vlad and I were well into our cups. Regina, a Ukrainian filmmaker, is Odessa-born, and Vlad had promised her—he didn’t require much urging—that he would burn the damned thing. It was smouldering in his pocket; he wanted rid of it.
Vlad was in possession of the passport because he was born in Tashkent, when it was part of the Soviet Union. His grandparents were Ukrainian Jews who fled to Tashkent to escape Hitler, or perhaps they were sent there by Stalin; the stories we were recounting over dinner all became jumbled in my mind. Vladislav’s parents emigrated to America when he was just six years old, and his father became what Wikipedia chastely calls a “kingmaker” in Brighton Beach. Vlad speaks American like an American, save for a palatalized consonant or two that you can hear when he’s overexcited.
Everyone at dinner had the same story, more or less. Toomas’s parents fled Stalin and Hitler, their exodus taking them first to Sweden and then to New Jersey. The great tyrants of the twentieth century chased all of our families out of Europe—and we were the lucky ones, because we survived, and grew up in America, the land of milk and honey—and then we came back, to a Europe at peace. We thought.
When Stalin invaded Estonia, Toomas’s grandfather learned that he would be shot. He owned a farm—the farm where Toomas lives today—and more, ran a factory. He fled, hiding in the woods. Then Hitler invaded. Hitler’s plans for him were no improvement. For three weeks in December of 1944—as Hitler’s army was retreating and Stalin’s was arriving—the chaos was such that escape was possible, and his father took to sea in a rowboat, where by chance the Stockholm-bound ship that picked him up was captained by his cousin. “It will only be for a few weeks,” his cousin assured him. “Then Churchill will tell Stalin to free us.”
Toomas was born in Stockholm. His family then emigrated to New Jersey. Not until 1991 did Estonia see freedom again. Toomas became the Estonian foreign minister, and later, the president.
Thus we found ourselves at dinner in Paris in 2022 telling stories about our parents and grandparents and, as we spoke, thumbing through our iPhones as we tried to figure out what all the reports of Russian private planes flying east of the Urals meant—were we about to be nuked?—and shepherding the refugees in our care from places where they were sure to be murdered to places where they might be safe. Anyplace is better than a place you’ll be bombed, but it’s best to go someplace where they won’t be cruel to you, isn’t it? Toomas was guiding two Ukrainians from the Polish border to a bus that would take them two Riga.
“They were okay,” Toomas said of his Ukrainians, scrolling through his phone. “Then the Russians started bombing them.” They had made it to the Polish border; now he was trying to help them find the bus. Toomas mentioned at some point that he remembered hearing his father talk about bringing water to the prisoners in cattle cars. One of them had had his tongue cut out. His mother, he said, told him about a soldier who had lost his boot. She picked it up to bring it to him, then saw that his foot was still in it.
Vlad and Regina both had long lists of Ukrainians. I have seven Afghans, whose prospects grow dimmer by the day. How will they compete with the blonde and telegenic Ukrainians?
Vladislav’s cousin didn’t want to enrol the little girls in a French school yet. The girls didn’t speak French. “They’re in denial,” he said. “They think they’ll be going back to Ukraine.”
“That’s completely normal,” I said. “Give them time.”
“They’ve had two days. That’s enough, isn’t it? When I arrived in America I had to start school right away. I didn’t speak any English. It was hard at first, it was awful and I was self-conscious, but I learned. They’ll learn.”
I said to give them a week.
“A week?” He was doubtful. They had no cause for self-pity, he said. They were alive. And they were in a much better situation than other refugees. Regina’s friend had offered them her apartment, which was extremely generous of her. “Their fairy-godmother aunt got them to France—and put them up in a proper luxury apartment on the Avenue Foch! With croissants! Not a refugee shelter like everyone else.”
“A week,” I said. “They’re completely traumatized.”
“Yes, but they have to get used to it.” He turned to Toomas for a second opinion. “Mr. President, what do you think?”
He looked up from his phone. “Don’t call me Mr. President.”
“Yes, but they need to get used to it, right? Like everyone does.”
“What, two days?” Toomas was trying to calculate a route using Google maps on his phone. “Give them a week. But yeah, then they have to get used to it.”
My grandparents would have understood our conversation so well. Which borders can you cross without a laissez-passer? How closely do they look at the documents at those checkpoints? What do we do about the elderly relatives who refuse to leave because they’ve never travelled before and they don’t propose to start now? Don’t they understand they’ll be killed? What further agonies does that madman have in store for us? Will anyone stop him?
“Never again,” my ass. The only thing that’s changed is that now there are iPhones and atomic weapons.
So we decided to go to the Russian Embassy and burn Vladislav’s passport, in protest, outside of it. The smallest of gestures, in the big scheme of things—the embassy wasn’t even open—but who the hell wants to be a Russian, now? Vladislav gave a speech in Russian and English. Fuck you, Russian warship, fuck you, Russian passport. This is for Mariupol. This is for Aleppo. This is for Toomas’s grandparents. This is for refugees everywhere.
For three weeks in December of 1944—as Stalin’s army was retreating and Hitler’s was arriving.. wrong. The Nazi army arrived in 1941.. in 1944 the Soviets arrived.. (again).
Did Grandpa Ilves really have to flee Hitler AND Stalin, or is that a slight modification to make the story even more interesting?