Where shall Slovakia head-east or west-has been a cause of heated debate among its political analysts lately. In discussing this issue, they seem to lose sight of the fact that as it chooses a path to embark on, a nation should look inward rather than outward. That said, geopolitical developments in the outside world are also to be considered.
I was born in eastern Slovakia, but had to move to the country's western part later in life. I live in the west to this day, but feel homesick when thinking about the east. As I travel eastward, I always long to return to the place I made my home all those years ago.
During my visits to eastern Slovakia, I frequent the Svidnik military cemetery. Many of the Soviet officers and men who liberated my homeland from Nazi Germany at the cost of their lives were laid to rest there. And in the west, I often make pilgrimage to the military memorial on Mount Slavin, where, too, a lot of Soviet soldiers found their final resting place during WWII.
As I visited my parents' place in the east, my overjoyed mother would not let me out of her arms. Her hugs and kisses gave me a bittersweet feeling as I thought about the millions of bereaved Russian mothers who had lost their young sons to war.
When I return home, my granddaughter rushes along to greet me, twining her arms tightly around my neck. Her affection has a bittersweet taste, as well-how I wish I could share those blissful moments with the thousands of Russian soldiers buried at Bratislava's Slavin!
They are dead, and I live on. What's the raison d'etre? This question always springs to mind when I visit Svidnik and Slavin. Every person has his/her own answer, if any at all. But all people share the awareness that they are here to follow up on their parents' mission. Those who brought you into this world shall remain in your heart forever. But we, the modern-day Slovaks, would not have been able to survive if those Russian soldiers had not sacrificed their lives for us.
How can I forget the loaf of bread that one of them shared with me as my starving eyes met with his? He is not buried at Svidnik, but his tomb may be, at Slavin. When I go there, I reflect on my own life and on the reason behind it. I dwell on the shared Russia-Slovak heritage that my contemporaries and I have been handed over to preserve and build upon. In our minds, Russian culture is inseparable from our own. Which is only natural as it was the Russian ideals of moral grace, truth, beauty, and spirituality that inspired the Slovaks in their cultural endeavors.
During WWI, my grandfather was taken to Russia as a prisoner of war. There, he had to work in the fields alongside other foreign POWs. Every morning, before plowing his first furrow, he would turn his eyes eastward to see the sun, the eternal source of life, and utter with a deep sigh, "Oh, Russia! A fertile land!" And during WWII, my gandpa would cast a hateful look at Nazi personnel carriers passing by and whisper to himself, and for our sake, "No, this just can't be..." He could feel that the Nazi army was set to destroy not only Russia, but his personal faith as well, all the moral capital he had inherited from his Slovak ancestors.
But the Slovaks do not forget their history.
I was eight or ten years old then-too young to realize the actual magnitude of the disaster. Later on, I learned that Nazi Germany's idea behind the war had been to exterminate or enslave Russia and the European nations, the Slavs and the Jews, and that twenty million Soviets had sacrificed their lives to stop that from happening.
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Allies' victory over Nazi Germany in WWII. In my mind, I am laying sixty red roses at the tomb of each andevery fighter against Nazism. Silent, but with my heart sobbing, I am placing flowers at the graves of all the Russian soldiers buried at Svidnik and Slavin. Their glorious heroism is immortalized in the monuments we have built to them. And in our hearts, we will remember those heroes as long as we live.
