No. 16: Beer and Tots with Tatiana
Foreign friends have seen what is unbelievable and will tell you to believe.
The Old Truck on Tyranny.
This week continues a series inspired by Tim Snyder’s 2017 book On Tyranny and the “20 Lessons” derived from his study..
Lesson 16: Learn from peers in other countries. Keep up your friendships abroad, or make new friends abroad. The present difficulties in the United States are an element of a larger trend. And no country is going to find a solution by itself. Make sure you and your family have passports.
Tatiana loves American pub food. So do I. We were in a brewery in Bend, Oregon. The hubbub added to the difficulty we had in understanding each other. It was easier when we were hiking early in the day, or having a lunch in the sun. But her accent, while beautiful in my ears, folded English words in ways my mind could not always unfold. Since I grew up in a place where everyone pretty much talks the same, accents befuddle me. Emigrating as an adult, this strange language of ours is now a necessity for her.
Her daughter is my age. She grew up in Soviet Russia, emigrating almost two decades ago. Masha now lives quite an American life. When we were sitting in that pub, her mother Tatiana had been in the United States for less than a year. It was autumn after the 2025 election. We were all about to see what Trump was going to unleash on America, and I was drinking beer and eating tots with two women who had seen where this language goes.
Vladimir Putin first came to power in Russia in 2000. He is still in power, 25 years later. Masha and I were 25.
Ylena held up her iPhone. “These are listening there. You can’t say things around any phone. Even when with your friends, you have to stay silent about what you think.”
I believed her.
There was a table of 20-somethings nearby. They were the beautiful people that come to Bend for one recreation or another. These had on enough labeled clothes to tell us they were from Idaho and supported the second amendment. I wondered how they took Tatiana’s rich accent. I wondered what they were thinking about what was about to happen. I wondered if they had any friends who had spent 25 years under the boot of a dictator.
Tatiana sipped her half pint of dark beer and ate tots, which make her smile.
She stopped for a second. She was assembling English for me to hear. It took a lot of effort for her to put her nuanced thinking into this other language. Her eyes welled up and her voice cracked, saying it for her.
“I don’t know how to say just right, but I miss my home so much. Every day. I do not miss my country, but I miss my home. Is that, does that say it?”
Nine months have passed since we shared those tots and beers. Winter passed through us, then Spring. It is now high Summer. I want to visit Tatiana myself and see what she sees around us. I am scared to hear that the darkness she left is creeping back over her, that here in a nation she took years to emigrate to, she is now seeing what happened 25 years ago play out again.
I want to learn from her how to be, if it gets that bad, and secretly I want to learn what could have been done differently then to bend history differently.