Neither here nor there

E. Barış Altıntaş, Journalist

Exile is not only a journey of political persecution, resilience, or struggle but also one of vulnerability, inner turmoil, and sometimes nostalgia.

One thing is certain: the journalists who contributed to this publication aren’t complainers. Not all of them speak about emotional distress openly, despite going through tremendous emotional upheaval, leaving their home country under duress, losing all that was familiar, including social and professional ties, and the uncertainty about the future.

Nevertheless, and not surprisingly, feelings of homesickness, disconnection, and the stress of having to rebuild lives in a new country are prevalent. While this is not surprising, This aspect is often overlooked by professional support groups and civil society organizations.

For most of the journalists, uncertainty and anxiety about their future rules their day. “I am not sure about my safety and future,” said Valery Nechai, who spoke of the precariousness of his legal status in the previous section, reflecting his continuous state of unease.

For Russian journalists, the gap between their stance and what their country is doing is heart-wrenching. Valery Nechai: “Feeling yourself associated with a state that started a war of aggression is hard. And also to see compatriots who support what is happening.”

Certainly, it is not only journalists who are upset about the war. The entire world is. This alone makes life more difficult for the exiled journalists, especially those in the Baltics, who had to face Soviet occupation due to a troubled past.

“Because of its complicated past, many people treat Russian citizens, regardless of their ethnicity, whether they are Russian, Karachai, or whatever, with dislike or fear. Russian citizens are often refused to rent apartments because of their citizenship. If a citizen of the Russian Federation opens a non-profit or business organization in Lithuania, banks are almost 100% likely to refuse to open a current account. A few months ago, the Lithuanian parliament considered an initiative to ban the sale of real estate to Russian citizens, and it was adopted with some amendments. Russian citizens were banned from owning weapons. I can’t buy my own apartment, of course, and I’m not going to own a gun — but living in a situation where you are constantly under scrutiny because of your passport, which you didn’t choose, definitely leads to emotional difficulties.”

Such experiences of alienation and discrimination contribute significantly to journalists’ feelings of emotional distress, creating an environment where they constantly grapple with feelings of being an outsider.

In the narrative of exiled journalists, Banu Acun’s story stands as a heartbreaking testament to the complex realities and challenges faced by journalists who seek safety in foreign lands. Acun, the seasoned TV journalist who made the hard decision to leave in 2017 in Turkey after things started to really heat up, says her move to Berlin was shadowed by feelings of resentment and loss.

“I came to Berlin in 2017, quite bitter and angry,” she reflects. “I thought I had lost my profession, my country, and now I had to build a new life for my child.”

A love and hate relationship

Exile also makes the already-strained relationship with one’s motherland trickier.

Andrey Shashkov has been very expressive about this, sharing the deep sense of nostalgia and loss he feels for his life in Moscow. “The main difficulty is homesickness, although I realize that it is not a question of place but of time, about a period of my life that is gone forever. The Moscow from which I left is no longer there. My friends are scattered all over the world. In Russia, I have only my 50-year-old mother, my ex-husband with whom I have kept very close relations, and my grandmother’s rented apartment in St. Petersburg,” he shares.

“Every small inconvenience here in Germany is a reminder that my coming here was not a choice but a necessity,” he says, contrasting his situation with other immigrants fleeing wars or famine.

“For example, we are particularly annoyed by all the minor inconveniences in the new place that we didn’t have in the old place,” he says, listing restaurants being more expensive yet offering lower quality service in restaurants, food delivery, level of digitalization, bad quality of mobile communication and internet speed, perpetually late Deutsche Bahn trains.

However, he notes, they complain “Not because things are terrible or we are ungrateful to Germany for accepting us. It’s because we didn’t come voluntarily in search of a better life. We fled from a worse one. Made a decision in a matter of days. And we have no idea if we’ll ever be able to return.”

“Thus, those who relocated from Russia in 2022-2023 chose between the permanent fear of those who stayed and the permanent longing of those who left. And also, not everyone could leave – for example, because of elderly sick parents. I decided that my circumstances allowed me to leave, that between fear and longing, I would choose longing as a less destructive emotion. After leaving, I started drinking more – and this is not an uncommon story among those who have left either. I am saved by renewed sessions with a psychoanalyst and vipassana meditation.”

Like most of his other colleagues, Alexander Pichugin also expresses an emotional disconnect with his past in Russia. “My emotional ties with Russia have become quite limited,” he states, a very complex form of homesickness rather than detachment in my opinion.

This article is a part of the publication titled “In the Shadow of Two Palaces“