My mother and her family ran out of Azerbaijan in 1989. My late grandfather was the head of a top Soviet engineering firm in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, and my grandmother worked under him in the same organizational department. By the late 1980’s, my mother's family had established quite a foundation for themselves, especially working within the constraints of an oppressive regime.

Unfortunately, 1989 marked the beginning of a long-brewing ethnic conflict between Armenians and Azeris in the Soviet Union. What began as a conflict over the Nagorny Karabakh, a region Armenians fought to reclaim after Stalin’s regional divide in the late 1920’s, ended up a violent, ethnic war, exacerbated by the slow break down of the central part of the Soviet Union. My grandfather, who was once respected and valued as head of his organization, was terrorized and disregarded as a “dirty Armenian”—a term that came to be known as a symbol of shame in Baku. My mother recalls being chased down the street for mistakenly revealing her Armenian heritage when she answered “che” (Armenian for “yes”) instead of “baeli” (Azerbaijani “yes”).

My mother ran to Moscow, the center of the crumbling Soviet Union, and my place of birth. My connection to Moscow and Russian culture is what I like to call artificial. As a Soviet Armenian, I speak, read, and write fluently in Russian; I adopt many Russian mannerisms, and my cultural influences are undeniably Russian. Both of my parents, while ethnically Armenian, were born and raised in the cultural centers of the Soviet Union—Moscow and Baku—where, at least until 1989, ethnic divides were regulated and pushed underground by Moscow officials; language was centralized (Russian), and the culture was dominated by Moskovite regulation. Yet, the history of my people resonates with me, to the extent that no matter the Russian influence, I’m undeniably Armenian.

When we moved to America, the culture shock was two fold. First, and quite expectedly, there was the immediate exposure to the American way of life—a world defined by individualism, money, and opportunity—things my family once (albeit, mistakenly) thought were secure in the Soviet Union, until it was taken away from them. But second, and much more alarming, especially for my mother, was that no one had even heard about the ethnic conflicts in Azerbaijan. No one had heard about the violent protests, the burnings, pograms in Sumgait, a city near Baku, the thousands of refugees fleeing Azerbaijan—nothing. It was almost as if it had never happened.

My parents made it practically their life purpose to ensure that I am aware of my history, beyond what I read about in textbooks and my school classes—because the worst part about being part of an oppressed culture is that no one even knows about it. The idea that political history could just be overlooked, to me, is the most damaging to any society.

My family history, my cultural history, although incredibly different from the political situation in America is the reason I believe in an overwhelming push for civil liberties. To me, performing my civic duty is not showing up in a courtroom or voting; my civic duty (and perhaps even a self imposed obligation) is to ensure that people are at least aware of the injustices happening around them—if not all around the world, then at least in the society they live in. The deprivation of civil liberties is one wrong; but the blatant ignorance (or indifference) of these deprivations is an entirely different, deeper wrong. Where the former can be fixed and bettered with a functioning system—courts, the legislature, the Constitution, the latter is a fundamental societal flaw that needs to change in order to prevent the former. My mother and her family did not have a voice: neither in Baku, nor in the Soviet Union. They did not have an outlet to express the injustices going on around them, and they didn’t have the means available to spread information in hopes of stopping them. I want to make sure that those Americans who feel like they don’t have a voice, who don’t want their story ignored, forgotten or overlooked—I want their voices to be heard. The worst part about emigrating from an oppressive regime to a free land is seeing people take their freedom for granted. Of course, I was young when I came to America—far too young to understand even what freedom meant, but the stories I grew up with and the history that my family carries resonates with me and acts as a catalyst to inspire change around me.