World citizen?

Zoya Kosmodemianskaya was a Russian woman partisan during World War II. During a raid she was betrayed by one of her co-partisans and captured by the Nazis. After torture, when she refused to reveal the names of other partisans, she was killed shouting, "There are 200 million of us, you can't hang us all."
I chose the pseudonym of Zoya because from my early childhood years, growing up in Armenia and Russia, I was listening to the story about Zoya Kosmodemianskaya with admiration! She was indeed a legendary figure for us, children, since she was of a very young age, when she was killed by the Nazis. While the Encyclopedia has different versions about her story, I believe in the official Soviet story. While the Soviet official proclamations were generally a propaganda and not entirely true and never to be trusted, they were true with regard to World War II.

In addition, Zoya's legend is still remembered by the people in her village. So the story of her partisanship, her courage when captured by the Nazis is all true especially because it is corroborated by the German sources.

However, I have decided to abandon this pseudonym for one major reason. If I aspire to be a world citizen, a cosmopolitan, choosing a Russian name for my pseudonym would perhaps not work... Since I cannot think of a name that would be truly cosmopolitan, I will simply remain in my true name, that was given to me by a chance and biologically...


I simply refuse to be a nationalist. While I am proud to be a US citizen and have taken the oath to uphold the US Constitution, and my background is Russian-Armenian, I simply want to say that I am first of all a human being, aspiring to be a world citizen! I aspire to identify myself with all cultures, all peoples and all groups, inhabiting this Earth! This is a blog where everyone is welcome, as long as you also believe in international solidarity and peace in the world!

(Listen to John Lennon's Imagine here)