"I've come so far. It's just a shame I can't show it to Dad." How Pavel Sheremet's daughter lives 10 years after his death

When the Zoom window opens, the first thing that catches the eye is a smile. Liza Sheremet smiles easily and sincerely. She now lives in New York, pursuing a PhD at Columbia University. She mentions that she got married a few weeks ago. She teaches, writes academic articles, walks the streets of her favorite city daily, and admits that sometimes she herself can't believe how far life has taken her — from Minsk, Moscow, Kyiv, from everything that once made up her world.

"I'm fulfilling my long-held dreams," she says. "And it's even strange to realize it. Life, especially when it's so far from places where it once seemed it would end, unfolds completely differently."

Then she admits that often, when walking through her beloved New York, she thinks the same thing:

"I look at all this and think: wow, how far I've come. To where I always wanted to be. And there are no limits to these dreams and opportunities of mine. And one thought immediately arises: what a shame I can't show all this to Dad. Show him this life."

Ten years ago, a car explosion in the center of Kyiv claimed the life of her father — journalist Pavel Sheremet. When he died, Liza was 20 years old.

Now she is 30. During this time, she graduated from university, taught at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. After the start of the full-scale war, she left Russia and lived in Warsaw for a year and a half. She enrolled in Columbia University — her dream university — and moved to the United States. She built a new academic career and started a family.

"I have a feeling of some kind of discontinuity in life. It is now divided into life in the last few years and life before that. Mom can get on a plane and fly to me, we can talk, hug. But with Dad, that will never happen again. He, unfortunately, remained there, in that distant life. And the further I move away — to Poland, to America — the more it seems to me that I am moving away from him too. He now lives only in my memory. And that, probably, is one of the hardest things," says Liza. 

In this manner of drifting into long stories, in the way she answers questions with entire life narratives, Pavel Sheremet, whom all Belarusian journalism remembers today, involuntarily begins to emerge.

"Grandma's friend heard I looked like Dad and said: 'How terrible, poor girl.'"

When you ask Liza how she introduces herself today to people who know nothing about her family, she first laughs. And then tells a story.

She was four years old, her brother Kolya was about six or seven. They went to their grandmother's village. Liza slipped in a paddling pool and swallowed water. Kolya fell off a fence and scraped his knee. Later, their mother called to see how they were doing.

— Mom, we're fine. I fell off the fence, Liza drowned, — Kolya reported seriously and dramatically.

"I usually don't go in, as they say, with my aces. I don't start with: 'Everything in my family is very dramatic.' Most often I just say: 'My dad was a political journalist, and my mom is a programmer.'"

When Liza talks about her childhood, Pavel in these memories is just Dad. And Liza and her brother Kolya are two children who always had something to tell those around them:

"We were very talkative children. Mom tells a story about how we went to McDonald's: she's ordering something, and Kolya and I are hanging on the counter talking to the saleswoman. We're telling her: 'I'm Liza Sheremet, I'm Kolya Sheremet, this is our Mom Sheremet, and our Dad is also Sheremet. And we are all Sheremets.'"

Liza laughs. Many years later, she would reproach her father for being willing to talk to anyone, anywhere. And then she would realize that she does the same thing herself.

"Dad didn't even need to be asked questions for him to start telling something. I think he felt relatively uncomfortable in silence. If there was nothing to talk about, he would still find a way out. For example, we were driving in the car, music playing softly. If he couldn't think of anything to talk about, he would start reading aloud the signs of shops he saw outside the window. Sitting in silence with him was never an option."

When Liza talks about her father, she often smiles. And admits: with years, she notices his traits in herself more and more often:

"I think we have a similar attitude to life. This love of life, interest in people, desire to talk, to learn something new. And also, probably, a certain stubbornness. If I need something, I will go and do it. I clearly have a great degree of courage from my dad. He just wouldn't stop, he'd bang his head against a wall. He didn't even break it down — he demolished it. We both also had a very strong striving for justice."

There are also less comfortable traits:

"We both had a certain impulsiveness. This is both a plus and a minus. Every coin has two sides. During his time working for Channel One, Dad even had the nickname 'the crazy Belarusian.' And, apparently, he was proud of it. And although all these medals have two sides, I'm glad that they all hang on my chest. And that I have them all.

At the same time, I am more cautious than him. I think more about the consequences. For him, it was like this: if something needs to be done, then it needs to be done, and then you deal with it later."

Earlier, Liza says, she looked very much like Pavel. Now she sees more of her mom in herself:

"Before, the main idea was that Dad and I were very similar: both our walk, and our smile, and this, and that. I remember, my grandma's friend heard I looked like Dad and said: 'How terrible, poor girl.'"

Liza laughs:

"My resemblance to my father is already a whole meme in our family. I carry one adult photo of Dad in my wallet. But I also had my baby photo, where I'm about three, and his baby photo, where he's also about three. And there's absolutely the same face. But if we leave all these questions about appearance aside... I have wonderful parents, both of them. I was very lucky with them."

"I never felt that I missed him. Until the moment of his death."

Pavel Sheremet worked a lot, traveled on business trips, returned late. Later, father and daughter lived in different cities and countries. But Liza says that during her father's lifetime, she never felt his absence.

"When he went to work, we were still sleeping; when he came back from work, we were already sleeping. And, it would seem, where was Dad? But it's strange that I never felt that I missed him. Until the moment of his death. His presence in my life was absolute. I knew that Dad was always with me and that he loved me very much.

Even later, however difficult our relationship was during my teenage years, I always felt it anyway. And even when we didn't live in the same house, I still had the feeling of that emotional connection. It was unbreakable."

In the last years of Pavel's life, they lived in different cities. When her father came to visit, he took Liza everywhere with him:

"It was his way of spending more time with me. He would come for a few days, and he had a lot of work: he had to give interviews, speak somewhere, go to an award ceremony, to a rally. And he just took me everywhere with him."

This is how Liza found herself by her father's side at journalistic and political events:

"I was often his companion at all these gatherings. And he could never just say: 'This is Liza, my daughter.' He introduced me differently, always saying: 'This is Liza, my daughter, a student of the Faculty of Sociology at the Higher School of Economics.' Every time, no matter who we met. That's such a long construction! But clearly, it was important for him to say it."

For Liza, it wasn't some special entry into the world of famous people:

"Many of these people were his friends. Others were people he worked with. And for me, it was just a way to be close to Dad."

Life where the surname doesn't decide anything

After her father's death, Liza tried to choose environments where she was not known:

"When I taught at the university in Moscow, I thought that students could just google my surname. And then everything they would see before them would be Pavel Sheremet's daughter. My dad's life was so grand that it filled everything. And sometimes I wished people knew me for what I do. That they would first get to know me, form some impression of me, and only then learn everything else."

In America, Pavel Sheremet's name means nothing to most new acquaintances. But when Liza does tell her family story, the reaction is often similar:

"Americans say: 'That's a blockbuster.' Everything like in a movie. At the same time, it hurts me that the way Dad died so easily overshadows everything he did. You tell someone about him, and the eye and ear immediately latch onto how he died. And it's already difficult to think about anything else."

"I first saw him through the eyes of Belarus"

Pavel Sheremet was one of the most famous Belarusian journalists. But his daughter admits: she truly understood this only many years after his death.

"For me, he was first and foremost my dad. Yes, I saw a part of his professional life, knew his friends, read his materials. After his death, I started watching his old reports. But this was still not enough to understand who he was to other people."

This understanding came unexpectedly. After the start of the full-scale war in 2022, Liza left Russia. She had long dreamed of studying in the United States, but the path there took time. Before New York, she lived in Warsaw for a year and a half. She says it was one of the most important periods in her life. She found herself among people with whom she didn't have to argue about basic things:

"For these year and a half, I existed in an environment of like-minded people, where we all agreed on what reality was, what was good and what was bad."

During this time, she applied to universities:

"I was lucky enough a long time ago to understand what I enjoy doing. And I thought I should try to return to the academic world. As my mom always says, first you need 'Plan A.' So you can even try to execute it and apply to the most prominent universities in the world."

Plan A worked:

"I managed to get into Columbia University, where I had wanted to go and dreamed of for about seven years. All this time I was preparing for it, saving money for my studies."

Павялічыць

In Warsaw, she found herself among Belarusian emigrants. During introductions, almost every time the same thing happened: people heard her surname and their faces changed:

"I made many Belarusian friends there. And half of them, when they found out whose daughter I was, just went speechless. They didn't know what to say, couldn't find the words. They got goosebumps. For them, Dad was such a significant figure."

Meetings with people from Grodno particularly impressed Liza:

"They told me: 'I lived in Grodno when your dad was in prison. We all knew and talked about it. There were signs everywhere saying 'Freedom to Sheremet'.' And someone said: 'You'll see, someday streets will be named after your father.' And that's when I first felt his scale not just as a person, but as a figure in the public life of Belarus."

She talks about it almost with surprise, as if she had rediscovered her father. Because before that, her perception of Pavel Sheremet was different. In Moscow, he was to her a man who introduced his daughter to Boris Nemtsov, Alexei Navalny, famous journalists, politicians, intellectuals. She went with him to award ceremonies, TV broadcasts, saw a large political and journalistic world around him. But that was *his* world. And only in Warsaw did she first see that there was another one: the world of people for whom Pavel Sheremet was a person who helped them not lose faith that Belarus could be different.

"I think people associated many hopes for a free Belarus with him. And I know for sure: even if he could no longer live in Belarus, he never stopped thinking about it. 'Belarusian Partisan,' everything he did after leaving — it was his constant attempt to do something useful for Belarus."

"I bothered everyone with the question: what is punk?"

And also in Warsaw, Liza spent time with punks:

"I am very grateful for that time and those people. They hardly knew me. I had one good acquaintance who invited me into all of it. And I was an absolute novice. I didn't understand anything, didn't know anything. I constantly bothered them with my silly questions: 'Listen, just tell me, what is punk?' I was really interested in everything."

As a result, she found herself in a completely new environment:

"These people welcomed me with such kindness and generosity. They showed me their world, took me to squats, invited me to various things. I even started practicing Thai boxing, although I have a complicated relationship with sports.

We went to some festivals, slept in tents, in some mud, danced. It was an amazing experience. Such an immersion into a life so different from what I had known before, never happened to me again."

Afterwards, Liza returned to a more familiar rhythm:

"It was a life that, perhaps, isn't mine at all. But I'm very grateful that I was able to live it for a while. I'm a very simple person. About 85 percent of my thoughts, my time, and my energy go into my work. I'm my parents' daughter: I love reading books, walking, and cycling. These are my interests."

"My life mostly takes place in solitude. But not in a sad sense."

Now Liza has a life that she largely built herself. In 2023, she moved to New York. She has now completed her third year of doctoral studies — the entire program is designed for approximately five to six years.

"I entered a completely different academic world. And just a completely different world. And my life, in a sense, got on its tracks and rushed at the frantic pace characteristic of American life and American academia. I got married and I'm doing my own thing."

Liza talks about her work with a smile:

"I'm studying, but technically I no longer attend classes. My whole life now is reading, thinking, writing. Like other PhD students, I assist professors and teach a little. But much less than I taught in Moscow. Here, we get our scholarship this way, we earn it. Once a week you conduct an hour-long seminar, the rest of the time you write articles, a dissertation. 

I'm doing what I'm interested in. And I really love New York. I think it's truly my city. During my first visits here, I walked through New York and couldn't get enough of it.

Sociology, which Liza studies, entered her life not without her father's involvement:

"When I was finishing school, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I thought: maybe become an actress, maybe a lawyer. I wanted to be everything. Finally, I came to my father and said: 'Just once in my life, I'll ask you what I should do. Just once I'll give you the opportunity to make such a big decision for me.' Dad went to consult with his acquaintances. He started asking all his important, smart friends. One of them was Yevgeny Yasin, who was then the academic supervisor of the Higher School of Economics. He said: 'Sociology is the science of the future.' I decided: since it's the science of the future, then I should go for it."

Now she laughs: sociology has been with her for thirteen years since then. But Liza didn't fall in love with it immediately:

"When you do something long enough, you start to understand a little more what's going on. And then you get great joy from it. I remember the moment I fell in love with sociology — when I was finishing university, I thought: 'Oh, sociology! Well, yes, I like it.'"

Now she believes her father wasn't wrong then:

"The advice turned out to be good. Dad did a great job, actually."

Павялічыць

Liza says that her current life largely takes place in solitude. But for this feeling, she chooses the English word *solitude*, not *loneliness*. Not the loneliness one suffers from, but the opportunity to be alone with oneself.

One of her typical days in the warm season starts very early:

"I often go cycling in Central Park while the city is just waking up. At this time, there are only a few runners and cyclists in the park, not crowds of people. I really try to catch those rare forty minutes of emptiness and quiet."

Then I come home, read or watch the news, get ready, and go to the library, lab, or office — to my "work" place.

As a PhD student, Liza receives a scholarship from the university:

"Everyone around me says that this money isn't enough. My opinion differs radically. I think it's more than enough. It's enough for me to rent my own beautiful studio in a good location — the university offers subsidized housing — and to live my life."

"I would walk with Dad and just not stop"

For Liza, New York is a city to walk through, not necessarily with a goal or along a particular route.

"Here you can and should walk for hours without any plan. I try to do that when I can. The essence is in the neighborhoods, houses, and places you pass through along the way."

If asked where she would take her father if she could show him her New York today, the answer turns out to be very simple:

"I would walk with Dad and wouldn't stop for several hours. We would walk to Chinatown, that's about a two-hour walk. There I would buy my favorite three-dollar noodles. Then we would sit on a bench in Sara D. Roosevelt Park. People are always playing streetball there. We would sit for a bit, watch all of it. After that, we would go for donuts and continue walking."

She talks about it as if the route already exists. As if it's enough just to leave the house:

"I would just walk and walk with him."

"What it's like to be that very Pavel Sheremet"

Liza says that only a few years ago she reached an age when she began to perceive her parents not just as mom and dad:

"When you're a child, you're not interested in asking your parents about their lives. Well, there's mom, there's dad. You think you already know everything about them. And then you get older and realize how much you didn't ask.

I finally entered that phase of life where you realize that parents are real, separate people, who have their own thoughts, experiences, ideas, stories. And I realize that in some sense I missed the opportunity to deeply get to know Dad as a separate adult, with his own thoughts and feelings."

Now she gets to know him through other people's stories, the memories of his friends, colleagues, and acquaintances:

"I would be interested to ask him how he himself felt. How he perceived his life, what he was afraid of, what he dreamed about, what was most important to him. I almost never thought about him possibly having a hard time. I never, until the moment of his death, felt sorry for him in any way."

That's why today she would want to ask precisely about that:

"How that life felt to him. What it's like to be that very Pavel Sheremet."

• 29
• 1
• 0
• 0
• 0
• 7
• 0
• 8