About Vadim

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Who I am

Born in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhia, I’m a resident of the Polish city Szczecin. While I am Ukrainian-born, I’m actually of Russian-Polish descent and of Crimean Karaite heritage. Mostly known for activities in regard to children’s rights, human rights, music and translation. I’ve connected myself to the activities of the UK-based charity ChildAid, based on mutual beliefs and values, with the exception of their strong Christian beliefs, which I support but do not adhere to. I adhere to the Jewish religious movement of Karaism.
I do oppose the current Crimean Karaite movement which has lost their former religious values due to the historical Soviet-backed indoctrination by figures such as Seraya Shapshal. Today’s Crimean Karaites have their own religious movement of the “Crimean Karaite religion”.

Political view

I hold mostly progressive and left-wing values, most often on the far-left of the political spectrum. I believe in the partial takedown of the current economic system, with the introduction of a standard income for every resident of a country and work leading to extra income for luxury goods. I believe in stronger support of children, disabled and special need people, homeless people and veterans. And also less support of (big) companies, with the full introduction of capitalism for companies and taking away the current system of socialism they usually have. Beyond just this, I believe in the trias politica model of separation of powers and the full inability for business people to ever be able to be active at politics. The income of all governmental workers should be reduced to the minimum income and frozen at this level, this way they truly live the life of a regular resident and apply legislation which fits the people, and not just the rich. But most of all, I believe in laws which reflect on the personal circumstances of people, instead of being applied based on the overall population. Like a fine of X amount could have little impact on someone with high income and no children, while having a huge impact on someone who has low income and children. I believe the government should support those with higher needs more than those with little needs. Like if you’re a CEO of a huge company and don’t need any governmental support at all, then that person shouldn’t receive any governmental support at all. Every person deserves a good life, even if others have to pay for this.

Focus on children without parental care

When it comes to my charitable activities, I do have special attention to children without parental care. This is due to me being a foundling myself and growing up most of my childhood in the care system of Ukraine. Eventually I was adopted by Ukrainian-Russian parents and have lived some time in Germany and Russia. This has eventually changed my view of Russian children without parental care a great deal and is an important reason why supporting Russian children without parental care is as important to me as supporting those in Ukraine and Poland. I do strongly oppose the Russian government, Russian expansion efforts, Russian war efforts and Russian propaganda, which sadly all remain too common.
While my (adoptive) family lived (until the invasion by Russia) in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, I have eventually moved to Poland after leaving home. Here I found love and continue my charitable activities on a more local level with the support of my now wife.

Family

Beyond my wife (as I promised her to not write in-depth about her here), I have 3 sons and 1 daughter, all adopted. Vladislav (short: Vlad) and Anton, adopted out of Russia and Ukraine. And Aleksander (short: Aleks) and Katarzyna (short: Kasia), adopted here in Poland. All of my sons are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, childhood disintegrative disorder. However, they are very different from each other beside this diagnosis.

Vladislav has a very bright and happy personality, trying to always make others happy, even when it causes himself to get down and depressed. He follows regular education and has quite an impact on girls his age by his personality. But, sadly, does have to deal with the health conditions of embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma (in remission), cystic fibrosis and cyclic vomiting syndrome. However, the worst to him are his ADHD-I and epilepsy. By his usually overly happy expressiveness to the outside world, people do not notice his needs, sensitivities and anxieties. He has the need for someone to literally always be there for him—for him to never be alone—and to get criticized as little as possible. In today’s world, both things are very rare. When he is alone for too long or criticized beyond what he can handle, he gets into a severe depressive mood from which he is unable to get out of himself. For a very bright boy, Vladislav has huge struggles. (He’s also diagnosed with dyslexia, dyscalculia, dyspraxia and dysgraphia. Yes, all at the same time.)

As for Anton, he is very introverted and prefers to be either alone or with as little people as possible. He has a mild to moderate form of intellectual disability. And is diagnosed with fragile X syndrome and dyspraxia. He is very held-back and silent, with very few exceptions. And takes a very long time to get used to new people. Probably the most typical part of him is his strong disliking of technology. He dislikes being photographed, doesn’t see any joy in video games or social media and prefers to do things in a more old-fashioned way. If we would bake something like a cake or cookies and the choice is there between using the mixer or a simple whisk, he will always choose the whisk. One of his most favorite activities is just laying down on his back, listening to ambient and new age music (such as Metamorphosis by David Clavijo) and drifting off in thoughts. He especially loves doing this while holding the hand of those he loves.

Then there’s Kasia, she’s undoubtedly the most caring of our family. In many regards, she’s what most stereotypically would think about girls. Like she loves dancing, especially ballet and ballroom dancing, and singing. However, she plays better football than most boys in our neighborhood at the same time. She has the diagnoses of social pragmatic communication disorder, dyspraxia, dyscalculia and non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder. Her life is very different than typical people because of it, and we are lucky the school our children go to are willing to adjust to this. There are times she misses out on schools for weeks due to her sleeping disorder. As she said while asking if I should add anything in her name to this writing, our family is most important to her and she enjoys life fully, even if people never seem to understand how she lives.

Last but not least, there’s Aleks. He’s the biological little brother of Kasia and the most active of our family. As Vlad usually says, Aleks is a “bouncy ball”. He’s the only one of my children about who I won’t be able to explain exactly what he has been diagnosed with, upon his request. All I can say is that it’s a genetic disorder with autistiform behavior. He does have a full autism spectrum diagnosis. As well as dyslexia, dyscalculia and dyspraxia.
The high activity he expresses through football and dancing, mostly ballroom and ballet. It’s what he loves to do. In general, he’s overly positive, almost always seen with a smile. As he explains, his mental issues are less of a problem than having to wear glasses and not hearing perfectly. (He has hereditary hearing loss.) It’s more important to him that he has a family that loves him than lots of friends.

As for myself, I’m obviously aren’t perfect either. Like my children, I also hold an autism spectrum diagnosis, Kanner’s syndrome. Besides of this, I currently hold the diagnoses of dysgraphia, speech sound disorder, ADHD-C, selective mutism and non-24-hour sleep-wake syndrome. Yes, the diagnoses were done by professionals. I strongly oppose self-diagnoses. To me, you could possibly diagnose that something is going on with yourself, but the exact diagnosis is not something you could validly do.

This blog

This blog originates from my Twitter activity back in 2015. During this time, it was intended as a way to express myself more freely than the limited amount of characters Twitter offers. The intention actually being more of a quote with some own words at the time, but instead my blog became different and valid long blog posts have since then been shared here. Although I do write long texts, I don’t actually hold much confidence in my own writing. The lack of confidence was actually an important spark for my translation work, which has always been focused on music and short films. Already since I was a young child I’ve had a huge interest in foreign languages, which has led to me spending loads of time learning languages, giving me a very broad selection of languages I could translate, and have translated on this blog. Due to the support of companies such as Sony, my translations have always complied to copyright requirements and are fully licensed, when applicable. Since 2020, my activities in regard to translation and subtitling have stopped due to my personal life requiring so much time that I no longer have time left to translate and/or subtitle.

Advocacy and activism

Although I’m active in support of children without parental care, my activities are not limited to this. For several years already, I’m highly active in support of several charities, primarily focused on the support of those suffering cancer, refugees, Roma, Yazidis and disadvantaged children. Apart from this, I am also supportive of causes revolving inclusion and education. And opposing abuse, neglect, hunger, hatred, violence, and war. My strong opposition of especially war is not always liked by everyone, which primarily has to do with my impartial stances. I am very well aware of it. The way I see it is that without talking you can’t achieve peace. Besides, I don’t believe governments do enough to avoid conflict and war. (There are exceptions to this, like the invasion of Ukraine is only caused by Russia.)
Another cause personal to me is the support of literacy. The knowledge of languages is important in this world, there’s no denying of that. And while I may have taken it a bit too far with my knowledge of about 50 languages, the knowledge of 2 languages is already too little these days, and that while there are quite many people who can’t read and write even 1 language.

More…

That’s quite a bit of text. However, is this not enough? Do you still have questions which remain unanswered? Feel free to let me know! You can contact me through mail by reaching out through the contact page or my Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. Do be aware, I’m not very active online anymore, so it may take some time to get a response. Possible answers to your questions may eventually be added to this to make this page more complete.

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