Quiet Beginnings
World War II reaffirmed the Soviet Union as one of the world’s two greatest powers. It also set in motion a sequence of political events that would dictate my family’s future for the next half-century, to where it currently stands in the United States of America. My grandmother, Mila, was born on June 29th, 1947 in a town called Poltava, some three hours east of the capital city of Kiev. Mila is a central character in this story, in the sense that the ongoing political and economic events of the time affected her personal decisions, which gave my family direction moving forward.
A house in Poltava, Ukraine, similar to my grandmother’s in the mid-20th century. Unfortunately, my family does not have pictures of the original house, but it also had two floors, a side garden and was situated in the suburbs.
One of Mila’s defining qualities is her forward thinking, which was uncommon at the time of her adolescence. Under communism, there was little individuality in the USSR, as wages were very evenly distributed among the working class. Moreover, there was a disparity in working hours, meaning that people could work a different amount of hours, yet earn the same amount of pay. While many women were satisfied with domestic duties and textile jobs, Mila exceeded the expectations attached not only to women, but to the Soviet working class. She wanted something better for herself, and felt motivated by knowing that she surpassed stereotypes of the time. This motivation influenced her future decisions, especially those related to her education and her career.
“By staying motivated and resourceful, I was able to create opportunities for myself; working hard was a social lift for me, I knew that I would get a better job after university.”
Moving to the Big City
She moved to Kiev on her own in 1963, to complete high school, where she was one of the top students in her class. The school she attended was similar to a modern day boarding school, with a specialization in physics and mathematics. She lived in a dorm with three other roommates, who studied the same subjects as her. Upon receiving the equivalent of a high school degree, she decided to pursue post-secondary education, which was supported by government funding at the time. Mila mentioned that cost was also an influencing factor in her decision:
“Free education was very important because it allowed me to get a good education.”
Mila spent five years in Taras Shevchenko National University of Kiev studying physical science (physics and chemistry), while working as a teaching assistant in her final two years of undergraduate study. She decided to pursue a career in the sciences, and made the decision to continue into graduate study; receiving her PhD in 1973, and eventually her DSc in 1988 from the Department of Physics within the university. Mila doubts she would have been able to pursue graduate study had it not been funded by the government.
The Taras Shevchenko National University, an institution that shaped the lives of my grandparents and father amid a changing political climate from the 1970s to the 1990s.
Finding Family in Physics
During her first year of graduate study, Mila met another student, Vlad, who was finishing his doctorate degree in quantum physics. The two began spending time together at the university, with Mila learning some of the challenging aspects of theoretical physics under his tutelage. Two years later, the two got married and two years after that, Mila joined Vlad on the Department of Physics’ faculty. In 1971, they had their first and only child, my father, Stefan. Vlad would soon become the chair of the Institute of Physics at NASU (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine), and Mila became a full-time professor there shortly after. They both taught graduate research courses there while raising Stefan.
“He helped me with everything: physics, studying, teaching. We raised our son together. We were a very happy family.”
Mila and Vlad continued working at NASU, but the USSR’s political environment began to change in the 1980s, as Stefan approached his years of adolescence. Soviet manufacturing began to stall, and society saw drastic changes due to Gorbachev’s new policies of perestroika and glasnost, which emphasized more individuality, both for nations and people within the USSR. This also applied greatly to Stefan’s development and education. He began on a track similar to his parents’, but found a growing interest in technology and computers.
Mila working on her graduate research at the National Academy of Sciences in Kiev, Ukraine.
In years past, Stefan would have likely pursued a teaching career similar to his parents, but instead, he came to focus on computer science, given that its presence was growing quickly. He was interested in the opportunity that computer science presented, and wanted to take on the challenge of creating his own path and finding his way in an emerging field. Together, the family saved up to buy one of the first computers available in the USSR, and soon after, Stefan was immersed in it. He continued his education at the National University of Kiev, and completed it just before the collapse of 1991. That’s when things really changed.
A Changing Socioeconomic Environment
As it became clear that the Soviet Union was bound to unravel, major question rose regarding the state of the independent nations that were to be created, as well as the international relations between countries that were once ruled by a single government. In the late 1980s, waves of nationalism began to break out across Eastern Europe, perhaps most notably demonstrated by tensions in Yugoslavia. People that had once lived together began to question the central government uniting them, and every country staked their claim for independence, both in government and society. Individual republics began to secede from the union, including Russia itself. The end of communism meant that there would be 15 new countries born, most under new systems of government. Obviously, that would place a great amount of pressure on the first politicians in countries that previously depended on redistribution of resources from a large central government.
During the 1980s, USSR manufacturing and agriculture struggled, leading to scenes like this outside grocery stores. Everyone had a claim to food through vouchers issued by the government, but there was not enough food to satisfy all of the issued vouchers.
Such was the scene in Ukraine after December 26th, 1991. Government officials would be elected, and it would be their job to sift through the socioeconomic rubble of the USSR, trying to pick out the pieces that would fit in with the forward vision that the country was seeking. This also meant that there would be immediate changes in the lives our three central characters. Mila and Vlad kept their jobs at the National Academy of Sciences, and Stefan would soon begin join them as a junior researcher to pursue his interest in computer science. But as previously mentioned, Ukraine was undergoing a political overhaul at the time. Funding that once came from the USSR would now have to be provided by the new government:
“People began asking questions about how the university would change going forward, and we were worried about what would happen.”
Stefan knew he had a career path available to him through the NASU with his parents, and had previously received a PhD in theoretical physics as his parents both did. However, he knew his future passion would be computer science. At the time, Ukraine offered few opportunities to pursue a career in the relatively new field. He knew he wanted to pursue computer science moving forward, and he knew that America was on the forefront of the new technological time. His mind wondered, but he knew that going alone would be a huge risk. In 1995, he married my mother, and the four of them moved into a two bedroom apartment in the center of Kiev. They were living comfortably and all working, but were not seeing much progress within their careers, nor the government under which they lived. Mila and Vlad had almost reached the peak of their careers as academics, and they knew that their son could most likely succeed them as the eventual chair of the Physics Department. But still, Mila knew her son wanted something more than that. As borders opened up in Ukraine, Stefan was able to travel to the United States on a tourist visa, and he saw that technology was rapidly improving in the U.S. Upon his return, he and Mila got in touch with a friend that had previously immigrated to New Jersey.
The Decision to Move and the Results
The family thought about the idea for a long time, and tested the opinions of other family members before ultimately making the decision to move. They were met with mixed opinions, but largely with a holistic sense of opposition, because they were happy with their situations. Many of my family members worked jobs in the city center, and did not see any reason to give up their comfort in Ukraine. They also didn’t believe that their ceiling could be much higher than its current state; thus, the family of four faced a tough decision. They knew that leaving would mean leaving behind a strong support system to create opportunities for my father, myself, and future generations to come.
Mila and Vlad at the NASU in the early 1990s, where they both taught graduate level physics courses. In 1998, they stepped down from their positions prior to immigrating to the United States.
In July of 1998, my parents boarded a plane to Warsaw, and then a plane to Newark, NJ. My grandmother’s friend had found them an apartment to stay at, and my parents immediately began looking for work. My father eventually found a job at a pharmaceutical company that used computer science for drug testing, and in 2000, we moved to New York in search of better housing. We settled in Marine Park and have lived there ever since, with my father working at the same company, and my grandparents eventually finding work through CUNY – my grandmother at Brooklyn College, and my grandfather at Queens College. To this day, my grandmother is an associate professor at Brooklyn College, and my grandfather worked as a senior researcher before retiring last fall. Their roles allowed them to continue their careers in their shared field of passion, while Stefan took on the opportunity to venture into computer science.
Undoubtedly, my family’s background in academia helped break the language barrier that existed for many people that made the same move. In Ukraine, my grandparents and father had all published many papers and articles in English, so the toughest adjustment was transitioning to English work environments. The three also came to expand their vocabulary with time, as much of their previous English experiences had been science related. Thus, there was no language barrier to be broken, but rather a brief period of adjusting to working in English.
Fast forward some four decades, and Ukrainians are still waiting in line for bread but for drastically different reasons. Recent nationalist sentiments have hurt economic relations with Russia, leading to high prices and low resources within the country.
In the few years after we left, Ukraine did not change much as a whole, but towards the late 2000s, conditions began to worsen. After the 2008 financial crisis, the Ukrainian economy suffered due to lower exports, and never reached its previous heights. The country remained stable for some time throughout the recovery, but corruption began to find its way into the legislative and executive offices of the country. Income inequality has worsened, and social mobility in the country has worsened ever since. On November 23, 2013, then-president Viktor Yanukovych halted preparations to sign an association agreement with the European Union. This sparked a nationalist movement, beginning from Western parts of Europe, and eventually spreading to the capital city, Kiev.
An aerial view of “Euromaidan,” which was a protest to uphold the association agreement that Yanukovych delayed signing. Protests here eventually became violent, damaging buildings in the area, killing and injuring people that were actively protesting in the square.
Yanukovych fled from Kiev in early 2014, and left the country in a state of unrest, particularly in the Southern and Eastern parts of Ukraine, which have historically supported relations with Russia. The ensuing political conflict between the two countries hurt Ukraine due to its dependence on Russia for many import necessities, such as oil and gas. The standard of living has declined in Ukraine over the recent years, as the country continues to struggle in its recovery from the 2014 crisis. In addition, many domestic prices are tied to the dollar, which has been strengthening in recent times.
“Changes must come from evolution, not revolution. People have to change their working mentality, not just their social standing. Through revolution, people lose culture and confidence in their future.”
In a way, these events serve to validate my family’s decision to move to the United States; their future expectation of security has been realized, and will remain important to my family and in the future. Every now and then I wonder what would have happened if my family had stayed in Ukraine – how good my education would be, what job opportunities I would have, and what would have happened given the heated political climate that currently exists there. Those hypotheticals have taught me that security often comes with the right sacrifice.
Recommended Readings (Provide a further background of USSR History)
Comments