Immigrating

A Locked-Down Country

My father with my grandfather in 1971.

The Soviet Union was notorious for being very difficult to leave. Starting in the 1960s, many Jewish citizens began protesting to be allowed to leave the USSR and go to Israel. Many of them were taken to prison or put in psychiatric hospitals, since "living in the Soviet Union was so nice, you would have to be crazy to want to leave". News eventually got out about this and, to avoid a scandal, the government began letting Jewish people immigrate to Israel. This stopped in 1979 after the Russian-Afghan War began, and travel became very difficult again. My father tried to go to Czechoslovakia as a tourist in 1984. He was required to go to the Communist Party headquarters in Moscow and answer questions about the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia. He answered all of them correctly, but was still not allowed to go. Traveling out of the country was incredibly stressful, if he had been allowed to go, he said there would be KGB agents at the airport to make sure no one did anything against the law.

Leaving and Coming Back

After Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, things started to change. He announced Perestroika, which would be a period of reformation in the Communist government that prioritized more openness. As part of Perestroika, it became easier for people to travel outside of the Soviet Union. The situation had changed so much that my father was allowed to travel to the United States to visit relatives in Atlanta, Georgia. Before, many people who had relatives in the U.S hid it because it could be dangerous. Once Perestroika started, "suddenly everyone had relatives in the U.S". He still had to take a test at the Communist Party headquarters and at the United States embassy. The test at the Communist Party headquarters was easier this time, but the test at the embassy was harder, as they had to prove that he had real relatives in the United States. "My mother was worried the whole time that I would be arrested for something", but he passed both tests and was allowed to go. When he arrived in New York to transfer to Atlanta he felt like he had "come out of the woods" despite living in a big city. The fact that the grocery stores were always stocked and everything was always open amazed him. When he got back to Russia, his parents looked at him like "I had come back from the moon". He said something changed in his parents' minds after he came back, that they finally thought it was possible to leave Russia and immigrate to the United States.

Parts of the visa my father used to immigrate to Israel.

Leaving for Israel

Eventually, he was able to convince his parents and his brother and his wife to come to the United States as a group because the Soviet Union was collapsing. However, they were not allowed to immigrate directly to the U.S. They needed to renounce their Soviet citizenship and travel to Israel first, at which point, because they were no longer citizens, they could travel to any country they wanted. From Israel they were able to go to the U.S. Although their visas were for Israel, they had Washington D.C on them, because that was where they wanted to go eventually. When they were asked about this, my father said they were definitely moving to Israel, but that the plane had to refuel in Washington D.C, and they still were allowed to leave.

Stamp received on my father's visa after he arrived in D.C. The eight-digit number below is his alien number, which is given to all non-citizens.

In the U.S, For Good

My father, my grandparents, and my uncle and aunt came to the United States in 1991. They were admitted as refugees because they proved that they could not go back to the Soviet Union. Because of their refugee status, they were able to immediately start receiving benefits. My grandparents were already retirement age when they came to the U.S, so they were provided with housing and a pension. They arrived in Washington D.C first, then moved down to Atlanta to be near relatives. My father decided to move to Massachusetts within a year to attend Boston University's graduate school, and was given grants because of his refugee status. He left Russia fairly late in his life, as he was thirty-six when he went back to graduate school. It was difficult for him because he was older than the majority of his classmates and he spoke limited English, but he persevered and earned his master's in telecommunications. He decided to stay in the Boston area after that.

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