A Little Bit About Me

I was born in the Soviet Union, in Ukraine, in the city of Dnipro, in the beautiful USSR.  I say “beautiful” because that is what I was told as a child by my school and teachers. USSR means Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Союз Советских Социалистических Республик) in Russian. The USSR existed from 1922 to 1991.

The street I was born on was called Rabochaya (Рабочая in Russian), which means “a street of workers.” My grandmother hated the Soviet Union because her family was a family of middle-class farmers who owned land, a house, and a farm. During the Soviet period, their land, house, and animals were taken away to be shared among the people of the Soviet Union. The entire family worked from morning until night on the farm. There were 10 family members, plus cousins, uncles, and friends. Everything they had achieved, including their middle-class status, was the result of very hard work.