25th anniversary of getting out of the USSR

Posted on February 19, 2014 by Oleg Volk

Today marks 25 years since my parents got my out of there and on the way to America. I am very thankful to them for the nearly two decades of personal risk and hard work it took to get out of the Soviet Union.

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19 Responses to 25th anniversary of getting out of the USSR

  1. Paul Koning says:
    February 19, 2014 at 1:23 pm

    Congratulations!
    Emigrating from a (roughly speaking) free country, as I did (Holland) is a big enough deal. I can’t imagine what was involved for your family. I’m glad you made it. Glad for you — now living in a free country. And glad for the rest of us — able to see and appreciate all you’re doing to help keep it free.

  2. Kang says:
    February 19, 2014 at 1:33 pm

    And America is better off because of it. Thank you.

  3. Jing says:
    February 19, 2014 at 2:38 pm

    I wished my parents (from China) could do the same by then but I knew how difficult or even impossible was that. Today, they are immigrating here because of my sister’s family. The freedom is not free, and let’s work hard for that!

  4. Tony Lekas says:
    February 19, 2014 at 3:20 pm

    I second what Kang said. America is better off for what your parents did. My thanks to them and to you.

    I was born in the US but my father was born and grew up in Greece. He came here as an adult. His father had come to the US in about 1910 and worked in the stockyards in Chicago. He saved up, went back to Greece, and purchased the farm my Father grew up on.

    My mother was born in the US but none of her Grandparents were. She had a Grandmother who came to the US from Russia in 1917. A very good year to leave. Other family came from England and Switzerland.

    The US is, in part, what it is because many people who wanted a better life for themselves and their children did what it took to get here. The people who did so were not “average”.

    • LarryArnold says:
      February 19, 2014 at 6:34 pm

      The people who did so were not “average”.

      “The cowards never started; the weak died on the way.”

    • Paul Koning says:
      February 20, 2014 at 12:13 pm

      “Not average”, indeed.
      I once analyzed the list of Nobel Prize winners in the sciences. Of the US winners, about 25% were immigrants — and that’s counting only those who immigrated first and won the prize later. (That excludes Einstein, for example.)

  5. SPQR says:
    February 19, 2014 at 9:55 pm

    Happy that your family made it.

  6. Spencer tchings says:
    February 19, 2014 at 11:05 pm

    Oleg, my world is better with you in it, thank your parents for bring you here.

  7. staghounds says:
    February 20, 2014 at 6:11 am

    Welcome again!!

  8. Linoge says:
    February 20, 2014 at 7:01 am

    Here’s to your parents!

  9. Bob G says:
    February 20, 2014 at 8:19 am

    Congratulations on your anniversary, Oleg. +1 on this country being a better place with you here. In my experience, in this age of complacence about the loss of our liberties and rights, some of the strongest defenders of those rights are our recent immigrants, especially those from places where most or all of the power is in the hands of the government.

  10. Jennifer says:
    February 20, 2014 at 8:32 am

    Congratulations! And we are better off having you here.

  11. htom says:
    February 22, 2014 at 7:54 pm

    You make my world better. Thank you, and congratulations and a thank you to your parents.

  12. karl says:
    February 23, 2014 at 4:34 pm

    Kudos to your parents and congrats to you!

  13. mikee says:
    February 28, 2014 at 9:45 am

    In the 1990s I worked at a semiconductor equipment manufacturer in Rockdale, MD. The company had about 100 employees, with maybe 40 Russian emigres, mostly Jews who had left as quickly and as often as they could. The company president for 25 years or so hired whenever possible these trained electrical engineers, PhD physicists and school teachers as line workers, building the large tools used in semiconductor factories.

    Listening to them tell stories of their education and abuse in the Soviet Union, and their delight in escaping to the US, was an education for me that was not matched until I traveled to other countries extensively and saw competitors to our country.

    Congratulations on this anniversary of your arrival here. Thank you for much entertainment and education via your online posts.

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