The Point of No Return: Choosing a Future over a Homeland

A few days ago, I watched an Oscar-winning documentary, “Mr. Nobody Against Putin” by Pavel Talankin.

I wanted to scream and cry, but I couldn’t. A few lonely tears came out of my eyes, and everything inside me contracted and froze. It’s just an infinite sadness and deep, muted pain that has been there for more than a decade already. I just trained myself not to look into that deep abyss.

Pavel is from Karabash. The documentary is set there. Karabash is just a 1.5-hour drive away from Chelyabinsk, my home city. Everyone in Chelyabinsk knows Karabash. We grew up hearing “Karabash is the most toxic town on Earth.” I’ve never actually been there. But watching the movie… I think I almost was. Everything looked painfully familiar — weather, nature, colors, architecture, people. The movie hits too close to home. Both literally and metaphorically.

Leaving Russia was the best thing I could do for myself and my children. But let me tell you the story of my immigration.

It was the winter (February or March) of 2014. Russia annexed Crimea. I was never into politics; I was indifferent to news; I just lived my small, individual life. Studying, working, traveling. But the annexation of Crimea was the first thing that took me out of my bubble. Somehow, in my gut, I knew it was the beginning of the end. I think I woke up at that time to the reality around me, and I started to see things I couldn’t unsee anymore. I felt that Russia — the one I knew or the one everyone hoped it would become — was slipping away.

I was born right before the collapse of the Soviet Union. I remember the struggle of the '90s, I grew up in the turbulent 2000s, and I became an adult in the 2010s. In 2014, I knew that the trajectory had changed, that we had moved past some “point of no return.” And, very selfishly — forgive me, my Ukrainian friends — at that moment, I was too young and too focused on myself to think about how it was for Ukrainians. I also knew a lot of Ukrainian people from Crimea who lived in Russia or wanted to live in Russia; they were happy to get Russian passports, so the feelings about that were very much mixed. But what concerned me was the absence of rule-based democracy. I just thought that if Putin could pull off something like that, he could do way more, way worse things. And that felt terrifying.

Months passed. People moved on; news changed. I was living my life, but it wasn’t the same since then. It was as if I started being more sensitive to the things around me. Like, once you saw something, now you see it everywhere.

I was reading Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984), a dystopian novel by George Orwell. I was reading it and thinking, “Doesn’t everyone see that we are living the book??? How come everyone is not freaking out?” But it looked like everyone (or almost everyone) was fine.

One day in September that year, I was driving to work, listening to the regular radio station I usually listened to on my commute. In the news episode, they announced that Aeroflot (Russia's largest government-backed airline) launched a low-cost subsidiary called… “Victory” (“Pobeda” in Russian). I almost choked in my car. “WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK!!!” I thought. Everyone who read the book 1984 probably choked right now with me. I just couldn’t fucking believe it. My body went into full panic mode after that. I tried to talk to people and share what I saw, but everyone looked just fine. All my friends and family were saying that I was exaggerating, that life was good, and there was nothing to worry about.

So I kept living, but the nagging feeling inside never left; I just couldn’t quite put it into words. I couldn’t explain it to others, and I couldn’t explain it fully to myself.

In December that year, I got married, and in early 2015, I got pregnant with my first child. When I knew I was expecting, something happened inside me. I don’t know whether it was maternal instinct, hormones, the cumulative effect of all the news, or maybe everything together. But my panic transformed into conviction: “I do not want to raise my child here. I gotta get out.”

Conviction turned into planning. I buried myself in research, organizing it in spreadsheets. I was going through the world map trying to understand which country we could go to. I wasn’t going anywhere in particular; I just knew I HAD TO leave Russia.

Professional points-system immigration to Australia? Birthright immigration to Israel? Diversity Green Card lottery to get to the US? Try studying somewhere in Europe and staying there? I spent a few months digging into all the options, considering all the facts like various legal paths for immigration, how much money we would need, what language people speak there, how friendly the country is to immigrants, etc.

By summer, the list had narrowed down to two: Israel and the US. I remember calling the Israeli consulate in the summer of 2015, asking them to schedule an appointment for me, my then-husband, and my child for an immigration interview. They asked me the name and date of birth of my child, and I told them — she hasn’t been born yet. They laughed at me, but signed us up with a “child placeholder.” The wait time for the appointment was several months, but I couldn’t wait that long. So I just asked to sign up the unborn child, and that worked.

We were sitting in the consulate with a one-month-old baby. We went to Israel in March 2016, took all our modest savings and bicycles there, and had a plan to immigrate completely a few months later after finalizing things in Russia and quitting our jobs.

But fate had different plans for us.

In May that year, we learned that we won the Green Card lottery. Change of plans. I asked my sister to sell the bicycles that were collecting dust on her balcony in Jerusalem. We were not going to Israel. We were going to the United States.

We quit our jobs and sold or gave away everything we had. We packed our entire lives into five suitcases, plus a stroller and a bicycle (yes, one more bicycle!). On the 1st of March 2017, we entered the country, which I now call home. My older one was 17 months old; I was 7 months pregnant with the second one. We had roughly $50k in savings. No specific plan, no jobs, no friends or family there, and I was about to have a second child. Based on my research, we had enough money to live a simple life for 9–12 months for a family of four in Chicago. That was it. It was our run rate to start a new life and figure out what to do next. The rest, as they say, is history.

Nine years later, I have an MIT degree, a career at Google, the freedom to travel, and a beautiful home in a town I love. But, as many people whom I meet now may think, it was not a traditional education-career immigration. I did not come here to study; I did not come here to work. I came here because I just couldn’t stay in Russia; I couldn’t accept the thought that my children would be growing up there. It was a political immigration, though back then, we didn’t really think about it that way.

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Watching the documentary, my heart aches for all the children who are given guns at school and marching in the hallways between the lessons, for all the adults who first lost the freedom of speech, then freedom of thought, and then their identity. When it all started, people laughed at it and participated in it as a “pretend game.” Something you had to do to avoid trouble. Small acts of complacency, which obviously wouldn’t hurt anyone.

Years later, no one remembers that life could be different — that it was different. Little by little, society has changed into something unrecognizable.

My children speak and write Russian, they know the culture and history, and they feel Russian inside, even though they don’t even remember ever being there. I hope that one day I can bring my children there and show them Russia the way I want it to be. I will show them my home city, and we all will feel free and safe there.