Although I don't remember it very much, I'm told that I helped the family business as early as the age of 5. In the Soviet Union, in the 1980s, during Glasnost and Perestroika, we were allowed to have a family co-op business. My father sold postcards on the Moscow market. We had a little stall that did fairly well. At the age of 5, I would ride the subway by myself to pick up entire stacks of photo paper. Later, when I moved to the United States at a very young age, I'd go door to door in Nampa, Idaho, offering lawn moving services for $5. I must have been 11 or 12. Later, in my teens, I did backbreaking work to make a few bucks in the summertime. When I turned 18, my father said, “You're a man now. It's time for you to pull your own weight.” Although I wasn't finished with school, I had to either pay rent or move out. Furthermore, to teach me the value of a dollar, he bought me a 1995 Ford Aspire hatchback for $2500. I had to pay him $100 per month until the debt was settled. We didn't have any handouts in my family. Fast-forward 25 years, having given everything it had in the United States away to my ex-wife and family, I moved to Russia with a dream and $250 in my pocket.
It was quite an adjustment. I had to be quick on my feet, and I had to figure out how everything works in Russia. My first job paid only 40,000 rubles a month. I made only $20 a day. And for that, I had to commute two hours to downtown Moscow and two hours back to Ramenskoye on the outskirts. As my documents got processed, I looked for other opportunities and opened a tutoring business. I started teaching at a business school. I moved to Moscow itself. I crisscrossed the big city, going from client to client, braving the icy streets, the packed subways and crowds. My client list grew along with my income, going up tenfold as I reached numbers of up to half a million rubles, which was a hefty sum at the time. I worked hard figuring out this market, and I worked extremely hard becoming good at what I did. At one point, I went as far as maxing out my credit card to get the best teacher training I possibly could. I flew to a Cambridge teacher training center and participated in an extremely intensive program that proved absolutely invaluable. Even before I moved to Russia, I had spent years reading books for eight hours a day or more. When someone wanted to party or play dominoes, I said, “No, thanks” as I went back to my book. In addition to the professional development courses, I'd watch countless hours of teacher training videos. I'd go as far as looking up what classes a Master's candidate in English language learning would take, then I'd look up lectures associated with those subjects online. I poured myself into my work, vowing to become as proficient as I possibly could.
It wasn't a smooth ride. The sanctions affected me deeply, but despite that, I managed to climb my way back up. I moved to a small town in Russia and even became a professor of business English at one of Moscow's top universities. I got married. I had a baby. I started doing some volunteer work every now and then, mostly helping immigrants who have just moved to Russia. In my volunteer work, every now and then I'd run into a person who wanted me to either do something for them or give them a handout. You have to understand where I'm coming from. At my wedding, one person, who was until recently a complete stranger, gifted me 10,000 rubles in cash. Despite the number of guests, nobody else had even thought to do anything of the sort. Recently, I saved up a down payment on a small apartment, and I made a polite request from my family in the U.S. about a $1000 loan due to the fact that I was a bit short. I thought that this family member, who lives in a huge house, who has her own Cessna which she flies all over the Puget Sound, and who travels to Hawaii and Florida several times per year, would surely say yes. “Suck it up, Buttercup!” was her answer. Frankly speaking, given the lack of support I had experienced in the last ten years, and given how we were raised, this is the answer I should have expected. I cancelled the purchase. If I cannot afford it, I cannot afford it. One may ask, “What did you do with all of your money? You made decent money.” The answer to that is simple: I exchanged creature comforts for something that was far more important to me -- family. The cost of our IVF procedure was not cheap, but it was the best investment I've ever made. What's the point of living in a sizable but empty house? My tiny 2-bedroom apartment is filled with love and life, and that's the way it should be. What's more, I had spent years (and millions) for various visa schemes to keep my wife here. On top of that, the process for getting her annulment in the Philippines so that she can get married here was a very lengthy and expensive process. I have forsaken lavishness, trading comfort it for love and family. I might not be financially wealthy, but I am wealthy in other ways. I don't expect everyone to understand.
Given what I've been through, the expectation that some people have that I will give them a handout or do something for them so that they can get established in Russia, is unrealistic. This is not a welfare state. If you're not willing to make the kind of sacrifices my family and I had to make, don't come here. Russia has no room for weak people. If you come here, I expect you to pull your own weight. If you come here, you need to figure stuff out like I did. If you come here, you need to be ready to sweat and bleed. In the end, you won't have any material possessions to show for it. You might not even have reliable friends who you can count on. But you'll have something else. And that's all that matters.