Leaving the Soviet Union
An Emigrant Story
It was the summer of 1989.
In August, quite unexpectedly—and much sooner than we had dared to hope—we received permission from Soviet emigration agency (OVIR, abbreviation in Russian) to leave the Soviet Union for Israel.
After spending an entire day standing in an enormous line, we finally managed, with considerable effort, to obtain our Israeli visas at the Dutch Embassy in Moscow. The Netherlands represented Israel in those days because the Soviet Union had no diplomatic relations with Israel.
When the embassy employee looked through our papers, she asked how we intended to travel to Israel.
I wasn't prepared for the question. I mumbled something in response, and that was enough to make her suspicious. She accused me of lying. It was obvious, she said: you had no intention of going to Israel at all.
She gave me a furious look, threw my documents in my face, and ordered me out.
The situation was saved by my mother-in-law. She filled out the paperwork again, in her own handwriting, and went back into the office without me.
The rest of August and the beginning of September were consumed by our attempts to obtain plane tickets from Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow to Vienna. Nothing worked.
The lines were enormous. People were arriving from every corner of the Soviet Union. A rumor had spread that the well-established route through Vienna was about to be closed and that anyone who wanted to get out had better do it quickly.
Realistically, the earliest tickets we could hope to get were for February or March of 1990.
We tried everything, including finding someone with the right connections and offering to pay extra. Nothing helped.
Looking back, I realize that if we had known how things would turn out, there would have been nothing particularly frightening about waiting until February. We could have survived a few more months in the Soviet Union.
But at the time, the thought of waiting that long terrified us.
We had no documents. Our Soviet passports and citizenship had already been taken away. Our apartment had been surrendered to the state, and we had no idea how long they would be willing to wait for us to leave. We had no jobs. Everything we could sell had already been sold. We had only a limited amount of money.
How were we supposed to live?
And what if something changed? What if, for some reason, we had to stay?
In the end, we decided to travel to Vienna by train, through Chop, small town on the border in Western Ukraine, and to leave as soon as possible.
Train tickets were much easier to obtain, and we bought ours for the end of October.
There was no longer any time to ship our belongings. To hell with the things—we could replace them someday. Whatever we could carry ourselves was what we would take.
A week before departure, there was still a mountain of things to do. I spent my days racing around Moscow, trying not to overlook anything important.
I was driving a car I had bought only recently—but by then it wasn't really mine anymore. I had sold it to my friend Vakhtang on the condition that I could continue using it until the day we left.
One day, my son and I were driving home along the Garden Ring. Somewhere along the way we entered an underground interchange. At the exit, the traffic light was red, and a truck was stopped in front of it.
I stopped about two meters behind the truck and waited for the light to change.
Then, suddenly, I glanced in the rearview mirror.
A large ZIL-130 truck was hurtling toward us from behind.
There was no question about it: the driver wasn't going to stop in time.
"Hold on!" I shouted to my son.
A tremendous impact followed.
Our car leapt forward and slammed into the truck that was still sitting in front of us at the red light.
For a moment, everything seemed unreal.
I felt myself, then my son. We seemed to be all right. A few lights were glowing on the dashboard. There was no smoke.
We climbed out.
Miraculously, neither of us appeared to be hurt.
I walked around the car and surveyed the damage. The rear bumper, trunk, and taillights were smashed. The front end wasn't much better: hood, bumper, grille, one headlight, and who knew what else.
But the radiator was intact. It wasn't leaking, and the engine was still running.
What now?
A police officer who happened to be nearby had witnessed the accident. He came over, and everything was duly recorded. I was told to report to the police station later to obtain the official accident certificate.
I called Vakhtang and, in a trembling voice, told him what had happened.
There was no way I could return his money. Almost all of it had already been spent.
"That's nothing," Vakhtang said. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," I said. "But what are we going to do?"
"Don't worry. We'll fix it. The important thing is that you weren't hurt."
"Come over. We'll take a look."
I went to see him.
He inspected the car and said he knew a mechanic who could take care of everything.
There was only one problem: we had to find the necessary body parts.
Anyone who remembers the Soviet Union of the late 1980s will remember that automobile stores were about as empty as grocery stores. But we learned that somewhere on the outskirt of the Moscow, at three o'clock in the morning, an underground car-parts market appeared—a place where, supposedly, you could find and buy anything.
We went there without delay.
Everything we needed was found and purchased quickly and without difficulty.
The hardest part, however, was still ahead.
I had to obtain the official accident certificate.
The car was still registered in my name. Vakhtang had been given a power of attorney authorizing him to sell it, so that after my departure he could transfer it into his own name.
That meant I had to go to the traffic police station myself.
And I had no documents.
My passport and citizenship had been taken away. All I possessed was my Israeli exit visa, covered with an impressive collection of stamps.
Well, I thought, that's it. There goes our departure. Now the real trouble begins.
With my knees trembling, I went to the police station.
I entered an office with two desks. At one sat a captain who looked fairly intimidating. Another man in uniform was sitting at the second desk.
I approached the captain.
"This is what happened," I explained. "I was in an accident, and I need to obtain the accident certificate."
"Documents," he said, without looking up from whatever he was writing.
With a trembling hand, I handed him my Israeli visa.
He stared at it in astonishment.
"What's this?"
"An Israeli visa," I explained. "The thing is, I'm leaving for permanent residence in Israel in just a few days, and then this happened."
"Passport."
"I don't have one."
"How is that possible?"
He looked genuinely surprised.
"That's how it is," I said, and explained the situation as best I could. "They don't let you leave the country until you've surrendered your passport and citizenship and paid all the required expenses. I don't have any other documents."
He turned my visa over in his hands and studied it for several minutes.
Then he turned to his colleague.
"Well, Kolya, shall we go visit George in Baltimore? What do you think, George? Will you have us?"
My knees nearly gave way.
Completely stunned, I dropped into a chair.
Of all the things I had expected to hear, that wasn't one of them.
Stammering, I managed to say:
"Uh... why did you decide I'm going to Baltimore? I'm going to Israel..."
"Oh, come on. We know you people. So, are you inviting us over?"
Then he turned to his colleague.
"Kolya, write him the certificate and let him go. Good luck over there, George."
I walked out of the station in a daze, overwhelmed by this completely unexpected stroke of luck.
And we resumed our preparations for departure.
The same friend, Vakhtang, volunteered to see us off.
I bought him a train ticket to Chop for a few hours earlier than ours and asked him to meet us there, find a porter with a luggage cart, help us with our belongings, and find out what was going on.
At Chop, emigrants had to go through customs in a special way. We had to get off the train, go through inspection, and then board again.
This applied only to emigrants. Soviet citizens traveling on business or for other reasons were inspected quickly and without much trouble, right in their railway compartments.
We boarded the train at Kievsky Station in Moscow without incident.
The following day, as we approached Chop, I looked through the window and noticed my friend running toward the train.
"Alone?" I asked. "Where's the porter with the cart?"
"Throw me the luggage! Jump off! Hurry!"
All right.
I grabbed the suitcases and jumped down. We ran.
Behind me came my wife, my mother-in-law, and my son, struggling along with all our belongings.
We rushed into the station building.
It was chaos.
There was barely room to move. People were shouting. People were sitting and lying on the floor. Mountains of luggage were everywhere. Children were crying.
I pushed my way after Vakhtang.
At last we reached some kind of line.
"Stand here," he said. "I'll bring your family."
I stood there.
A few minutes later my exhausted wife, son, and mother-in-law arrived. The people in the line immediately became agitated. Apparently, I had been standing there alone, and now I had suddenly brought three more people with me.
Fortunately, a young man standing behind me with his family moved aside, and somehow we all managed to squeeze into the line.
Only then did we discover that this was the customs line.
And we were second in that line.
To this day, I have no idea how Vakhtang managed to get us into second place.
But it turned out to be our lucky ticket.
Customs worked slowly. Very slowly. Nobody seemed to be in a hurry.
It was almost impossible to clear customs and make it back onto your train. The train stopped at Chop for only about an hour and a half before continuing across the border, and usually only two or three families managed to complete the process in time.
Everyone else was stranded at the station for days, losing their reserved seats, sleeping wherever they could on the station floor, and then trying somehow to make their way to Bratislava and Vienna.
The last person who managed to catch his train that day was the very same young man with his family who had been standing behind me in line.
I won't describe how thoroughly customs searched us and turned our belongings upside down before finally letting us through.
Eventually, though, we emerged onto the platform with our suitcases and bundles.
There was our train.
Now we had to get everything back aboard.
Our carriage, unfortunately, was nowhere near us. It was at least 150 meters away.
We took my mother-in-law with us. My wife stayed behind with some of the luggage, while my son and I grabbed suitcases and ran.
We got my mother-in-law into the carriage and told her that if the train started moving, she was to pull the emergency brake.
Then we ran back.
More luggage.
Back to the train.
More luggage.
As we approached the carriage again, several young men were leaning out of the windows, watching us and laughing among themselves.
After all the stress, the customs ordeal, and the running back and forth, I was so exhausted that I could barely lift a suitcase onto the train.
Then came the announcement:
"Train number such-and-such will depart in five minutes."
Seeing that things were becoming serious, the young men stopped laughing.
They climbed down and began helping us haul the luggage into the carriage.
Despite the announcement, the train fortunately remained where it was for another twenty minutes or so.
With their help, we managed to get everything aboard.
At last, we were on our way.
I had a bottle of cognac with me.
I picked it up and went to the compartment where the young men were sitting. I wanted to thank them for their help, nothing more.
But they had other ideas.
They wouldn't let me leave.
Inside the compartment stood a whole crate of vodka and two crates of kumis.
Yes—kumis.
They immediately explained that kumis was an excellent way to wash down vodka.
It turned out that my new friends were the administration of some small Belarussian town, including the mayor himself. They were traveling to Austria on a goodwill visit to the town's sister city.
The cognac disappeared almost immediately.
Then the vodka came out.
Then the kumis.
I don't remember what we ate, what we talked about, or how I eventually found my way back to my own compartment.
What I do remember is that I felt absolutely miserable that night.
Sometime around the middle of the following day, however, we finally arrived in Vienna.
We got off the train and said our warm goodbyes to our new Belarussian friends.
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