Anatoly Yakovenko
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
We didn't have any shovels, but they would use their shovels and they gave us like a couple of bucks and then we spend it on candy and movies.
It was awesome.
Like we bought like upper deck basketball cards and played Street Fighter in the arcade.
We fully bought into the American dream.
So he was also from?
Yeah.
There was like a little community of expats.
As soon as a...
Like you couldn't leave the Soviet Union.
This is how you know it was bad because they didn't want you in.
Yeah.
They didn't want all the smart engineers to leave.
So you couldn't leave so that my parents were denied exit visas.
But as soon as the USSR kind of fell apart, end of 91, my parents died.
and they would only let you take 50 bucks per person of value.
So this is when my parents landed in $50 per person.
The immigration folks were telling us that U.S.
is in a recession.
This was like 91, 92.
And it was bad and whatever.