A Quote by Alexander Vindman
My family fled the Soviet Union when I was three and a half years old. Upon arriving in New York City in 1979, my father worked multiple jobs to support us, all the while learning English at night.
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I remember starting to read about the Soviet Union when I was eight years old; I think I was reading my father's 'New York Times.'
I moved to Hollywood when I was 22. I was married. I had a kid right away. And I had worked as a furniture mover amongst various other jobs, and I'd work eight, ten hours a day to support my family - and I'd come home and write for two hours a night or two and a half, or three hours a night.
My mother and father were farmers from very humble means, and when I was three years old they moved from the roca to the city to try to give us a better life. My father took a job at a winery and my mother worked as a seamstress.
There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter — the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something.
Kennedy was significantly different than Eisenhower before him, and different from Johnson after him. So those three years were the beginning of a détente with the Soviet Union, a new feeling for peace, a seeking out of a new ally with the Soviet Union - the end of the Cold War, as Kennedy called it in his American University speech.
When I was mayor of New York, my views changed. I began as mayor of New York City thinking that I could reform the New York City school system. After two or three years, four years, I became an advocate of choice, of scholarships, and vouchers, and parental choice, because I thought that was the only way to really change the school system.
If you are asking did I support the Soviet Union, yes I did. Yes, I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life.
The first year I was in office, only about 800 people came out of the Soviet Union, Jews. By the third year I was in office... second year, 1979, 51,000 came out of the Soviet Union. And every one of the human rights heroes - I'll use the word - who have come out of the Soviet Union, have said it was a turning point in their lives, and not only in the Soviet Union but also in places like Czechoslovakia and Hungary and Poland [they] saw this human rights policy of mine as being a great boost to the present democracy and freedom that they enjoy.
My mom had been a script supervisor in Hungary, but you can't just jump into that in Canada without knowing any English. She worked retail jobs and raised my sister and me while learning English.
Soviet mathematics was particularly good in the second half of the 20th century, basically because of the arms race, because the Soviet Union realized... World War II created the conditions for the Soviet Union to become a superpower.
In a lot of ways, New York isn't the city I moved to back in 1979. I'm old enough to separate my nostalgia for those days from the reality of how dangerous and uncertain they could be.
My father was an Episcopal minister, and for 14 years my family lived in China, in a city called Wuchang. We four children spoke Chinese before we spoke English. We left when the communists came, in the early 1930s. I was about 5 years old.
I used to live in New York City, then when my son was two years old we moved to Cambridge Massachusetts and we've been there ever since. My son is now twenty-nine years old, so we've been up there for a while.
Yes, I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life.
I was born and raised in New York. My family has been in New York City since the Civil War. I have a ton of N.Y.C. in my DNA, from both sides of my family. I had a wonderful childhood in the city.
Who co-founded Google? Sergey Brin, a Russian-born Jew whose family fled anti-semitism in the Soviet Union to settle here and who considers himself a refugee.
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