All posts by REG

I come from Minsk. My dream was to work at railways, but my school was affiliated with a college of education, so I had a bigger chance of getting accepted there. I also wanted to become a radio DJ, and even went to audition to a few radio stations in Minsk, but my taciturnity stood

Two years ago, my husband and I decided to move to Russia, our historic land: I am from a family subjected to political repression who were exiled to Kazakhstan; after the collapse of the Soviet Union, my family was rehabilitated. My husband was born in Russia, but his parents moved to Kazakhstan in 1980s. My

I was born in Vinnitsa, Ukraine, in a common soviet family: father a mine worker, mother a cook in a clothing factory canteen. After they divorced, my brother, sister, and I ended up in an orphanage, but later on, my father took me to Vorkuta where he was living at the time. After finishing school,

I am a simple person from a Tajikistan village. Now I look at my life from my late thirties and think that I could have been a common Tajik street sweeper, one of many thousands in Moscow, married with kids, who visits home once a year; and there would not have been any of this.

I come from a Georgian town of Rustavi where my parents worked at a metallurgic plant famous from the times of USSR. This town was founded by my grandfather. I went to school there. My two brothers went to study in Khimki, Russia, right after having finished high school in our home town. One of

I went to Russia, leaving La Havana, right after finishing school. No, not for university. I had only one dream: to leave Cuba. It is a very poor country – the average monthly income in La Havana is 90 dollars. I chose Russia because we don’t need a visa to come here. I used the

I’m 24 years old, and I have been earning a living in Russia for 9 years already. I was born in southern Kyrgyzstan in a traditional family: my mother was taking care of three kids, and my father was a driver. They constantly quarreled, my dad was beating my mom, and later he left her

I grew up in a good family in Tashkent. My mother is a laboratory worker, and my father works as a civil servant. Since I was a child, I have always loved attention; I even dreamt of becoming an actor, producing my own movie and starring in it. My parents, however, were not thrilled with

As a kid, I was a typical nerd girl from a good family; my grades at school were almost immaculate – only one “B” among all “A”s. But then things changed for the worse… I have always dreamed of becoming a doctor. But in my junior year of high school, I decided that I was