“I Left the Communists to Themselves”
Vitaliy Mostovoy was born on March 12, 1946 in the Ukraine. His parents were Michael Mostovoy and Ganrietta Belodubrovskoya (which means, in part, “white oak”).
Michael was a Ukrainian Jew, and Ganrietta was a Polish nurse living in the Ukraine with an elderly woman she was hired to care for. As it happened, the elderly woman’s children and grandchildren often came to see her, and one day one of her grandson’s brought a friend along by the name of Michael Mostovoy. As soon as Michael saw Ganrietta, he fell in love with her, and they married in 1928. Michael worked as an economist, and Ganrietta continued working as a nurse until their first child, Ina, was born in 1932.
Fourteen years later, in 1946, a son was born – Vitaliy. Vitaliy attended high school and university, eventually becoming a professor of physics, with a specialty in medical radiation. He was on the chief of staff in this field, did extensive research and gave lectures at the university in the evenings and enjoyed his career immensely.
In 1969, when he was 23, he married the love of his life, Lyudmila. He had been dating a different girl, Anna, shortly before this and the two had gone to a friend’s apartment one night to celebrate Anna’s birthday. At the impromptu party, Vitaliy was introduced to his friend’s date, Lyudmila, and instantly fell in love with her, perhaps in the same way his father, Michael, had fallen in love with Ganrietta. Ten days after Anna’s birthday party, Vitaliy married Lyudmila in a quiet service.
Vitaliy and Lyudmila, who worked as a language teacher, made a happy life for themselves in the Ukraine and had two sons: Vadim and Anton. Vitaliy says he left the Communists to themselves and lived his own life. He felt he had a pretty good salary, a great job, a nice family and a nice apartment. When the Communists fell, however, his life began to fall apart. His salary shrank to almost nothing and his sons, just leaving university now, had no job prospects. Seeing the situation in the Ukraine as hopeless, Vitaliy decided to move the family to America and arrived in Chicago in 1994 with Vadim and his wife and daughter; Anton; and Lyudmila’s parents. And while there proved to be much more opportunity for their sons, Vitaliy and Lyudmila’s prospects worsened. Vitaliy gave up his brilliant career in research to become a janitor and Lyudmila found a job at the counter of Lord and Taylor.
After about a year in America, the powers that be at Evanston Hospital where Vitaliy worked as a janitor heard of his background in the Ukraine and offered to send him through 14 months of training to be a lab technician in exchange for him to continue working as a janitor as a volunteer. Vitaliy desperately wanted to take the offer, but eventually declined it, knowing that they could not exist for that period of time without his salary. For one thing, shortly after their arrival in America, Lyudmila’s parents began to have a myriad of health problems. Her father had to have a lung operation and his leg amputated, which required extensive hospitalization. In order to visit him every day, Lyudmila’s mother had to take three busses to get to the hospital, and eventually the stress got to her. She had a heart attack and then a series of strokes and falls before she finally died.
Vitaliy continued to work as a janitor, trying to make the best of it, comforted at least that his sons were able to have a career here. He doesn’t regret leaving the Ukraine, he says, “but I am a pessimist at heart. Wait and see.”
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