Entrepreneur
Homemaker
Civil engineer
Writer
Introduction
Family embraces the good life
but harbors nostalgia for old times
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(CNN) -- The Mitsubishi entertainment system produces sound, but the 72-inch television screen remains blank.
"I got a PlayStation 2 for my birthday," explained Yanna Dashevsky, 14, "and I kept the TV on for eight or nine hours a day nonstop, and then it stopped working. I guess it got tired."
"What do you mean eight or nine hours? It was more like 12 or 14," countered her father, Leo.
"I should have gotten the model with wheels, but that was special order," Leo added, looking at the massive television console taking up nearly an entire wall in the family room of their spacious home. "It's too big to move. We will have to have someone come here to repair it."
Leo and Stella Dashevsky and their daughter Yanna have come a long way since they left Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and arrived in Atlanta, Georgia, as refugees in 1994. Their elegant home in the Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta is stuffed full of possessions, including dozens of toys for the newest addition to the family, 2-year-old Victoria, as well as the latest in computer gadgetry, video equipment, cell phones and cameras.
"In terms of material goods, it's better here. And Yanna has many more opportunities. But for me, it's sometimes difficult," Leo said. "I had to leave many very good friends behind. It's impossible for them to even get a visa to visit me."
While Yanna unabashedly calls herself "100 percent American," her parents have a more complicated identity. Their native tongue is Russian, but they were born and raised in the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan. They describe themselves as "of the Soviet Union."
"Even though it does not exist anymore, that is the time that we are from," Leo said.
Intellectually, they understand that the collapse of the Soviet Union was inevitable, that the changes had to come, said Stella. Emotionally, however, she and her husband still look back on the days before perestroika with nostalgia.
Stella, a civil engineer, worked for a government agency that was studying ways to reduce air and water pollution in Tashkent, while Leo was a computer programmer.
"We had to take much more time to do household work and find goods and products for the family," Stella said. "It's not like you go to the supermarket. In Tashkent, you have to go to one, two, three or more stores and stand in a long line and then maybe you'll find something. It was normal for us. We thought it was a very good life."
'Suddenly, they changed everything'
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But with the advent of perestroika in the mid-1980s, which opened up the Soviet Union to more outside influences, Stella's perspective changed.
"I was happy until I had something to compare our life with," she said. "When you realize how people in other countries are living, you find out you are not as happy as you think. In Russia, we have a saying: 'You're lucky if you don't know how poor you are.' "
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 added more challenges to day-to-day life in Uzbekistan. Many large manufacturing plants were forced to close because the Uzbekistan government could not afford to import spare parts, causing wide-scale unemployment. Inflation drove up the prices of essential items.
"Old people who worked all their lives to have enough for a fairly decent retirement can now afford to buy only two or three loaves of bread and a few pounds of meat and some milk. That's it for the whole month," Stella said. "They have nothing left over to pay their rent or to buy medicine or clothes."
The national language switched from Russian to the native Uzbek, which was not widely known in the cities, Stella said. "All our life we studied and spoke the Russian language. Suddenly, they changed everything. If you wanted to go to college, if you wanted to work, you had to learn a different language."
As the economy worsened, the atmosphere darkened. "It became more and more dangerous to live there," Stella said, "especially since we are Jewish and it is a Muslim republic."
One day, Yanna, then 3, came home from her nursery school with a question for her mother.
"She asked me, 'Who are the Jews? Who are these people?' But she didn't use the proper word for Jew; she used a very mean (slur)," Stella recalled. "I asked her, 'Why do you want to know? Where did you hear that word?' And she said, 'Today at school the teacher told us these people are bad.' "
After her daughter went to bed that night, Stella said she decided she would do whatever she could to move from Uzbekistan. "It's not like you can pack your suitcase and leave," she said, "but I began the long process of applying to go to the United States."
Four years later, the family made it to Atlanta. Stella and Leo found jobs in their chosen fields.
"I liked Atlanta from the first moment," Stella said. "It's a feeling that if you work you can achieve something. Your income, your stability, your safety mostly depends on yourself. In Russia, you can work very hard for yourself, but there is no guarantee. There are a lot of heartbreaking things going on there now."
Most of Stella and Leo's close relatives have left Uzbekistan. They are scattered in Israel, Germany and the United States. Stella's parents followed her to Atlanta.
"They didn't want to leave, but they came mostly because of us," Stella said. "They are in their 60s, and it's very hard for them to learn the language and accept the changes."
Her parents closely follow the news about the political situation in Russia and the other former Soviet republics, but Stella said she does not keep up with developments there.
"To be honest, I have other things to worry about," she said. "I'm more worried about what's going on in the American government right now."