Millions of Ukrainians go abroad to study or get a job, and many of them leave for good.
According to the Shevchenko Scientific Society in the United States – a Ukrainian-American scholarly institution based in New York – some 930,434 Ukrainians live in the United States.
The Kyiv Post talked to five of them who live in the United States and who don’t plan to come back to their motherland.
Sofia Bilianska, 26, from Odesa
Piano tutor
Sofia Bilianska moved to the United States at the age of 18, after entering an undergraduate program at Mannes School of Music in New York on a full scholarship. She said that during her first year in the United States she felt as if she had been “thrown into the middle of the ocean.” However, she is now in the process of getting U.S. citizenship, and said she can imagine returning to Ukraine “only in a nightmare.”
“The first month was total enthusiasm, but then you are thrown into apathy,” Bilianska told the Kyiv Post. “I remember my birthday when I was sitting alone on the floor and eating a cheesecake with a spoon. The first year in the United States was the loneliest one in my life.”
During her eight years in New York, she has earned two Bachelor degrees, in piano and composition, and has collaborated with Michael Bacon, the brother of actor Kevin Bacon, who taught her how to write music for films. Bilianska now teaches piano at the school on Long Island.
“Our musicians work there (in Ukraine) at a school for $200 per month. I cannot imagine how to live on this money,” she says.
Her path to success in music was a long one, however: She has had jobs selling dogs, working in an antique store, and as a hostess in a restaurant, where she met her future husband.
Bilianska, however, says she might consider getting back to Ukraine if they have kids.
“Probably, when I give birth to my kids, I’d like them to grow up in Ukraine,” she said, adding that most kids in the United States are spoiled.
“A five-year-old kid can tell me ‘You’re here because I’m having fun – if I don’t like this anymore, you’ll lose your job,’” Bilianska said, speaking of her work at the music school.
Bohdan Sheremet, 25, from Odesa
Tennis coach
Bohdan Sheremet moved to New York in 2014, following his mother, who had relocated there three years earlier. He doesn’t regret the decision, he says.
“Do I miss that life (in Ukraine)? I miss people and the atmosphere in which we were together, but not the life,” says Sheremet.
The most difficult thing for him was to get used to the idea that he would not see his friends for a long time, he adds.
“When you leave at 21-22 years, as I did, you’re already a formed person. Then just at that moment you throw everything out, and then you need to find your soul again,” he said.
Sheremet currently works as a tennis coach. He’s also preparing to enroll in a college to study physiotherapy and plays drums in a band.
“I didn’t adopt someone’s mentality, I didn’t become an American – I just found myself,” he says.
In the United States Sheremet attended the United States Open Tennis Championships – something he had always dreamed of doing. He said he was sure that if he stayed in Ukraine, his dreams would remain just dreams.
“A lot of people can’t cope with the difficulties here – the language and cultural barriers, integration. But I accepted this country as my own and I had no doubts. I only sleep four hours a day, but the result gives me strength.”
Alina Smolyar, 25, from Odesa
Actress
Alina Smolyar left Ukraine in 2013 to enter the New York Film Academy in Los Angeles.
“Hollywood is the heart of movie production. If you throw a pencil at a passer-by, he or she will either be an actor, or a director, or a producer,” she says. “I was always attracted to the United States. The more difficult something is, the more interesting it is for me.”
Smolyar said the most difficult thing for her was to get used to the everyday routine tasks, like filling up a car, or learning how the banking system works. It also took time for her to get used to the people’s mentality – to people always being friendly and smiling.
“You can just walk down the street in Los Angeles, and some guy or girl will say: ‘Hey, cool shoes,’” Smolyar said. “When you say nice things, people start glowing. At first, it was wild for me – compliments just like that. But living here, I figured out it’s just in the air.”
She said that whenever she comes back to Ukraine, people seem depressed there. “It’s clear that there is a constant struggle for survival.”
Smolyar has already obtained a degree in acting, and she’s not going to return to Ukraine, saying the things she feels most nostalgic about from Ukraine are her mother’s borscht and stuffed fish.
Mykhailo Drozda, 38, from Lviv
Waiter
Mykhailo Drozda won the Green Card Lottery in 2016, and have been living with his wife in New York for 10 months.
In Lviv, Drozda used to work at a consumer protection service office and had never been abroad, but moving to the United States had been his dream. Drozda says he wasn’t embarrassed that having three university degrees, the only job he could find in New York at first was as a janitor in a gym, although now he works as a waiter. Drozda recently obtained a construction industry license, and his wife entered a nursing faculty at a college.
“If you want to achieve something in the United States, you will get it sooner or later. In Ukraine it’s impossible if you don’t have money or connections,” Drozda says. “Here I’m working physically and sleeping peacefully.”
Vladyslav Khiger, 57, from Kharkiv
Head of daycare center for retirees
Vladyslav Khiger, who has been living in New York for almost 30 years, believes that each state can be defined by the way it treats the elderly and disabled people.
“Everything is beautiful in Kharkiv, the city is full of youth, but why do not we see the old people? Either they’ve not survived or they just stay at home. And now go through Brighton Beach – here people live actively until they’re 80 or 90,” Khiger says.
For the last six years, Khiger has been working as the head of a social daycare center called the Garden of Joy, where retirees spend their free time dancing, playing lotto, chess and more.
In the late 1980s, Khiger received a call from his Israeli relatives living in the United States, and together with his pregnant wife he left Ukraine, when “banditry and assaults on private business had begun.” A Jewish organization helped for a while, he says, adding that he earned his first money working night shifts at a gas station, and working as a taxi driver he learned English. Khiger has changed his jobs five times, but has never thought of returning to Ukraine.
“I never look back,” he said. “And there was no time to think about it. Seven years ago I visited Kharkiv – the atmosphere was horrific, bleak. There’s nothing to miss.”
However, he said he thought that unlike Russia, Ukraine is on the right track.
“Ukraine will be reborn – I see its future, and I think that it will turn into a European country. Ukrainians are freedom-loving people. They will not endure the yoke on their neck like a slave.”
Read a story about Ukrainians who did return to Ukraine here.
