BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

“Only by taking infinitesimally small units for observation (the differential of history) … can we hope to arrive at the laws of history.”
- Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

We landed at Auckland Airport on March 1, 1996. We are me, a PhD in mathemat-ics and physics and an associate professor at a technical university; my husband, a PhD in electronics and head of the department of industrial electronics at the university; and our 13-year-old son.

We had only three travel bags with us, and one was filled with books. I hoped to continue my scientific work in New Zealand, and brought in the bags with me the key parts of my PhD thesis. Worried that this thesis might be considered at customs in Moscow to be a scientific or military secret (although this was not the case), I detached it from the binding and used the pages to wrap cutlery, so giving the impression that the pages were only wrapping paper.

We had no money, no English and no acquaintances who could help with advice and information. But we had hopes and dreams for a better life than Soviet Russia and post-Soviet Ukraine offered, and a willingness to overcome difficulties.

We did not think about