Former Medical Doctor Recounts Life in the Soviet Union

At 94 years old, Zoya has been a courageous soul and gained the love and respect of many workers and residents at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Even being a compassionate senior citizen, she has endured many generations of upheaval and lived a long yet prosperous career. 

Born in Ukraine in 1929, she was only 12 years old when the Second World War started. “I had my father, my mother, and my twin sister. I lived in Ukraine until the start of the second world war with Germany. And when war started, we escape from our city and from Ukraine”, she said. “It was very hard because nobody help us. We were working, all family. For 12 days and night, we work to escape from German army. I remember everything. How it was terrible; We had no food, no water, the plane was bombing, and it was very hard. My father was in army, he was killed by German near Krakow, Poland”.

She fled with her sister from Ukraine to Moscow, Russia, and stayed there throughout the war. They finished high school and were determined to continue their education. Both applied to medical school because they wanted to be medical doctors, to continue working and providing to society. After graduating from medical school in 1953, Zoya and her sister worked as pediatricians at Moscow’s Children's Hospital. After that, she got married and had two children. Even then, life was very difficult because money was very tight. 

“We had not enough food, not enough money, for example to buy cod, to buy books, you had to stay in line for several hours.” Zoya said. “It was very hard to buy food because it always big line everywhere, but I was working and after work I stay in some store to buy dinner for my children. It was hard and it was discrimination too.” 

While they were in Moscow, they were able to endure and manage their burdens by reading the newspaper for entertainment. They would read underground stories. 

“We had some paper against the government and we wanted to read this, but we couldn’t go to the bookstore to buy it because they didn’t print it. So we give each other and we talk to each other about how our life is. We read somebody but it was secret. Because it was many writers, for example, Solzhenitsyn, he wrote it but didn't print it officially. It was good too, not just bad.”

Her sister left for America with her family and Zoya shortly followed after. However, Zoya was only able to bring her children while her husband had to stay behind.  “My husband couldn’t come because he was a professor, physicist and government didn’t let him go. They told me, you can go with your children, but your husband never will go. He is a physicist and professor, he knows a lot of secrets. He will tell secret in another country.” 

Upon arriving in San Francisco, Zoya struggled with the language barrier and cultural dissonance. She became a housekeeper for a very old Russian woman who escaped the Russian Revolution in 1917. Although she was working as a housekeeper, that didn’t stop her from learning. Every morning she would go to school in San Francisco and practice her English. She gained most of her knowledge from working at a UCSF laboratory. 

Zoya was determined to work. She did not have welfare so she worked at UCSF as a medical doctor and worked in a laboratory for 17 years. Her sister was also a medical doctor and became an interpreter in Stanford University. She had many Russian patients who didn’t know English very well. “My twin sister had car accident, very terrible and she not survive. It was twenty years ago, I still have her in my heart, but she was very successful here,” Zoya said.

Since then, Zoya received a senior citizen passport and visited Moscow several times. She visited relatives and stayed with them.

“We had very good president, his name was Gorbachev. He opened iron gates. People couldn’t go from Soviet Union to another country, even visited, a country close to Soviet Union. But Gorbachev, people who want to go out and see their family, they could do it.”

Zoya was finally able to be reunited with her husband. They went back to America together where her husband wrote a textbook about physics. 

Now, Zoya visits the North Berkeley Senior Center and has many friends there. Her son graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in mathematics and computer science. Her daughter went to university to study design and is now a successful designer interpreter. 

“Now, I am retired, I go to senior center. I like senior center very much, I like people and people like me. I have lots of friends here, and I enjoy everyday. I was in many country, I was in Holland, Germany, like tourist. Italy. But, this country, America, is the best for me, and I appreciate people who take care of us, immigrants, that America is very wide.”