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Drawing Back the Iron Curtain

Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not.

—Epictetus

In the summer of 2023, as I pieced together this chapter, an invitation arrived to deliver a guest lecture at Pepperdine University, nestled in the tranquil mountains of Malibu, California. Pepperdine, a prestigious Christian institution renowned for its rigorous academics and spiritual ethos, draws students from affluent American families and international elites, all shelling out upwards of $60,000 per year for tuition.

Though it wasn’t my first lecture, this particular engagement carved a lasting impression on me. Fresh from riding the tumultuous yet rewarding wave of the latest cryptocurrency bull cycle, I arrived on campus with an air of newfound status. A string of astute investments and strategic deals had catapulted me into a life I once only dreamed of: living in a serene oceanfront home in Malibu, driving the sleek, quiet hum of a brand-new Tesla, and wearing the subtle gleam of a presidential Rolex. I moved through the world with a sense of poise, as if I’d deciphered life’s most cryptic codes, especially those concerning wealth.

Yet, I was mindful of never giving off that “new money” stench. Those who come from very little, like me, experience substantial psychological changes when they first step into wealth. It’s part of the myth of money. Most times, the feelings are a mix of imposter syndrome wrapped up with guilt. Why do I have the fancy new car and the expensive watch, while others have so little by comparison? I’m no better than my sweet cleaning lady from Venezuela, who cleans my house for $20 an hour, and yet she earns her living through physical labor, while I get to travel the world and work on multimillion-dollar deals. I’d worked hard to achieve my newfound success, yet the pointed feelings of guilt continued to bubble up as queasiness in my weak stomach.

These feelings accompanied me as I prepared for my lecture on cryptocurrency, facing a hundred or so guests and students, most of whom hailed from established, wealthy families—families unlikely to have experienced the brink of poverty like mine or the imposter syndrome that accompanies newfound success. I wondered: Will they see right through me? Will they think I’m a fraud?

Still, being invited to impart wisdom to the bright, eager minds at Pepperdine was not just an honor; it was an affirmation of my journey, a tangible marker of having “made it.” As I stood before those students, I felt a sense of completion, a moment of reflection and recognition that what I had achieved was truly mine, a testament to the journey, the decisions, and the relentless pursuit of success that had brought me to that moment. It was a poignant reminder that some milestones in life are not just about arriving but about understanding and embracing the path that led us there.

Roots of Resilience

A few years ago, I explored my ancestry through 23 and Me, uncovering a kaleidoscope of European roots that span Ukrainian, Hungarian, Polish, Russian, and Ashkenazi Jewish heritage, with a surprising hint of 1% East Asian descent. I was born on February 9, 1988, in the Ukrainian city of Cherkasy, of not quite 300,000 people, or at least it was before Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022. My birthplace was not entirely a matter of choice but rather a last-minute decision. My mother, ever resourceful, opted for Cherkasy because her father lived there; with her due date fast approaching, she sought familiar surroundings and some semblance of support as she embarked on her labor solo.

There’s a term for children like me: “wedding night babies.” My parents’ love story was a whirlwind romance—a courtship of just five dates—culminating in my father, a soon-to-be-deployed captain on a Soviet ship, proposing marriage. They had mere days to make things official before he was set to sail from Severomorsk, a port high above the Arctic Circle, home to the Russian Northern Fleet. He would be at sea for nine months.

To this day, my father laughs about how, on their wedding day, every cosmic sign urged him to flee. First, the taxi was late, making them late for the ceremony. Second, both witnesses came down with an inexplicable virus and couldn’t attend. Third, my father received an urgent call that his ship had disappeared—a false alarm, it turned out, as the ship had been moved for maintenance without proper reporting. All in all, their wedding day was a fiasco. The details of the wedding night remain a mystery, except for one undeniable fact: it was the night I was conceived.

Years later, in my 20s, my father handed me an album. It wasn’t filled with baby pictures or mementos from family outings—those couldn’t exist, as my father wasn’t part of my childhood. Instead, the album chronicled my parents’ relationship during his post-wedding deployment. Within its pages were the letters exchanged between the young newlyweds. Initially, their correspondence was filled with love and the excitement of building a life together. The joy of impending parenthood brightened their exchanges, as my mother shared her first inklings of my existence.

However, the tone of the letters soon shifted. Financial strain crept in, emotional commitment wavered, and the dream of a cohesive family began to unravel. By the time my father’s ship docked, I had already been born, and my mother wanted nothing to do with him. When he arrived at the hospital, he was served with divorce papers and asked to exit my life until my 21st birthday.

Yet, genetics had its own sense of humor. Despite my mother’s dominant blue-eyed, blonde lineage, I emerged a stark contrast: my father’s brown eyes, a mop of dark, curly hair, and porcelain skin—a nod to my paternal Ashkenazi heritage. Throughout my childhood, my mother and I often drew quizzical looks from strangers; we made an odd-looking pair.

The Fall of the Soviet Empire

In 1989, when I was one and a half years old, my mother remarried, and we moved to Moscow. Two years later, on December 25, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev delivered his final speech as the leader of the USSR, explaining his decision to resign. “The reason was evident—society was suffocating in the grip of the command-bureaucratic system. Doomed to serve ideology and to bear the terrible burden of the arms race, it had been pushed to the limit of what was possible,” Gorbachev asserted. “All attempts at partial reforms—and there were many—failed, one after the other. The country had lost direction. It was impossible to go on living that way. Everything had to be changed fundamentally.”

That New Year’s Eve, the atmosphere in our Moscow living room was charged with more than the usual suspense and anticipation. Every television set across the vast expanse of the Soviet Union was tuned to the same channel. Boris Yeltsin—the newly elected president of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) and the first popularly elected head of state in Russian history—was about to announce the beginning of a new era for Russia, and its satellite republics, as an independent state. Yeltsin also promised to transform Russia’s command economy into a capitalist market economy; in other words, he planned to finish the job that Gorbachev began. And indeed, Yeltsin’s presidency was marked by significant political and economic reforms in Russia. He would soon implement economic shock therapy, floating the ruble on the free market, instituting nationwide privatization, and lifting price controls.

With a gravity that matched the historical weight of the moment, as the clock struck midnight that New Year’s Eve, Yeltsin declared the USSR, a behemoth that had stood unyielding for decades, dissolved. Yeltsin finished his speech with the following words: “We, the multinational people of Russia, united by a common fate on our land … declare our sovereignty.”

I was on the cusp of turning four. While children my age in the West took the stability of their governments for granted or didn’t think about government at all, I witnessed firsthand the disintegration of the structure that formed the very basis of our lives. For most people, governments are seen as eternal, their permanence as certain as the rising sun. As my earliest memories formed, my eyes were opened to a profound truth: even the mightiest of structures can crumble. Perhaps the only Americans who would have similar memories from childhood are those who lived through the assassination of JFK in 1963.

The realization that governments and their leaders are fallible left a permanent scar on my psyche. While the world around me continued, and continues to this day, to evolve, this new understanding of impermanence became a cornerstone of my worldview. The knowledge that foundations can shift, and that the familiar can become unfamiliar seemingly overnight, shaped my perspective in profound and lasting ways. I questioned everything and everyone, including the adults around me. After all, if the leader of one of the greatest superpowers on Earth couldn’t hold it together, what gave anyone else any authority?

Contrary to how it seemed to me then, the downfall of the Soviet Union was not an abrupt event but a culmination of several critical factors. Foremost was the escalating...