We got out of bed this time to talk to Vadim Nikitin, a journalist and blogger born in Murmansk, about his immigrant experience.
We had a really interesting talk. Vadim’s story is unique. His father, a captain on a fishing ship out of Murmansk, was sent to the U.S. to get an MBA during perestroika. He took Vadmin and his family with him and while they were in America, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. When he returned to Russia right after the failed 1991 putsch, he was told to take a hike. Nobody wanted him back at his job. The huge Soviet Murmansk fishing fleet — worth billions — was being picked up apart and privatized by his former coworkers and comrades and they, not surprisingly, weren’t too eager to share the spoils.
Some of the things we talk about: living among the Anglo-Saxons, the perils of individualism, Soviet nostalgia, sanctions and the corruption of the democratic process, Russia’s liberal intelligentsia, 1990s privatization, the war in Ukraine, similarities between “the West” and the Soviet Union…actually too many to list!
Enjoy!
Vadim on his father’s trawler
PS: You can follow Vadim on Twitter and check out his writing in the London Review of Books and the Nation and others.
Soviet Ships and Immigrant Deprogramming with Vadim Nikitin