From the dining table in her one-bedroom apartment at 546 Main Street, Lyusya Zheleznyak can see the power plant in Queens.  “This apartment is much smaller than the one we had in the center of Moscow, when we left Russia 15 years ago, but we are much happier here than we were in Russia,” she says.  A petite woman of strong character, it is clear she was able to live through all problems in Russia, but “our family left Russia as we wanted to find a better place to live for my grandson.”  To be able to be reunited with their daughter and grandson in America, Lyusya and her husband, Alexander, had to wait for eight years for special permission to leave the USSR.  “Now I feel that I was born in America and that my home is here on Roosevelt Island,” Lyusya smiles.  She has a warm kind face, which often breaks into a smile.  When Lyusya says how she feels about living in the US, she smiles widely, so it is clear that she is really happy to be here.

Alexander, now retired, was an army officer whose career began during the Second World War and who served all over the USSR.  Lyusya was a lawyer.  Now retired from the law, she stays active as a writer.  Her stories have appeared in Russian and American publications, including AMI/Narod Moi (My Nation) and Slovo/Word.  In 2000 she published a book of autobiographical stories, entitled During One Lifetime.  It depicts a remarkable life.

For 12 of their 15 years in America, Lyusya and Alexander have lived on Roosevelt Island.  “We love the Island very much.  It is a great place,” Lyusya says. “It is like a small town in a big city, and Manhattan is just five minutes away by tram.  As for the power plant, it makes noise, but the noise is monotone, so we got used to it quickly and it doesn’t bother us anymore,” Lyusya says.

When they first came to the U.S. they lived for three years with their daughter’s family in New Jersey.  Lyusya and Alexander had a close and loving relationship with them, but they wanted a place of their own.  Besides, “after living in a city like Moscow, we felt life was too provincial in a small town in New Jersey and we hoped to move to New York City.”  Being on a limited budget they looked at several apartments in the City that they could afford but did not like them.  “Then we found out it was possible to apply for a subsidized apartment on Roosevelt Island.  We came to look at the Island and fell in love with it.”  They were delighted when they got the apartment.  “We wouldn’t consider living anyplace else.”

“We like everything about the U.S. and the reality of America has exceeded our expectations,” Lyusya says.  Once, when they still lived in New Jersey, she went for a walk and got lost.  “I did not speak English well, so I didn’t know how I would be able to find my daughter’s home,” she recalls.  On the street she met two people – a young woman and her father – and they were very nice to her.  She managed to explain to them that she was lost, but she could not even spell the name of her son-in-law.  They brought her to their home, managed to find the son-in-law’s name in the phone book, and called him.  Then they insisted on bringing her home.  “I was thrilled that total strangers were so nice to me.”

“As for the country as a whole,” Lyusya says, “we found in America what we had always longed for but did not have in Russia – democracy, freedom, stability.  In the USSR we felt separated from the system. We could not stand lies.”  Lyusya and Alexander lived through the regimes of Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, and Gorbachev.  “Only Gorbachev,” according to Lyusya, “brought some hopes for a better life.”  They left Russia before the USSR broke apart in 1991.

”Growing up in the Soviet Union,” Lyusya admits, “I once believed it was the best country in the world.” But disillusionment came quickly.  In her book, Lyusya explains why she and her family decided to leave Russia.  (The book was published only in Russian, which is unfortunate because it means that non-Russian speakers cannot enjoy its funny, sad, mysterious stories.)

Lyusya’s book begins on a day when she was 17 and returning from a date with her fianc‚, Alexander, during which they discussed their plans to get married.  They had both just graduated from high school and planned to go to university.  ”Alexander wanted to become an actor, but I was hesitating between law and journalism, so the surest thing for me was to marry Alexander.  The future seemed so bright and happy to us at that date,” she sighs.  But the day was June 22, 1941 – the day Germany attacked the USSR.  Alexander went off to the war.  There would be no studying and no wedding for four long years.

Lyusya’s memories of the war brought a story of Nata, her dear school friend, whose dream was to be a ballerina.  When the war began Nata chose to stay in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), because she did not want to leave her mother and siblings.  That decision cost her life. A bomb destroyed her house, killed her brother, and left Nata paralyzed.  Lyusya and her mother, who had managed to evacuate from Leningrad to Siberia, sent Nata money so that Nata could buy fruits. “We did not know that it was already impossible to buy bread in Leningrad.”  Nata had died of starvation.  “Nata’s death made me an orphan,” Lyusya laments.

Lyusya has a story in the book about another friend who was trapped in Leningrad during the 900-day German blockade of the city.  The friend, named Alexandra Christiani, tried to keep her beloved dog alive by giving it half of her four-ounce allotment of bread (the only food for the whole day in Leningrad during the blockade).  One day a crying woman came and pleaded for Alexandra to give her the dog, so that she could feed her starving child.  At first Alexandra wanted to close the door, but then she changed her mind and gave the dog to the woman.

Lyusya’s book is not only about tragedy.  One story is about a friend who had a painting of his grandfather by an unknown artist.  His wife asked him to sell it, but he was told that it was worth nothing and that he could sell only the frame.  He sold the frame and threw the painting in the garbage dump.  Several years later he found out from his cousin that the unknown boy from Vitebsk who had painted their grandfather’s portrait had become famous.  The boy’s name was Marc Chagall.

One of Lyusya’s stories is about honesty and friendship.  “My mother, who had a good education in Germany before the Russian revolution and spoke three foreign languages, could not find a job after the revolution,” Lyusya says.  Faina, a good friend, suggested that her mother earn money by knitting.  Lyusya’s mother took Faina’s advice and soon she had many clients.  But for most of the Soviet era it was forbidden to conduct private business for money.  Lyusya’s mother was arrested.  She was set free only because her lawyer was able to bribe the judge.  “But she was most saddened to learn later that she had been arrested because the informant who had reported to the authorities that she was knitting for money was her friend Faina, who was envious of her commercial success,” Lyusya says.  Many years have passed, but Faina’s betrayal still hurts Lyusya. She looks very sad when she remembers this story.

Lyusya’s book includes stories of people she has known who were famous, and those who were just a degree from the famous.  These include a woman who was a close friend of Stalin’s wife; daughters of Brezhnev and Khrushchev; and Khrushchev’s wife.  Lyusya met a woman who lived next door to Lenin’s mother.  She had brushes with the famous Russian actors Oleg Efremov and Iya Savvina, with the singer Isabella Yurieva, and with Alexander Solzhenitsyn.  Lyusya chuckles that though she and her husband have lived a life far from famous people, they have met them on their way very often.

The book reflects Lyusya’s sadness that most of her friends suffered from the Soviet system.  One such friend was Irina Gogua.  Irina’s father, Kallistrat Gogua, was Stalin’s friend before the revolution.  He once helped Stalin by telling him that he was about to be arrested, and giving him money to escape the arrest.  When Stalin took power, he paid Kallistrat back by having him arrested and then killed.

Kalistrat’s daughter also had to pay.  Irina was one of the closest friends of Stalin’s second wife, Nadezhda Allilueva.  After Nadezhda died, Irina was arrested, leaving her three-year-old daughter alone.  Irina was released from prison only after Stalin’s death.  (Lyusya’s story about Irina was used in the movie “Nadezda, the Wife of Stalin,” directed by Slava Zukermann.)

Lyusya remembers her mother crying when Stalin died.  Being from a rich family she had lost everything with the revolution and never accepted the Soviet system.  Nevertheless, she was afraid it would be worse after Stalin’s death.  “It did not get worse, but it did not get better either,” Lyusya says.

In the 1980s, Lyusya and Alexander decided to leave the USSR.  “We decided to leave at a point when we had a relatively stable life,” Lyusya says.  But the outside stability could not compensate for the lack of trust in the future.  “We wanted our grandson to live in a better country,” she says.  First, their daughter and her family left, but Lyusya and Alexander could not get permission to leave for eight years.  Their requests for exit visas were repeatedly rejected, possibly because Alexander had been a military officer.

Although Lyusya and her husband were already retired when they came to the U.S., they both enrolled in college.  Alexander attended Touro College and his picture and a brief biography were published in The National Dean’s List, which honors America’s outstanding college students, for 1992-1993.

Lyusya and Alexander communicate mostly with Russian speakers. “I’d love to make more American friends, but my English is not good enough to make American friends easily,” Lyusya laments.  Lyusya and Alexander stay in touch with their friends in Russia, who invite them to visit. “But neither of us wants to go to Russia or feels any nostalgia for it,” she says.  However, they follow the news from Russia through Russian-language newspapers and television.  “We see the changes happening in Russia, but we do not believe, as some people do, that it has changed completely.”

Lyusya and Alexander’s grandson, Anton, earned summa cum laude degrees in both finance and art from the University of Pennsylvania.  Anton now studies law at Harvard and is one of the best students.  Anton came to the U.S. when he was two years old.  “He is now a real American,” Lyusya says proudly.  Anton is interested in many things, but his interest in Russia is not deep.  When he was choosing which language to study in school, Lyusya and Alexander suggested Russian but Anton chose French.  “We understand his lack of warm feelings for Russia because he remains angry about what Soviet politics did to his family,” Lyusya says.

This year, as they do every year, Lyusya and Alexander celebrated the Fourth of July, which for them is a family reunion.  "It is a great holiday and it is now our holiday too," Lyusya says. The last sentence in Lyusya’s book is "God bless America," and it is what she really feels.