Forum Moderators: goodroi
[momentmag.com...]
Sergey is too young to remember the day, in the summer of 1977, when his father came home and announced that it was time for the family to emigrate. “We cannot stay here any more,” he told his wife and mother. He had arrived at his decision while attending a mathematics conference in Warsaw. For the first time, he had been able to mingle freely with colleagues from the United States, France, England and Germany. Discovering that his intellectual brethren in the West “were not monsters,” he listened as they described the opportunities and comforts of life beyond the Iron Curtain. “He said he wouldn’t stay, now that he had seen what life could be about,” says Genia.The couple knew, of course, the perils of applying for an exit visa. They could easily end up refuseniks, unable to find work, shunned, in perpetual limbo. Nobody had promised Michael a position abroad but he was confident he could find work in the West that was intellectually stimulating and would support the family. Genia, however, was unconvinced. They had lived in Moscow their entire lives. They had decent jobs and a young son. Was it worth it to try to leave? “I didn’t want to go,” she says. “It took a while for me and his mother to agree. I had a lot more attachments.” It was up to Michael to do the convincing. “I was the only one in the family who decided it was really important to leave—not in some distant future,” he says.
I've always loved the garage story, and the choice of the name Google was briliant in itself; but it's nice to get the personal background, it kind of puts flesh and blood on the "Googliath" phenomenon, a legend in its own time.
