30s

[natalia_vintage]

My grandfather Lev Dubrovsky and his sister Olga. Lev died about 25 yeas ago. He worked some 40 years at a small Moscow "secret plant", with a 4 year break for the war (he was starshina in an artillery battery).

His elder sister's life is far more interesting: her daughter Lyuda married a Czech she met in her University and had a daughter with him. They all left for Prague just before 1968. Lyuda and her husband Milosh were very active in the days of the "velvet revolution": Lyuda, a native Russian speaker, used to make speeches before Soviet tank crews asking them to please go home. When things went completely wrong and arrest was imminent, Milosh's company found a way to send him, and his family, to a "business trip" (of course it was a trip of no return) to a nice western country. You can easily guess what country it was by this photo:



Milosh died a few years ago, Lyuda, a retired engineer, lives in a respectable Boston suburbia with Olga who's over 90 now.
Her daughter Lyuba (the girl in the photo) is a very successful NY physician, married with 2 daughters.

Needless to say that after 1968 Olga never had a chance to see her brother again. She came here in late 1980s: as soon as the borders were open, to meet what was left of her old family. There was not much.