
I love stories, and life has given me plenty to tell. It has long been my plan to put them down on paper. My path has taken me through 15 years of entrepreneurship, travelling, and finally, immigrating. I found myself again in a new place as an employed software engineer, and now, five years onwards, I am transitioning back to independence.

I was born in soviet Moscow and went to school in a new, unknown country that had yet to define itself. I belong to the single, non-indoctrinated generation of Russians around: we were taught that anything was possible and that our only limits were those we set for ourselves. This played some bad jokes on me: Once my childhood was over, the country decided to make another turn, this time back to authoritarianism, and together with its people, happily embraced the old and familiar soviet dogmas.

So, a year after graduating high school, I jumped on the website development bandwagon that has carried me for the last 20 years.

My experience was not purely virtual: my severe first \[ad]venture was an e-commerce website that sold shoes and accessories (my friend brought the idea, not a passion for shoes!). The next one was even more grounded: a chain of gadget repair stores. The third I would call 'Chinese adventures', as I was involved in trading activities for many small-scale entrepreneurs like me in China. These adventures, spanning from 2000 to 2014, were thrilling but ended abruptly as Russia took a turn I couldn't follow.

That time, my country decided to be, once again, the bad guy and no one asked me if I wanted to participate, so I quit.

The word 'quit' is nice and short! Applying it to reality was a grilling experience. It took me several attempts and struggles to acquire a new true home: Israel. Most of my current stories are related to this land and its people.

I'm practical, so I write about entrepreneurship, technology, business, and ideas in general. I have never been short of ideas, and I believe in the power of sharing them to make the ideas a part of reality, to let them sprout and witness the fruits.

To set the record straight, I am a Christian, so my viewpoint is not so common in Israel or the world of tech. This lens offers a distinctive angle to my experiences and reflections.


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Immigrant, Enterpreneur, Husband, Father and Son

Rodion Kuprin


I was involved in the knock-off shoes and garments e-shop during my early entrepreneurial days. That's how I learned about those bazaars on Moscow's outskirts. It was an interesting marvel of the time, presenting a rich cultural background. I'd like to say that it came and went, and now it's not there any more, but as far as I know, those trade syndicates still exist and thrive.

The source of our website's product portfolio was not just any place, it was something truly remarkable: an iconic landmark in every post-soviet city of the time, a mother and a father of all malls, a place where fortunes were made and deals were done. 

It looked like a flea market or more like a Turkish bazaar in a post-apocalyptic setting, filled with all kinds of textile and leather products you can think of imported from China, Turkey or other countries. Some bazaars were open for retail customers, and others were mostly for wholesale. 

Those bazaars came to life in the late 80s, when the first freedoms were granted and yesterday's felons became the first merchants (all commerce activities were considered a felony in the USSR). There were known 'places' where you could meet those felons: you hang out on the spot, then someone wearing Western outfits would casually pass you by, and you murmur something you would like to get: jeans, watches or a bottle of perfume. Those places where these acts of petty treacherous were committed later became flea markets and, in some years, unregulated trade fortresses as they are today. 

At first, people stood and sat near their goods on the pavement. Later, some makeshift structures arose: shipping containers were placed, and some booths were built. The places were bustling with people, as that was the only chance for anyone in the nineties to get something to cover themselves with. 

Being a kid at the time of the rise of these markets, I remember my experience coming there to get a pair of jeans or a shirt: it's a murky place where you have to shoulder your way following your mother. You go from one shipping container to the other, trying on the jeans or whatever it is. Once you get your size, you are stood on a piece of cardboard, and some lady is holding a curtain so that your miserable, pantless attempts to balance yourself will not be exposed to the crowd. The trick is to stay on the cardboard, as the ground is covered with mushy snow colour of dirt.

The government tried to control the trade, but the best they achieved was to contain the activities, moving it further and further from the centre. 

As the years rolled by and the Moscow public grew more affluent and discerning, the bazaars demonstrated remarkable resilience and adaptability. Shifting from their traditional offerings, they now specialise in knock-off goods and wholesale trading, catering to merchants from distant cities such as Murmansk and Grozny, becoming regional hubs for international trade. 

These bazaars were a melting pot of cultures, with several primarily Chinese bazaars, at least two Vietnamese and one Azerbaijani. Controlled by prominent Mountain Jewish and Chechen families, each bazaar had its own leadership, security, hierarchy, banks and cultural imprint. They were more than just trade centres. They were vibrant ethnic enclaves, offering authentic cuisine, barbershops and drugstores for the locals. 
### Ethnicities on the market
The biggest market is called 'Moskva'. I just checked, and it still exists and is thriving as of 2024. It is located beside the outmost of Moscow's ring roads, between residential blocks and an industrial zone. It is a massive structure that is hard to circuit: many buildings, a vast parking area, and some heavily guarded storage areas. Armed security patrolling the aisles.  It is a place to trade as much as a place to live, as many do not leave the premises and stay there for the night, sleeping in several hostels in the area. 

The bazaar presents an enclave with checkpoints, 'police', 'banks', and even its own justice system! Black market financial services and things like drugs and prostitution are available to the locals. 

The society of the bazaar features social groups with distinct ethnic characteristics. So, it's an easy guess that someone from China is a trader, while a person from Tajikistan is probably a boxman.

A peculiar fact is that the owners of this trading hub are known to be Mountain Jews, a small and unique community of Jewish people of Persian descent originating from the North Caucasus.

So, the social ladder that you can't climb looks like this: 
- **Traders:** Chinese, Vietnamese, sometimes Russian and Azerbaijani nationals.
- **International shipping**: Exclusively Chinese nationals
- **Security**: Russian nationals (including people from the Northern Caucasus of different ethnicities)
- **Boxmen**: Tadjik and Uzbek nationals
- **Customers**: Russian nationals from all over the country

### Financial and International shipping services
Shipping and 'customs clearance' are among the most important parts of the bazaar's economy. Most of the goods that are sold there bypass customs in this way or another. Every major trade route between Russia, Kazakhstan and China had its own 'perks': somewhere you could squeeze in a full container without the duties paid, and somewhere you could 'import' a crate or even a single box. 

The smuggling is a well-documented and established grey area of Russian-Chinese relations. Smugglers are primarily Chinese nationals. They deal with transporting goods and money so that a bazaar shop owner can bring cash, get it wired to his Chinese bank or WeChat account, and receive the goods, avoiding the hassles of customs clearance. 

I got acquainted with a smuggler in China a few years after my repair shop business got up and running, and it's a whole other story!
### A provincial merchant's morning
Now, back to the market! Buses from around the European part of Russia arrive as early as 4 AM at the large parking lots outside the bazaar. They are met by trade agents and boxmen looking to be hired for the whole morning. The shops are already open and waiting for their wholesale customers. 

Passengers, primarily ladies in their fifties and sixties, are slowly getting dressed and emerge on the parking lot. They journeyed through the night from their hometowns to restock their stores. Most buses feature some kind of makeshift sleeping bunks, running water, and a toilet, giving the impression of a variety of steampunk camper vans. 

Imagine it's a dark winter night, it's -20 c˚ outside, and you are making a routine visit to the capital to restock your shops with cheap boots, parkas, and pantaloons fit for the Russian winter. You don't see much of the city: it's dark now, and by 8 or 9 AM, it will still be dark when you leave.

The plan is the following: you need to hire a boxman with a large cart. He will follow you all morning on your visit with his cart.  Your job is to point your finger at the things you like for your store and order several size runs. The goods are piling on your man's cart, labelled with your name, bus destination, and license plate (Let's say it is Ira - Vologda - A 556 BT). You pay for the goods in cash, forking out the bills from the thick roll, and wind your way to the next shop, some hundred meters away. 

Your boxman has to go back and forth a few times, dropping your goods at the bus. He is an energetic gentleman of the same age as you, coming from Tajikistan and working for you every time you arrive. He must be trusted, so you don't hire younger folks who speak very little Russian. Your helper, whose name is Rustam, has a degree in history and used to be a teacher back in the days of Gorbachev, the same degree and occupation you had! So, you work as a pair for a few hours: he's handling the goods, and you're dealing with the money. 

After the trade is done, you still have an hour or so left. You sit with Rustam in the Uighur joint, consuming the steaming noodles with some unknown meat, casually talking about families and crooked Chinese shopkeepers. You pay for the early lunch, hand Rustam his day wage, about 2000 or 3000 rubles (around 30 or 50 bucks), and part. 

You board the bus, get back to your bunk and try to make up for the lack of sleep this morning. The next day, you will spend looking at the endless white fields, small towns and gas stations, waking up and slipping back into your dreams. With a few stops on the way for a snack and an actual toilet, you're back home at around 7 PM. 

Now, imagine this is your routine for the last 20 years. Sometimes you do it bi-weekly, sometimes every week, and sometimes you ask your husband to go instead of you, but he always brings something you don't like, so you prefer to do it yourself. Your children used to admire your trips when they were smaller, as it was easy to please them with toys and fancy garments, but now they have grown up, and it seems like they are a little ashamed of your routine. 

Do you remember when you used to be a teacher? It was over twenty years ago. You taught children about a country that no longer exists. Some of the stories you told them were true, while others were fake, made up by the communists. Rustam did the same on the other side of the empire, but now no one remembers any of it - not you, your students, or even Rustam.

### Broken Generation
Today's bazaars are filled with a new generation, distinct from the first wave of post-Soviet traders. They're savvy, quick, and understand the unspoken rules of this world. Many from the far reaches of the former Soviet Union see this life as a stepping stone, hoping to establish businesses eventually. 

Characters like The Trade Lady and Rustam are now less common. They represent a generation with unfulfilled dreams, uprooted from planned engineering, teaching, or manufacturing careers. The collapse of the Soviet Union forced an entire generation into an involuntary shift, a sort of emigration, trading their professions for market stalls, meeting harsh realities of wild capitalism in the murky setting of former soviet cities.

I am surviving my own 'real' emigration: a new home and a new language. I am now finishing my first decade outside of the familiar culture. After Russia went to war with Ukraine, I realised that my friends who chose to remain in Russia became non-voluntary immigrants, exactly like their parents. 

Russian society, longing for the certainties of the Soviet Union, embraced the shift to fewer freedoms and opportunities as if the rest of the Soviet 'perks,' like clear career paths and accessible housing, would follow. I see how hard it is for my generation in Russia now, but for our parents' generation, that was ten times harder, and I try to remind myself of that every time I want to whimper. 

---
This is a part of my [Crazy CV](https://www.rodion.io/categories/crazy-cv) series. If you like to read similar stories, please check it out! 

Dive into my journey through the bustling marketplaces on the outskirts of Moscow in 'The Bazaar.' In this narrative, I reveal the vibrant world of post-Soviet trade hubs, where cultural legacy intertwines with the echoes of a bygone era.

The Bazaar


A few years into my freelance career, I helped many of my friends establish their online presence, but I had a dream about having a business of my own. The ideas were popping up daily, but being a one-man-show operation, I could not produce anything beyond a modest website where I offered my services. I desperately needed someone who could take the 'offline' part of the business upon his shoulders and let me deal with the things I knew how to handle.

So, I talked to my friends, primarily classmates, and tried to spark some desire for entrepreneurship in them. One of my close friends appeared to be willing to try something out. He was always an outside-of-the-box thinker and exercised remarkable ethical flexibility combined with the circumspection of a small field animal. We were friends from my early school years: me, a computer nerd with the confidence of a hamster, and he, someone equally certain about himself but more like a rat.

At the time, he was much into partying and getting nice outfits to impress his night-time acquaintances. Getting those outfits was practically impossible with our income, so he discovered places in Moscow where you could get some affordable knock-off variations of what he wanted for a dime a pair.

The place that he discovered was not something secret. It was a variation of a flea market, a phenomenon that deserves its own tale. It appeared that most fancy-looking Moscow dwellers were getting their outfits not on the high streets but on the outskirts, where I discovered a whole new world.

So, his idea was to establish an e-shop where people like him could fulfil their dreams. I had many doubts. On the one hand, I understood that we would sell pirated stuff; on the other, I did not understand how something that ugly and boastful could be sold for money. He convinced me that people who purchase this stuff know it's fake, as he and his night-time friends do, and that plenty of people like them would die for a shirt or jeans with some known label. In the end, he concluded that we were, essentially, providing some kind of delivery service: sourcing items in one of those bazaars and selling them to people around the country.

Reluctantly, I agreed. I understood that it put me in some place I'd never wanted to be, but my part was quite simple, and I knew the craft: making a website and working on the SEO. I remember being perplexed by how practically no one else saw this moral shortcoming of mine!

Something new was that we had to take pictures of the stock. That's how I managed to see how those flea markets operate and to know people there. With my eye getting used to the items we were selling, I started to see them everywhere: in the malls and boutiques of that era. I discovered that most of the expensive brand items sold in Moscow during that period appeared fake and differed only in price, reaching exuberant numbers in the premium malls and high streets.

I think it was around 2006, a year after we established the venture, our website finally picked up, and we started to receive around 5-6 daily orders instead of 1 or 2. Later, we grew a little more, but not a lot. It was something wonderful! People from all around the vast country ordered shoes, trousers and shirts. We appeared to be one of the first e-shops in Russia specialising in something that requires fitting and is not easy to sell as, say, electronics or household items.

Around half of the sales we generated were sent out to some distant places, and another half was delivered locally. The process was like this: my partner went to the bazaar every morning to get the items ordered yesterday. He was coming with our deliveryman, an older acquaintance of ours. They picked up the boxes and worked out the day's itinerary.

That was the time when money was easy, and a bit more persistence on my side could've put us on top of the e-commerce food chain. Just a few years later, our competitors removed the initial portfolio of forged shoes and jeans and became prominent players on the national e-commerce stage.

But this e-shop was bound to die and not thrive, though: being an unwanted child, a project that I felt ashamed for, I never paid much attention to its well-being and management. At some point, we focused too much on one particular supplier: someone reasonable, having many items in stock and not willing to let many other e-shops into his warehouse (at some point, it became a thing, and many youngsters were doing the same: taking pictures and selling it online).

The supplier we focused on was a family business: two Azerbaijani brothers were working together, one in Moscow dealing with sales, and another one spending more time in Turkey looking for new things. We both quickly realised that we could work together and formed an alliance: our deliverymen were trusted to take as much as they needed from their stock and return the items that were not sold routinely. Money changed hands a few times per month, so it was a big step forward compared to how we started: my partner used to spend days on the bazaar dealing with individual sales and returns.

The website we had at the time was generating around 2000 users per day, an impressive number in 2007 or 2008. We should've invested more time into it and extended our portfolio, but we focused on the things generating most of the sales, rarely experimenting with new products. We overlooked the risk of relying on something we don't control: the Azerbaijani brothers.

Around 2011, Moscow looked very different from just five years prior. It overcame the disfigured and wretched signs of the 'damned nineties', the time of poverty and lawlessness, and grew to appreciate both its Soviet and imperial heritage. Disorderly rag fairs, kiosks and chaotically placed ads were all bound to be wiped out from the city streets. Moscow government decided to crack down on visual clutter and our bazaar - being located in one of the central areas was the first to go.

The bazaars always were areas of lawlessness, and by the end of the decade, they became isolated fiefdoms with their own security forces, laws and hierarchy. Each of them had some distinct ethnicity in charge: ours had Azerbaijans, others were run by Vietnamese and Chinese, and Mountain Jews ran the biggest one. Bazaars were not only places of trade but also places to live! Each of them had a different set of customs and cultural imprints. 'Ours' featured many Turkish restaurants, some financial services to aid international trade, and many small shady offices providing local book-cooking. The Chinese bazaar was much bigger and featured a full-blown Chinatown under the roof of their vast market on its last floor, where the ceiling was low and no customers were around.

So, when Moscow finally decided to eliminate this cancer of chaotic trade, they had to deal with very well-established groups with one foot in the city and another in the federal government. Each group fought fiercely for its survival and prosperity, as every player eliminated provided additional growth to the bazaars left.

The Azerbaijani bazaar was in a bad state: being the smallest and close to the central areas provided enough incentive for the government to deal with it swiftly. So, one day, our brothers received a message that they had 12 hours to evacuate their stock and be gone. They were cautious people and followed the instructions: packed as much as they could handle and left.

For several days afterwards, they were not answering the phone, but that was not needed to know what happened: it was in the national news that the bazaar got demolished the next day, and a park promised to be constructed in its place.

We lost our main supplier and tried to figure out what to do, but it was late: the crackdown spread rumours to the other bazaars that promptly closed their doors and made to compromise with the government. For the next three months, very little trade was made, and we lost our customers (we had many regular customers). By then, we had other business running, and we sold the remnants of our online property to someone willing to invest his energy in finding new sources.

Once I got rid of all relations to that e-shop, I felt much better and never regretted the loss. The five years of dealing with the shoes, jeans, belts and shirts left me with a big bag of man's underwear of one particular type and a lesson: never to engage in something you don't feel like doing. The underwear bag diminished slowly but steadily. I think it took me around 5 to 7 years to utilise it according to its intended purpose. That was the first thing I actually wore that was available on our website. I felt kind of obligated to pay my tribute to all the good and bad that happened to us during our bazaar career. When I got rid of the last briefs, I felt a little nostalgic but happy: the quest was over.


Years active: 2005 - 2011. Role description: Co-founder of an innovative e-commerce venture specialising in fashion retail.

Part 2: Knock-off shoe website CTO


He was a prominent 'petty' businessman I met during those years. He operated a retail business selling honey. The natural honey that has to do with bees and flowers. This time, though, not only were the bees at work for this product to come to life. 

He operated around forty compact stalls, each brimming with honey containers in a spectrum of hues. These stalls were located in a vast park area where he had established a strong rapport with the authorities, ensuring his operations went unquestioned. His sales team, primarily composed of women from Ukraine, dealt with a range of 'natural', 'organic' and 'locally sourced' products long before it became a thing.

Always on the hunt for new natural remedies to expand his product range, honey was soon joined by herbal syrups (some containing alcohol were discreetly sold) and an array of unusual items like natural 'male performance enhancers' and immune system support substances. The crowning glory of his product range was 300 ml glass bottles marketed as 'Bear fat' and 'Badger fat', whose origins remain a mystery. I guess that no bears and badgers were harmed during the production of the substance. 

Most of his health-related products exploited the placebo effect, and for him, it was okay to sell the substance with some weird label if it promised swift relief and no side effects. 

Now, back to the honey. Here, I will elaborate on how compromises were made in this early stage of the Russian market-oriented economy. 

His original setup was like this: he met the beekeepers every late summer and acquired the honey. He was looking for some 'speciality' kinds of honey, like the one that happens naturally if the blooming flowers nearby are not mixed much, like in uniform maple or linden forest. Honey collected in places like that is significantly more expensive but could look and smell more or less like any other. There are ways to deal with honey, such as modifying its colour and consistency so that it's not always clear to the buyer if it's special or not. 

His stands in the park were devoid of cash registers. This was his 'territory', and he managed to dodge taxes. His team of ladies selling honey and other remedies had to collect cash and record their sales in thick notebooks while playing fast and loose with the accounting. His audacity might amuse you, but that was more or less how most of the small business operated during those years. 

When the inevitable happened, and the ladies began selling the cheap honey as the expensive variety, pocketing the difference, the honey salesman faced a turning point. Firing them was not an option, as most were guilty. So, he came up with a clever solution - he levelled the price of all types of honey, eliminating the incentive for his employees to manipulate the proceeds. 

His creativity extended to his warehouse operations. When the previously expensive honey became relatively cheaper, demand skyrocketed. However, the profit margin disappeared as it was more expensive to acquire. So, he came up with a 'creative' solution: he mixed the pricier honey with cheaper varieties, along with some sugar or other unknown substances. The result? A unique blend of honey – perfectly coloured, honey-like in taste, encompassing twenty varieties at the same price!

So here's where I came to know this man: even though the anecdote draws a grim ethical picture, he was inclined to philosophise and embraced all the available new stuff. And he wanted to be 'good', acknowledging his shortcomings with mixing and flavouring.  So, at first, he decided to let the customers order some elite kinds of honey delivered home (this honey was not available at his stands), and later, he decided to build an e-shop with my help so that the original, not mixed honey, was sold there. 

This guy became my friend and mentor; at some point, I realised that he despised his grim reality of being a retail trickster as much as I despised mine being a webmaster for people like him. Eventually, he sold his properties and immigrated to Spain. He called me sometimes and bragged about the house he purchased in Tenerife, his decision to open up a carwash on the island and his advancements in Spanish. A few years ago, he died. He was in his fifties, dreaming about having so much good ahead. 

His quest to pursue security, comfort and moral higher ground was over, but he could not reap the fruits. It appeared that it alone could not breathe life into his days. Instead, the pursuit of goals, the thrill of the chase, and the joy of aspiring towards something far away kept his spirit alive.

In his story lies a quiet reminder: true contentment comes not from the comforts we gather but from the dreams we chase and the challenges we meet along the way. It's in our pursuit of something greater, no matter how small, that we truly find life's richness.

---
This is a part of my [Crazy CV](https://www.rodion.io/categories/crazy-cv) series. If you like to read similar stories, please check it out! 

This is a story about one of the business people I interacted with in my early years as an SEO consultant and web developer. This anecdote captures the zeitgeist of the early 2000s in Moscow. 

Honeyman


The person developing the websites was called a webmaster back around Y2K (two fossils).

So, that was around 2002 when I sold my first website. The website, created in a vibrant eggplant colour that seemed cool at the time, was a clunky masterpiece of table-based design. It was really ugly, of course! A person who paid for that high-tech marvel wanted several pages online with some industrial item listings. Also, there was a form to fill in card details directly alongside a message containing the purchase details. The card processing was not implemented.

I received $130 in cash. We met somewhere deep down the Moscow metro and shook hands after I delivered the website on the CD-R (third fossil!)

I had hundreds of similar interactions in the years to come: static HTML was replaced with Mambo, Joomla and then, finally, WordPress CMS. My web development skills were soon combined with PPC (pay-per-click, essentially, Google Ads) and SEO (search engine optimisation) knowledge that I put to work to benefit all kinds of small business owners. I helped sell plastic windows, dog kennels, air conditioners, forge work, and various services.

### No upfront money

Most, if not all, interactions were personal: we met with the business owner in a coffee shop and discussed his needs. Some months later, we had a website running. I remember not taking any upfront payment, as I thought that it was a sign of distrust on my side: as we sat in the coffee shop, I saw the drastic difference between the gentleman sitting opposite and me: usually, he was 'an established' middle-aged man wearing a leather jacket with a car parked just outside, and I was a 19-year-old student with a discounted metro monthly pass.

Most of the time, this approach worked well, but sometimes it didn't. Once, I built a website for an exceptionally 'successful' man: he sold plastic windows, the plague of any modern post-soviet city. When the project was delivered, he paid me a small amount, and we agreed that he would pay the rest in the form of commission when the SEO and PPC were up and running, and he would start to bill customers.

We were partners! So I tried my best to deliver as many clicks to his website as possible, and about a month later, I heard him for the last time: he was happy, and we scheduled to meet in a few weeks. He promised to pay a hefty commission, an amount beyond my comprehension.

Of course, he disappeared. Sometime later, I received a call from Moscow police: they were inquiring about my 'partner' and said that he had never installed a single window but had taken the money upfront and ran. The story ended much better for me than it could have been: the police inspector on the line understood that I was one of the fools he took for a ride, not a mastermind of the operation.

### My business machine

Every week or so, I received a new call from someone who needed a website. That was a self-perpetuating process: my previous clients recommended me to their friends. It appeared that it was as much a blessing as a curse: most of my clients were very much alike, some individuals with a small business looking to build websites cheap and fast.

I have never been able to navigate out of that crowd, and even though it has given me some bread and butter through the next decade, I could not establish any real business out of that.

As I see it now, I should've been much less shy with my rates and conditions, but I am who I am, and at least it was a fun time!

### Moscow in 2000's

To put you into the context, the early two-thousands in Moscow were great years. The economy was booming; Western investors were eager to participate in the miracle yet to happen and streamed into the country. Every day some new international company's branch opened up its doors.

Shabby Soviet-made Ladas gave way to a myriad of cars from abroad. The streets became brighter with the neon of the coffee shops and restaurants popping up here and there.

I felt some pride in witnessing the transformation of the Soviet Capital to a world-class metropolitan city on par with London and New York (that was what we felt. Just a handful of people I knew back then had been there).

### Petty 'businessman'

No, this is not me at the time. That is a generalised character of my story, my client!

First of all, it was 'he'. I had some female clients as well, but those few were outliers. Next came a few distinct features: this man dealt with cash and was always looking for some venture. As I wrote it, it started to sound like me, so be it!

I guess the only distinction between me and the hero of this anecdote is my lack of greed. This is something I am not able to adopt to this day.

Most of this man's deals fell into the grey area, not explicitly illegal but skirting the boundaries of the law. Some taxes were not paid, and some people were hired under the table. Servicing them meant for me to become one of them, a prospect I loathed. Restlessness consumed me, and I yearned to escape this mire.

Much later, I understood that we all were bound to follow customs more than the law, as it being constructed for large businesses had many holes and gaps for us, the smallest fish in the pond. We were left to mingle between ourselves and fight for the remnants of the feast of the bigger animals.

Here's one story from that period that I think is valuable as a picture of how things were done at the time: [Honeyman](https://rodion.io/blog/honeyman)


Years active: 2002 - 2007. Role description: Freelance web development and SEO consulting

Part 1: A 19-year-old webmaster


My new workplace was in between Hod HaSharon and Petach Tikva. I dropped my things at my old-time friend, a resident of Herzliya and started my office life. Nothing to share about my new role: I just commuted daily to the office, typed letters on the screen and commuted back. It's not that I haven't done anything of significance, but I did more or less standard things the standard way.

The office life looked like a sort of adult kindergarten, something that amused me a lot during the first weeks. I and my coworkers enjoyed very little responsibility but had to have lunch at specific times of the day and did some fun stuff the rest of the time. Later, the stuff I did lose the appeal, but the first weeks were nice.

My first goal was to find a new place for us. It was challenging in the Tel Aviv area a few months before Corona: renters were competing for the apartments, and landlords enjoyed the bull market trend by raising the prices frequently and imposing some extra requirements. The fact that I am an employed software developer helped a lot: Many times, people were not happy to deal with someone whose Hebrew exposed his recent immigration, but just mentioning it soothed all the alarms as if it were some magic spell.

Finding a rental apartment is a function of time and money. My time was limited by my desire to leave my friend's couch and see my family. On the other hand, money was scarce and unknown, as I had yet to understand our budget for necessities, so I opted for a minimal sum of money. A month into the search, I could finalise the contract for a small but well-maintained 2-bedroom apartment in a neighbourhood known in the past as quite a dangerous place to live and now was just a little scuffed.

The apartment was in a run-down building with many tubings and wires exposed in an open view. That was one of the reasons my landlord was not very greedy, and I did not have much competition. One compelling thing was the option to purchase the furniture of a previous renter: a pair of students were moving out.

About a month after I moved in, Olga and Mark arrived. I remember the day I was waiting for them at the airport: I was thinking about what would be less intimidating for my wife: the dark and beaten-up neighbourhood after sundown or the ugly sight of our new home in the streams of the setting sun. Our destiny was to arrive late, and I will never know what would've shocked her more, but I recall that the effect was profound and sufficient for her to be a bit down for the first few days.

It was a hectic period: I worked full time, and Olga and Mark tried to adapt to life in our new place. We had to start from scratch: filling our apartment with furniture and smaller items, learning where to get groceries and befriending the neighbours.

This building I described in detail appeared to be a hidden gem for us: Mark just arrived and desperately needed new friends. He had not yet started to speak Hebrew, so he needed some Russian-speaking friends. It appeared that two families with kids his age are also living just next door! It has been more than two years since we left this place, but to this day, those kids frequently see Mark, and we often see their parents. Remember how hard it was to find someone you like in Ashkelon? Here, in Herzliya, it was so different!

We met many people during the first months there who are our friends to this day. Most of our first batch of friends were from Russian-speaking families with kids the same age as Mark, and later, more Hebrew and English-speaking families entered our circle. We were frequently invited to visit them and vice versa, so we were not socially deprived anymore, which helped a lot down the line.

Mark's adaptation was not easy: the kindergarten he was assigned to was run by a sturdy lady with many virtues but little empathy. She ran the house full of screaming Israeli boys and girls with the vigour and confidence of a seasoned sergeant. It was not something Mark expected to see, and there was very little good to recollect during his first year of education. He became detached and did not participate in the educational activities she led. I praise God for giving him relief in a couple of friends he acquired there. Unfortunately, we could not comprehend it on time, so Mark spent an entire year in this institution.

Later, this lady played a positive role: as he did not participate in the classes, she stirred the process of putting our son into the special education system. Despite the harsh sound of it, that was something wonderful! The following year, he spent time with a smaller group of Hebrew-speaking kids surrounded by many professionals who helped him overcome the difficulties of communicating in Hebrew. He quickly opened up and started to talk to everyone around, made new friends and became a happy boy. He entered a school the next year, having sufficient soft and hard skills of a first-grader. Now, as he is attending a third grade (ד), I see this year in special education as a blessing.

That was not so easy with Olga. She was reluctant to enter Israeli society as she longed for her Moscow life. She has many things to lose: her relationship with the Russian language was much more intimate than mine. Her career was connected to it as she was working in the publishing business, her friends were there, and she did not feel the same as I do towards the Russian move to totalitarianism. Even when the full-blown Ukrainian invasion started, she still felt like she would like to go back.

Her life was hardly bearable: she was depressed and went through some dark times during the next couple of years. I was increasingly more anxious, did not know how to help, and probably was not capable of helping her.

My life was not peaches either, as I am very much dependent on the well-being of my family; I was anxious to overcome the difficulties that my wife and son had and probably did more harm than good.

That initial adaptation to the new reality and learning to live together again took us over three years. It was a bumpy ride, to say it mildly. It's a hard part to write: immigration for us, and many families we witnessed, was like a planned car accident: you put all your family members in the car, wish everyone good luck, accelerate and slam into the wall, hoping that everyone will survive and the wall will crack.

If you compare it with the family's internal struggles, overcoming the external stress was peanuts. Fighting for a place under the sun emptied us, and then we were to fill ourselves with something else; we were to meet the new people who emerged from this process and get to know and love them anew.

I started this story by mentioning our dog, Baton. That's my first dog friend! Throughout my life, I never understood the deal with pets and perceived pets as a burden and tool for emotional sublimation. What a snobbish prick I was!

Meeting Baton was a miracle that changed our relationship dynamics. Through his love, we gained new strengths, met new people, and our life got an additional dimension that we have explored together.

Many old friends are surprised to see me, once a self-proclaimed pet-sceptic, happily sharing my home and even my pillow with Baton. That's the crux of our journey – I am not who I was before. We are not who we were before. We've grown, learned, and loved in new ways, and Baton's arrival symbolised the start of this new chapter.

Reflecting on this journey, I realise it's more than a physical move from one country to another. It's a journey of transformation, redefining home and family, and learning to embrace change with open arms. And in this journey, we found not just a new place to live but a new way to live.


In the final chapter, I describe a family's journey that comes full circle as we settle into our new life in Israel.

Part 7: Herzliya


That was the most well-prepared and thought-out attempt that eventually bore fruit. But before that, I had to deal with the fruits of the previous one.

When we moved back to Russia, I didn't have any plan for how I could be back yet, and my days were filled with efforts to catch up with the ongoing business. It was pretty hectic, so I could not reflect on what had happened and what to do next. Some opportunities were lost, some money burned, but most importantly, I burned up myself: I was utterly exhausted, and a few months afterwards, the signs of it started to appear: I lost sleep and felt pain in my stomach. That took me quite a while to understand that it is connected and that it's a result of anxiety and depression that took me by surprise.

At first, I was trying to keep up the pace of life I had for many years, meaning practically no rest. Then, the fact that something was wrong became evident to my family and, finally, to me. Suddenly, I could not produce any value; all I did was worry or be nervous. Jogging helped, as well as some sauna. That was all my remedies at the time.

My journey towards the norm took about a year, and skipping the dull parts, the key was the right medical professional with whom I developed trust. She understood immediately that my pains had nothing to do with organs and everything to do with my state of mind. She put me on a cocktail of antidepressants, tranquillisers and neuroleptics for some months, gradually decreasing the dosage. I dropped around 12 kilos that year; if anything was good back then, it was my weight.

A week or two after I started to take my pills, I entered a different state of mind: that was like being inside a well-oiled off-road vehicle that could ride you towards whatever destination. You don't need to exit the car. You steer it to wherever you want. This feeling gave me confidence and calmness that I haven't had in my life! To this day, this metaphor helps me to overcome the difficult times.

The problem was that I wanted to return to Israel but had no idea how to get there. Any business in Israel was out of the picture. I did not want to be back to the point of devastation that I just escaped. So, I put the plan B into action: get a job like a person without a crazy bug. The problem was that I never had a job (to be clear, I was 20 or 21 when I was hired the last time, and it was already 15 years ago).

### Getting a job

Getting a job that can feed a family of three in Israel is not that easy: historically, Israel is famous for its high cost of living and comparatively low wages. Given that my wife's professional adaptation had not yet even begun (she was working as a managing editor of a prominent Russian publishing house), I had to find a way to get hired and paid way above the average.

Here, I need to put some numbers: in 2019, when we finally made it back, our expenses were about 14000 ₪ monthly in Herzliya. That includes rent, groceries and other necessities, but no fun things. Our son was already at the age when public preschool institutions are available, so there are no nursery expenses (it's usually 2000 - 4000 ₪, depending on the location). Five years later, the minimum for a family with one kid has grown significantly; I estimate it to be 18000 ₪ somewhere around Tel Aviv (excluding expensive areas) or 15000 ₪ in some more distant but still compelling locations.

So, with that in mind, I embarked on my journey to acquire the only profession that paid well and was available to an immigrant without a solid Hebrew: software development.

I remembered people's attitude towards me in the accelerator: I am a Russian programmer, so I decided to make use of this bias to get a stance in Israel.

I used to know many things about software development and had many years of experience in web development, but more as a manager. Working with code took up at most 10% of my days. I always tried to avoid writing code myself, as I thought of it as something that could be easily delegated (true). But hard times lead to hard choices, and sometimes there's no choice, despite what they say.

So, with the help of my friends in the field, I started my journey to the 'exciting' new world of JavaScript and Node. [[My journey to becoming a professional Software developer]] It took me about a year to revamp my business expertise into something digestible for the Israeli Job market.
I gradually removed the exciting parts from my CV, leaving only things that could be understood by someone looking for a full-stack developer.

As I remember it now, I learned around 6-7 months every day for about 5 hours by watching courses on Udemy and consulting my savvy friends when needed, and then I started to prepare my CV and send out the applications.

I haven't had any success during the first five months: I've applied to numerous jobs (my goal was ten applications daily) and received zero interview invites. Every couple of weeks, I rechecked my CV and adjusted it more and more, looking at the examples of successful career shifters on LinkedIn.

After one of those efforts to become someone else on the paper, I finally started receiving interview inquiries. That was sudden, and I am not sure now what has happened. Was it me or the market? One of my apparent gaps was that I was still in Moscow, which was not something HR people wanted to see, but it didn't prevent my phone from ringing. I remember having a couple of short phone interviews and doing some tech assignments, but no solid results. And then, someone called: that was a CTO of a small promising startup in the logistics area. He noticed my entrepreneurial experience and wanted to interview me. I said I was fine coming to their office but needed time to book a ticket and return to Israel. That did not turn him away, so in about ten days, I was already biking through the fields between Herzliya and Hod HaSharon to meet the company and my future boss.

During those ten days, I was able to secure another two interviews, so in total, I had three: one in this logistics company, another one in the ad-tech startup that was in a more advanced stage, and one more in a company that had a real estate business in Israel. Of the three interviews, I was able to get two job offers. That was an impressive result!

Five years later, I should acknowledge that I could never meet the demands of any HR, and all the interviews I passed were directly with a hiring manager. So, as a developer, I was bound to work in relatively small companies where HRs have not yet taken hold.

### Departing Russia

That was sometime in late May of 2019. COVID was ahead; the full-blown war in Ukraine was ahead. Planning the trip, I felt like I was jumping on the last ship coming out for some reason. I don't know why. It may be a coincidence, but I felt it strongly: day by day, I saw propaganda at work and no sign of a thaw coming.

Another few weeks of preparations in Moscow came and went. Olga grew increasingly anxious and felt like she, this time, could not escape Israel easily. Those two previous attempts were brutal on her, and now she enjoys life in the big city where everything is open 24/7 and where she knows every corner. The big deal was our friends: they became resentful towards me as they saw Olga's frustration about the move. Mark was four and a half years old then, and he had started to develop individual relations with each of the grandparents, so there were many things to lose.

As you can imagine, bringing the news that I got accepted was a sour moment: we had to prepare for the move and repeat goodbyes.

With our friends, it was rough: we used to have a tight group of friends who were together from the early twenties. The annexation of Crimea cracked us down: some members favoured this advancement, but we were still together, holding our differences to ourselves most of the time.

People in Moscow had adjusted to the new life: the war was raging on the outskirts of the empire; officially, there were no Russian troops, and it was easy to ignore. The city was thriving and had just welcomed the FIFA World Cup. The colourful event made many believe the future would be bright and stable.

I was surprised then and am surprised now at how easily the mind bends where pressure is applied. And how fast Moscovites were at returning to their pre-Crimea way of life. It was as if they were in a big hurry to return to their important life: paying the mortgage, advancing their careers and getting new cars.

I was considered to be crazy among our friends for many years. Before, it was more like harmless-crazy, but now, as I was determined to take my wife back to Israel, the move she did not want, I started to get many worried looks and understood that my position had changed. In their eyes, I became an abusive husband or a psycho.

So, our departure took the form of a funeral this time, as we were leaving the thriving developed city for some more struggles in the desert. My parents, though, were quite optimistic as, this time, I would have a regular and well-paid job.


In this part of the story, I struggle with the consequences of my previous reckless immigration attempt and finding my first job in Israel.

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