[therusskiy]

In USSR my grandfather's parents were stripped of everything they had and sent to Siberia with nothing but the cloth they were wearing.

Skip a few years, my grandfather was the youngest doctor of science (in Russia that's next level from PhD) in his city in the field of Nuclear Physics and during his life was a dean in 3 different universities and a head of another one.

My 2nd grandfather was born in a village and had to tend for his younger sisters because his two older brothers were fighting in WW2 (and died there).

Skip a few years and he taught himself engineering and later became a head of a department in a big spaceship construction factory that employeed 10s of thousands of people, was doing research, travelled whole of soviet union overseeing testing of spaceship componponents.

Both died in poverty a few years ago: doing any government jobs in Russia is extremely unrewarding if you are an honest man.

(and here I am doing stupid crap in Javascript and Ruby earning 50 times what they did).