Alex Frishberg

I was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, on May 9, 1963. Like many other Jewish families at the time, we left the Soviet Union in 1974 because of rabid antisemitism. For example, only 1.5% of medical school students could be Jewish (3% for engineers). The hazing in the military was notorious, especially for Jews. To put it simply: if you were Jewish, you were a second-class citizen. We travelled through Vienna and Rome, and after five months on the road, we landed in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1975. We didn’t know anything about St. Louis, except that Mark Twain came from there (not exactly true, because he came from Hannibal, Missouri). Still, this lovely Midwestern town became our new home.

In a few years, my parents passed all the exams to qualify to practice medicine in the U.S. (they were both psychiatrists). It was an extraordinary accomplishment, especially considering that they had to learn regular English and medical English (more akin to Latin). Then came internship, residency, and all the challenges that entailed for a middle-aged couple from Kyiv.
It was in St. Louis that I received a B.A. in English language and literature from University of Missouri and a J.D. from Washington University School of Law. In 1988 I moved to Washington, D.C., to work in one of the largest law firms (Hogan & Hartson, now Hogan Lovells). The experience was invaluable, but short-lived, because the Soviet Union broke up into separate countries in 1991. That’s when I quit Hogan & Hartson and moved to Kyiv to set up my own law firm in October, 1991.

There were two considerations. First, I did not want to end up like many partners, who dedicated their lives to billing thousands of hours and supervising junior associates before they retired and had a heart attack (or cancer). Second, Ukraine was open for business, and I was the only foreign lawyer in the nation the size of France, ready to assist all foreign clients who were about to enter the market. All the biggest multi-national companies and foreign embassies became my clients, simply because I spoke fluent English.

Sure, I faced a few problems along the way. In fact, I had people come to kill me two times. The first time they were drug addicts (heroin), who thought I would sponsor them. They were wrong. When I complained to Sergei, they all disappeared (the cops took them away, never to be seen again). The second time was much more serious: the notorious Savlohov brigades came around. Fortunately, one of my newfound friends (who happened to be the Minister of Foreign Economic Relations) let me borrow Sasha, his bodyguard, to “speak on my behalf” for a measly $500 fee.

Sasha was part of the Alfa unit, anti-terrorist division of the SBU (formerly known as KGB). Before that, he fought in Afghanistan, and returned unscathed, without a scratch. He was a rare fighter, trained as a sniper and in hand-to-hand combat. At the time, Ukraine implemented a so-called “clean hands campaign,” which allowed armed government employees to shoot the bandits on sight without any consequences. Naturally, the racketeers avoided me like a plague after Sasha’s little conversation with them.

As life would have it, many of my clients faced the same problem with the local bandits: protection racket. Fortunately, having gone through the unpleasant experience myself, I had just the solution: Sasha. I estimated the monetary value of this legal service to be $5,000 in cash, and all the clients gladly paid the fee. Sasha got his $500, and I kept the rest. Everyone was happy, until my ex-wife asked me, “aren’t you afraid that you’re a short, pudgy Jew from America, who is sending government killers to scare the bandits?” That’s when it occurred to me what I was doing, but it was too late: by that time I was already involved in this lucrative business for more than two years, so I continued without worrying about the consequences.