The American Dream

When applying out of college in the United States for the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship, it helps if you have a good story to tell -- one that wraps where you've come from and where you want to go in one coherent narrative.

Luckily for Anastasia Piliavsky, Lev Sviridov and Eugene Shenderov that's exactly what they have.

All three were born in the former Soviet Union and emigrated to the United States, where they overcame financial adversity and cultural hurdles to achieve academic distinction. All three were recently named Rhodes Scholars, and will begin studies at Oxford University next fall.

The Rhodes Scholarship was established in 1902 by De Beers founder and diamond magnate Cecil Rhodes, after whom Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) was also named. The award covers tuition and expenses for two or three years of study at Oxford, and has shuttled such figures as former U.S. president Bill Clinton, top diplomat Strobe Talbott and General Wesley Clark into major roles in world affairs.

Academically, so far, Piliavsky, Sviridov and Shenderov seem no less directed. Piliavsky, who graduated last May from Boston University, plans to use her time at Oxford to study the social anthropology of a province in northern India. Sviridov, a chemistry major and former student government president at City College, which is part of the City University of New York system, will continue his research into transcontinental dust particles in an effort to fight pollution. Shenderov, a chemistry student at Brooklyn College, also part of CUNY, will focus on cancer research while at Oxford.

It's an unprecedented number of scholars to come from the former Soviet Union, said Elliot Gerson, U.S. secretary for the Rhodes Trust, which administers the scholarship. "I don't think we've even had two in one year."

The selection process is famously grueling, with several rounds of state and regional interviews geared to single out the 32 most outstanding students from the hundreds who apply (another 60 Rhodes Scholars are chosen from other English-speaking countries and Germany). That's where the compelling narrative comes in.

The immigrant experience makes for a "pretty story," Piliavsky said. "Mine is that I'm interested in anthropology because I encountered issues of culture. That's true to some extent, but at the same time, the real story is more jagged, more happenstance."

Piliavsky and her parents, who are both artists, left Odessa, Ukraine, in 1994, to escape anti-Semitism and poverty for a world of opportunity. "Also, my parents didn't think there was much hope there for my future education," she said. Piliavsky spoke no English when she arrived in Boston at age 14.

Svidirov's move from Moscow was more accidental. His mother, Alexandra, a screenwriter and one of the creators of Sovershenno Sekretno, originally a 60 Minutes-style show, took him along on a research trip to the United States in 1993. During their visit, Boris Yeltsin turned tanks to fire on the parliament, and Sviridov's mother looked for ways to make the move permanent, eventually winning an EB1 green card for "extraordinary abilities in the arts." The first few years were tough for Sviridov and his mother, before they found an apartment of their own in the Bronx.

"After October 1993, well into August 1995, we bummed around mostly with friends, but sometimes on the streets," he said. "We'd walk the night out until we found a library or someplace open to sleep. I thought we were out to see the nightlife, but it was more of her trying to sugarcoat it for me."

To help cover rent, Sviridov worked odd jobs -- moving furniture, gardening -- before finding more lucrative work as a math and chemistry tutor. And despite his interest in political activism, he regards research as his first priority. "Science is more likely to put food on the table," he said.

Outside of research, Sviridov has represented the Moscow-based human rights organization Glasnost Defense Foundation at meetings at the United Nations. He also spent two weeks early last summer campaigning for former Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, knocking on doors from Alabama to Michigan. He is proud of having been chased away by staunch Bush supporters from homes in the South. "I got called a Yankee," he said.

Shenderov's interest in cancer research springs from his own bout of leukemia as a child. Growing up in Chernovtsy, a town 230 miles southwest of the nuclear wreckage of Chernobyl, he was diagnosed with the illness in 1988. His family sought treatment in the West, moving to Brooklyn two years later. Shenderov plans to attend medical school after Oxford.

While the other two Rhodes Scholars speak Russian at home, Shenderov does not. He was born Yevgeny, but has gone by Eugene since becoming a U.S. citizen and feels little connection to Ukraine, "other than that I was born there," he said.

By contrast, Piliavsky's entire extended family is still in Odessa. "With the turmoil of the contested elections, we've been on the phone with them a lot," she said. "The Rhodes has faded away in my mind and I'm constantly watching developments in Ukraine."

Both Piliavsky and Shenderov gave up their Ukrainian passports when they became U.S. citizens. Sviridov holds Russian citizenship but not a Russian passport, since in order to receive one, he would have to register in the Army, he said; draft notices arrive at his old apartment near Rechnoi Vokzal metro station every six months.

Shenderov said that he rarely goes to Brighton Beach, the center of New York's Russian community. The most interaction he has with other Russians is through his college chess team. "That's the big Russian club," he said.

Since receiving their scholarships to Oxford, Piliavsky has been profiled in The Boston Globe and Sviridov and Shenderov in The New York Times. "We're living the American dream," Piliavsky said. "I think that's why we get a lot of press."

Gerson echoed Piliavsky's point. The three Rhodes Scholars are proof, he said, that "the story of America is still being written by immigrants."