When Sergei Zverev was born in the city of Kharkov in eastern Ukraine in 1949, Josef Stalin was the terrifying leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the communist threat had frozen the free world into a defensive stance that would last for 40 more years.
Now the Cold War is over, the menace of communist domination is a bad memory, and Mr. Zverev and his wife Rimma are seeking to make a living in their new country, the United States, and in their new city, Baltimore.
Mr. Zverev is a resource anxious to be tapped, a nuclear physicist with a doctorate in experimental physics who is searching for a teaching job in his specialties of applied mathematics, dosimetry (the study of X-rays and radiation) and computer programming.
Meanwhile, to survive, he has become skilled at scraping floors, painting walls and hanging wallpaper.
Mr. Zverev, 45, and his wife emigrated from Moscow to the United States in late August. Their complicated story is one of chance, perseverance, luck and the helpful American spirit.
"In Russia, it appeared that nobody needed me," he said in fluent English in the dining room of his row house on North Collington TC Avenue in East Baltimore. "Here, there is opportunity and encouragement. It is most important to me to be a scientist and be recognized as such.
"We all understood that the communist theories were attractive, but were used to subjugate people. I was a believer as a child, and proud to live in the U.S.S.R. But in my middle teens, some friends explained the real situation. Communism is a cancer on society's body."
He traveled the usual Soviet youth trail. "My whole school class was declared members of the Young Pioneers, and later the Komsomol," he said, referring to Communist Party youth organizations.
But he avoided party membership while working his way through the rigorous Russian higher education system. "You had to be a member of the party to reach a high level in any profession, but I just wanted to be a scientist," he said.
He got his doctorate from the Moscow Engineering and Physics Institute in 1981 and began teaching experimental nuclear physics there. He also wrote articles with others on such exotic subjects as laser plasma X-ray continuums and nuclear emulsions and was a co-author of "Atomic Physics," a textbook.
Then the Soviet Union broke up, the Cold War ended, and money for research disappeared.
"I was essentially out of a job," he said. "They said we could keep working, but they wouldn't pay us much."
When Mr. Zverev left Moscow in August, he was earning the equivalent of $50 a month, and living in a tiny apartment with his wife and another family of three.
"We were barely making it, even with my wife's small salary as a registered nurse," he said.
Enter Glen Cox, Jay Warren, the FBI, and the Rev. Ivan Dornic, pastor of SS. Cyril and Methodius Greek-Catholic Church in Joppa.
Mr. Zverev met Mr. Cox at a travel agency in Budapest in 1990.
"I was trying to get a visa to visit Russia and getting nowhere," Mr. Cox said. "Sergei, who was on a tour from Moscow, tapped me on the shoulder and said he would try to help me. Just pure chance. He eventually did, and I later stayed with his brother for two months in Moscow."
Mr. Zverev visited the United States on business in spring 1993 and came to Baltimore where he visited Mr. Cox, and through him met Mr. Warren, a retired CSX executive.
"Jay took me around and helped me get some interviews with some companies," Mr. Zverev said. "I also met Father Dornic."
Father Dornic, president of the National Slavic Society, told Mr. Zverev, "The United States should be interested in someone like you.
"I called the FBI and said I thought it was in the country's interest to have him here," Father Dornic said. "The U.S. is concerned that many Russian and Ukraine scientists are going to Middle East countries like Iran and Iraq."
FBI officials asked Father Dornic if he would sponsor the Zverevs, and when he agreed, they said they would investigate and support the couple's bid to immigrate.
On Aug. 28, the Zverevs arrived in Baltimore under an immigrant status that will allow them to stay indefinitely. They plan to become U.S. citizens as soon as possible.
Father Dornic found them the house in the 700 block of N. Collington Ave., bought a 1987 red Dodge Lancer with 78,000 miles on it for them, and arranged jobs for both.
Rimma Zverev works as a nurse's aide at St. John's Community nursing home on Patterson Park Avenue, a 15-minute walk from their home. Mr. Zverev helped complete renovation work on St. Mary's, a Greek-Catholic church being restored in Joppa, but now he's out of work.
"Sergei became a specialist in scraping and painting," Father Dornic said, smiling.
Father Dornic's church also is paying the $400-a-month rent and utilities on the Collington Avenue house.
The Zverevs stayed with Mr. Warren and his wife, Chris, for two weeks while Mr. Zverev worked on the house.
"We gave him some help, but he did most of it himself," Mr. Cox said.
The Zverevs entertained a guest recently in their new home, the walls now painted in gentle pink, blue and white, the rooms filled with donated furniture.
"Everything we have has been donated to us," Mr. Zverev said, "even the glassware.
"Americans are so different from Europeans. It was a surprise to me. They are so friendly. In Europe, when you visit someone, they tell you to go to a hotel. In America, they take you into their home."
It was a big emotional decision for the Zverevs to leave Russia.
"We left parents and friends," he said. "Who knows when we will see them again? I told my wife, 'If you want to be happy, you have to feel this is your permanent home. Don't yearn for your homeland.' "
His parents are university professors in western Ukraine. Both were wounded by shell bursts while serving in the Russian army in World War II, and his mother was left for dead. "I'm very proud of my parents," he said.
Mr. Zverev was in a joint venture for several years with a Swedish company to market energy-saving equipment in Russia.
"My Swedish friends don't like America," he said. "They said this was a strange country, filled with poor people who don't want to work. This is not true. I have met many hard workers here."
Mr. Cox, 29, who operates an export business from his apartment in Baltimore, noted with satisfaction the appreciation the Zverevs feel for their American benefactors.
"They held a dinner party for about a dozen of us," he said. "It was in the Russian tradition, with lots of toasts and food prepared in their homeland style. They were so gracious, it moved us all."
Mr. Zverev said he and his wife felt "closed in" for the first few days on Collington Avenue.
"But my wife is always smiling and waving to the neighbors on her way to work, and we're not afraid any more," he said.
Mr. Zverev, with Mr. Warren's help, has applied for employment at Johns Hopkins University and hospital, Towson State University and Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. -- without success.
"I will continue to apply, apply, apply," he said, his gray eyes intense. "That's it."