SPOKANE, Wash. — Eric Miller is a refugee from the former Soviet Union. He made his way to Spokane, Washington in 1989, after witnessing the fall of the Berlin Wall.
“Of course at that time we didn’t know the famous phrase or statement that Reagan made in Berlin, ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall.’ Of course, that was not on the Russian or the Soviet news back in the day,” he said.
“It was just a great sense of relief…it was a huge paradigmal shift. We could sense that. The world is changing, something’s happening. Of course at that time we were already in the free world,” he continued. “We were just happy for the Germans.”
Now Miller works for Eastern State Hospital in Medical Lake. During his time in the Soviet Union, he was part of an underground Baptist church. His decision was either to flee or end up in prison.
Miller said he and his family came to the United States as religious refugees because Soviet leaders viewed the Protestant church as a foreign influence from the West.
“So, we were like direct enemies of the state type of a deal. Even though they’re trying to hide it,” he said. “Like my wife, she went to college and she manage to be in school for two years. As soon as they found out she was a member of the underground Baptist church, they kicked her out. So you could not get higher education. You could not get a good job.”
Miller said his time in the Soviet Union was so tough that he finds it difficult to describe it to his children.
“Especially at the end of the Soviet Union, the last couple of years, it was exceptionally tough. Everything disappeared from the stores. You could not buy anything,” he said.
The censorship in the Soviet Union was pervasive, Miller said.
"There was no point to read the newspaper, it was just 100 percent propaganda,” he said. “It was a miserable existence in this regard. Everything was censored, everything was filtered. There was this sense of hopelessness when nothing was changing, everything was getting worse and worse. Everything was kind of collapsing before your eyes.”
Miller and his wife left what is now Ukraine and immigrated to the U.S. at 20 years old. Their daughter was 15 months old when they left and their son was 6 months old.
“Our youngest daughter was born in Fresno, California, so she’s the genuine American or California girl,” Miller said.
The move to American was “a cultural shock in a very positive way,” according to Miller. He described it as going from a black-and-white TV to a state-of-the-art, color TV.
“You come to America and you walk through the super market and it’s like going to a museum, you know. I’m not exaggerating, we would go to the stores as you would go to the museums just to explore things,” he continued. “It was a shock, you know, the prosperity in this country. In America, people were friendly, and they’re smiling, and they’re trying to help us.”