Ternovskiy had been planning to leave in mid-March, but he accelerated his plans in a moment of adolescent rage. VestiFM, a state-owned radio station, had invited him into its studios for an interview; he asked to do it over the phone, and never heard from them again. Then, the day after we met at the café, Ternovskiy’s mother heard VestiFM moderators mocking her son as she streamed the program on her computer. “Do you hear that, Andrey Ternovskiy?” one of them said, laughing, and wished him a speedy failure. Ternovskiy had just got his U.S. visa, and the taunts, with ill-timed clarity, seemed to confirm his father’s point about Russian hostility toward the successful. Ternovskiy ripped out the speakers’ power cord and booked the first flight west."
