This is a transcript of the interview with Dr. Alexander Tokarev for Mackinac Center’s “Chasing the American Dream” series in celebration of the 250th anniversary of freedom in the U.S.

I'm Alexander Tokarev. I am a professor of economics and classical liberal philosophy at Northwood University here in Midland, Michigan. I grew up in Bulgaria under socialism.

I was born in the late 60s and I was drafted in the army after high school. All the boys had to survive two years of that experience. I started school after the army. I was maybe in my fifth week of my freshman first semester at the University of Chemical Technology and Metallurgy in Sofia when they announced on the radio that our dictator was retiring. The Berlin Wall had fallen the day before. Nobody knew about that.

So this is where I come from. About a decade later I was tired, really tired of waiting for the reforms to really bring freedom and prosperity to Bulgaria, and I visited my family and friends in New York City. I read a book by Ludvik Fon Mises and then another one by Friedrick Hayek, and I decided to study economics. I applied. I got a scholarship from the Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. I got married, and my wife and I came — almost as a honeymoon — so I could study in the Ph.D. program. I graduated in 2004. I got a job in Iowa, another one later in Minnesota, moved to New York City, came back to Illinois for a year, and 14 years ago we moved with my wife and two children to Michigan.

Looking back on how we lived [in Bulgaria], I realize it was a prison cell.

You couldn't criticize the government, the dictator, any of his ministers, or the police who brutally beat us up when we would chant the name of our favorite soccer team, Levski, because they had changed it. Or when we would go to rock concerts. Seeing my favorite rock band — that was the time when you would really feel free. You could express yourself yelling, jumping. And the police would come and beat you up. Any criticism against this would land you in a jail cell. They might prosecute you and send you to a labor camp if you disobeyed. Many people have died in those labor camps.

The rock music was banned from Western bands like Kiss and AC/DC. You were told to dress up in a certain way. I wore a uniform in kindergarten, another one from first to fourth grade. They changed the uniform from fourth to seventh and then in high school a different type of uniform. Then two years in the army, obviously a uniform. So I wore uniforms for as long as I could remember, before the fall of the Berlin Wall, which is why I hate dressing up these days. They would prescribe how you wear your hair. So boys could not wear long hair. They would have all kinds of restrictions.

When we came [to the U.S.], we lived with my wife, and then my daughter was born in my second year at my Ph.D. program. After I paid my fees and paid for my university housing, we lived on $2 per person per day. That was all we had.

Still, compared to our life under socialism, we lived a good life. These were financially tough years, but we had great friends in Carbondale, Illinois, from our church. And I can't really say I had hard times at any point in the past 27 years. I've been blessed. It's the feeling of freedom. It's the feeling of being in charge of your own life.

Before I came here, I did not realize that the natural order of things is for the people to be free, to exercise their rights. For the people in government to be considered public servants, not leaders, not rulers, but under us and be constrained by what we the people have charged them with as responsibilities in the case of the United States under the Constitution.

This country offers the best opportunity for people to try things, to fail multiple times in all kinds of attempts to achieve what they value and to try, try again until they find what makes them happy.

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