After a life of constant pressure to drink and smoke, Anton Kruglyak, a freshman from Russia studying computer science, said he has led a life filled with hard decisions, some of which led him to study at BYU-Hawaii. Kruglyak said he believes coding is intertwined with how the world works.
Conversion Story
Kruglyak is from Ufa, Bashkortostan Republic, Russia. He said his family consists of his parents and himself. He said, “They are good parents. They have taught me a lot during my life, and they were really good examples to me. At the age of 8 in 1995, we met the missionaries and they started teaching us.
“We had a lot of lessons because my parents had a lot of questions. It’s funny; after one of the initial missionaries who met and taught us was transferred, a new missionary came and took his place. They were still teaching us for a long time and the new missionary told his companion, ‘This family is not going to get baptized. They have a lot of questions and it takes too much effort to teach them.’ But our first missionary disagreed and told him, ‘They are going to continue seeing us.’ So finally my parents made a decision to be baptized.”
Kruglyak said when he first joined the church, there were a lot of members but then a lot of them quickly became inactive. “One of the reasons I think that happened is during the Soviet Union time, not many people were coming to Russia,” he explained. “Then when Russia was open to preaching the gospel, a lot of missionaries from the LDS Church came. It was something new and many people wanted to try it, and many joined the church. I believe the same thing happened to many other churches that came to Russia at that time.”
He said there are a lot of different churches now that Russia has been open to missionaries for the past three decades.
Breaking Traditions
Kruglyak said, “It’s part of our Russian tradition that a lot of men drink alcohol, especially when we have celebrations like birthdays or New Year’s.” He said his father used to drink alcohol before joining the church. Even though smoking was easy for his father to quit, alcohol was very difficult. “He couldn’t stop. Even when he wanted to, he couldn’t. It was like his addiction in some way,” Kruglyak recalled.
When the missionaries taught his family about the Word of Wisdom, Kruglyak said his father decided to pray about it, but he did not feel anything special afterwards. However, upon heading home the next day after work, his coworkers invited him to go drinking, as they often did. But that day Kruglyak said his father felt something different.
“He didn’t feel anything could force him to go drinking. Instead, he felt freedom. It was really easy to choose to go or not to go. So he used the moment and said, ‘No, I’ll just go home. I don’t want to drink today.’ And then after that, it was really simple for him. Because he made his first decision that day, it was easier for him to make good decisions after that,” said Kruglyak.
The tradition and peer pressure to drink and smoke was no different for Kruglyak. He said friends and others first started to offer him alcohol and cigarettes at age 10. “When I was a kid and I was studying at school, I had some guys in my class who were saying, ‘Oh you want to go smoking with us?’ And every time I said no they would make fun of me and tease me. They would say, ‘Oh are you a mommy’s son? What’s wrong with you? You want to be a man? You have to smoke.’”
Kruglyak said he looked to his father as an example. He said, “Every time they’d say, ‘So you want to come smoking with us? If you want to be a man you have to smoke,’ I’d say, ‘If my father doesn’t smoke, does that mean he’s not a man? No one tells him that he’s not a man.’ That was a really good argument because after that they just stopped asking me.”
He said he was the only LDS child his age in his school, town, and area. “For this reason, sometimes it was hard to make decisions because other guys were always pressuring me to smoke, drink, or do anything. You’re just 10 years old and you already have to make decisions to try alcohol or try smoking. But I believe it helped me become stronger, so now I don’t even ask myself if I want to try it because I was asked so many times during my childhood and when I was a teenager. Now it’s not just easy, but it’s not even a question.”
Interests
Kruglyak went on to serve in the Russia Moscow West Mission from 2009 to 2011. “After I came back from my mission, I wouldn’t say that I had some kind of hobby. I like stuff that makes me think about something, like something that’s philosophical or teaches you about how to live a good life or eternal equations.”
However, when he was a child he said he filled his time with music or martial arts. He said, “My mom is a musician. She wanted me to study music. So I had music classes and had to play the accordion for seven years… I tried to learn different styles and different martial arts, but mainly I do Aikido. It’s one of the Japanese martial arts. So I’d say those two were my biggest hobbies I had.”
While at BYUH, Kruglyak said he is studying computer science for two main reasons. He said one reason is people live in a modern world that is highly dependent on computers, coding and programming. “It’s everywhere, in every field, every industry. Anywhere you go, it’s run by computers. I wouldn’t say I’m really good at computers, but it’s something I want to learn and know much better than I do,” he said.
The second reason he said is anything people learn on earth is a part of their eternal knowledge. “If you learn chemistry, for example, it’s the knowledge God used to create this earth and our bodies and everything. Physics is the same. He used the principles of physics to create everything in the world. And if you study geography, astronomy, or anatomy, it’s all the same. It is the knowledge God used to create everything in the world and outside the world as well.”
Kruglyak said he believes coding and programming can be applied to more than computers. He said, “Coding is everywhere. For example: genes. Why do some people have dark skin and some people have white skin? It’s coding. It’s a part of programming. Why do some people have curled hair and others have straight hair? It’s the same: coding.”
He said with coding people can create something, like how God created his children. “We’re different because we have different types of codes, and it is the same with programming and computers. You can create something. It’s hard to answer what I want to do with computer science, because I don’t know this field very well. So I don’t yet know everything I can do with computer science, but I believe that after I graduate I will see more perspectives in the future.”
Journey to Laie
This is Kruglyak’s first semester at BYUH. However, before he was here, he was in Provo studying at the BYU English Language Center (ELC). He said, “Sometimes you do something, and after you do it, you realize it was a good idea. It happens to everyone. When I was at ELC, I knew I had to apply to universities to study something. Honestly, I wasn’t really thinking about going to BYUH, but then one day I was looking on the BESmart website for some information, and I saw that I had a high enough score to apply for BYUH. So I thought maybe BYUH could be an option for me.”
He said after he pondered about it, his thoughts and feelings told him it would be a good idea and he sent in his application. Kruglyak was accepted and said when he got to Laie, it was during an NSO meeting where he received a feeling of confirmation that he was in the right place.
“In Russia we have many people from different countries, so we have a mix of cultures. If you study our culture, you can see some things that came from Europe and some that came from Asia. We have a bunch of stuff that comes from different places. It’s interesting to me to learn about different cultures and histories from different countries.”
Kruglyak said he does not feel his life has been different or special in any big way. “Sometimes people say, ‘Oh you have a lot of experiences that never happened in my life.’ But it’s normal to me. It’s just my life and it happens in the opposite way. I talk to others and something they say might be interesting to me, but it’s normal to them.”
Writer: Leslie Owusu