LA dreaming #7: The United States of the Soviet Union: Russians in America
The United States of America is known as a country of immigrants. And of course all of you at least heard about Russian immigrant culture here in America.
Actually there are lots of Russians in any big american city, especially on the Coasts. So, I’ve been to 3 russian neighborhoods in New York, San Francisco and recently in Los Angeles. I went there not because I felt homesick and wanted to poest’ kotletki s kartoshkoi v kafe pod nazvaniem «Beriozka». I just was wondering how it looks and feels like. And every single time it looked and felt quite odd.
Surely only Russian folks are able to sense that. Although chinese tourists experience kind of the same taking a walk around chinatowns, I assume.
First of all american Russians are very recognizable. For instance (the pic below was taken by me in NYC’s Brighton Beach in 2009):
Is it possible to not identify your countryman? ;-)
Secondly Russians in America are not necessarily Russians. This term may refer to all local people speaking Russian (ex-Soviet), most of whom came to the US during the last waves of emigration (when USSR was about to fall apart or had already fallen apart). Therefore in the majority of cases members of russian neighborhoods are seniors.
They couldn’t or rather didn’t want to assimilate into American society and live by their own in pretty closed communities. As far as I can judge the typical inhabitant of Russian neighborhood is a senior person with soviet habits. Their children don’t live with them because as opposed to the parents young became embedded in the environment and they are losing the bond with the old folks more and more now.
When I try to describe my impressions on visiting America’s Russian areas to someone I always claim it looks like those people were uprooted from their own native ground and carried to other one that does not really fit them.
Indeed, I constantly feel that when I am in those places. Maybe I am mistaken. But it doesn’t seem like I am.
The photo I took a couple of days ago here in West Hollywood represents my impressions exactly enough:
