Russian New York

New York is a city that periodically revives itself through immigrants, who alter and are in turn altered by the city’s amazing dynamic. In fact, the 2000 census shows that New York’s population is the highest ever recorded, due in no small part to the influx of Russians in the post-Soviet era. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Russian (or more precisely, Russian-speaking) community in New York City is the fastest growing ethnic group—second in size only to the Hispanic community. Like any other group, the Russian community in New York is spread among the city’s five boroughs, though there are certain definable locations that over the past 25 years have become distinctly “Russian neighborhoods.” 

These neighborhoods are far-flung: there is Washington Heights in northern Manhattan, home to a large portion of the Russian intelligentsia in New York; there are Bayside and Forest Hills in Queens and Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn. And then there is Brighton Beach.

No other Russian neighborhood in New York City (perhaps the country) has the magnetic power or the sensuous appeal of Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach. A large part of its appeal is because it is really on the beach—from midtown Manhattan it’s an hour ride on the rumbling
Q Train—making it a neighborhood on one of the city’s geographic edges.

Perhaps Brighton’s magic is due to its proximity to fabled Coney Island. Who knows, for Russian speakers with their native affinity for the poetic possibilities of language the alliteration may also have something to do with it. Whatever the reason, Brighton is the neighborhood everyone immediately associates with Russians in the city. It has become especially well-known, even in Russia, since the latest wave of immigration began in the 1970s.

While the predominance of the Russian language among the majority émigré community from the former Soviet Union is the legacy of empire, clearly most of the people are Russians. The paradox is that while the Russian language is a unifier for recent immigrants, assimilation into American society is the name of the game.

That aside, as you might expect, Manhattan has some of the better known, and glitzier, landmarks of Russian émigré culture. The best-known of these was the Russian Tea Room at 150 West 57th Street. It was opened as an actual tea room in 1926 by four émigrés who had been members of the Russian Imperial Ballet. Later, during Prohibition, it metamorphosed into a restaurant that boasted a Russian menu and decor to highlight its elegance. A few years ago, the Tea Room closed for a multi-million dollar renovation, reopening with a flourish in 1999. Sadly, however, this summer the Tea Room closed for good, unable to survive the untimely death of its flamboyant owner, Warner LeRoy.

Meanwhile, still popular with the Russian intelligentsia in New York is Russian Samovar, at 256 West 52nd Street, which opened in 1986 and is co-owned by ballet dancer and choreographer Mikhail Baryshnikov.

However, the real story of Russians in New York is, like the people themselves, simultaneously more down-to-earth and enchanting.

For instance, just east of Union Square in Manhattan are two Russian gift shops. The Sobor Icon Antique Gallery is located at 232 East 14th Street, while across the street at 227 East 14th Street is a shop whose sign bears a drab Soviet-style name, Russian Souvenirs. If you can’t get to Russia, but have a hankering for icons, matryoshki, wooden toys, Palekh boxes, Gzhel or Russian clothing—especially caps—this is the next best thing. Russian Souvenirs, which even contains a framed photograph of Yuri Gagarin, is the more haphazard of the two, with items displayed everywhere you turn. It’s one of those places where if you don’t see what you want, it’s wise to ask, because the owner will probably be able to dig it out from somewhere. The Sobor Icon Antique Gallery (sobor means cathedral) sells non-Russian items as well but has more of a feel of a Russian magazin with everything behind the counter and displayed on shelves on the wall. In both stores the shopkeepers are friendly, especially if you speak a little Russian, but caveat emptor—the prices reflect New York rather than Moscow realities.

Russians came to New York in successive waves, and nearly always fleeing oppression. The earliest Russian settlers in nineteenth-century New York City were peasants, mostly Jews escaping pogroms. By the late nineteenth century, the Orthodox Church had established itself in the city—baptismal records go back to 1894. The church at that time was under the Moscow Patriarchate. In 1907, Bishop Tikon moved the See from San Francisco to New York, establishing it at St. Nicholas Cathedral on East 97th Street. But then came the Revolution. As recounted by Father Christopher Calin of the Orthodox Church in America: “In 1926 we lost the cathedral in a legal court case with the Bolshevik government.” Ironically, he noted that “they [the Communist government] lost everywhere except in New York.” The Orthodox Church in America thereupon moved to Houston Street in a space donated by the Episcopal Church and in 1943 moved to its present location at 59 East 2nd Street, between First and Second avenues. There the cathedral was consecrated as the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Virgin Protection.

In 1970, the Orthodox Church in America became autocephalous, meaning it is independent of the Moscow Patriarchate. Fifteen years later, however, the church was on the verge of closing its doors. Though it had managed to survive the rough years of the 1970s in the Lower East Side, the congregation had dwindled to an average of about twenty people at services. The decision was made to embrace the community and now the service is recited in English, and occasionally parts are recited in Spanish. The transition to English reflects the church’s stability in New York—its attraction of American converts—as well as the youngest generation of immigrants, especially those from non-Russian former Soviet republics, such as Georgia, who are too young to have learned Russian. Still, Father Christopher said he believes that language has been a strong, unifying feature for both Russian and Russian-speaking immigrants, especially anyone in their twenties and older.

The downtown cathedral boasts a choir that itself has a claim to fame —Russian/Swedish tenor, Nikolai Gedda (born Ustinov) sang there as a guest. The cathedral’s interior is decorated with numerous icons, some of which were painted by the noted icon painter S. V. Sokolov. In its effort to maintain the thread of tradition, the Orthodox Church in America has operated an icon-painting school since 1992 in the cathedral’s basement where, hopefully, future Sokolovs and Rublevs learn the craft.

Further downtown in Manhattan is a locus for more contemporary Russian art. The gallery of the Russian-American Cultural Foundation, directed by Dr. Regina Khidekel, is lodged in a tiny space at 55 John Street, just east of Broadway. It is an area south of City Hall that used to be comfortably nestled in the long shadows of the Twin Towers. The foundation’s name also signals a desire for assimilation, or at least integration with the vaunted New York art scene. As Dr. Khidekel explained, “This is a Russian-American cultural foundation, so it’s not only Russian. I don’t want to create a ghetto for Russians. What I’m doing mostly, I’m combining Russians [artists] with Americans [in the exhibitions].”

Dr. Khidekel, who came to the US from St. Petersburg, holds a doctorate in art history and has curated a number of exhibitions in New York. In 1996 and 1997, she began thinking about starting up her own arts organization. “I came to the conclusion that I wanted to have my own organization, not only because of my curatorial interests,” she said, “but also because I found out that the Russian community didn’t have any [ongoing] cultural presentation in Manhattan.” The Russian-American Cultural Foundation sponsors numerous small exhibitions in its gallery, while musical events are usually held elsewhere in the city. “One or twice a year we also have large exhibitions,” Dr. Khidekel said.

One of the best known of the larger exhibitions sponsored by the Foundation took place in May-June 2001 in an abandoned warehouse in the section of Brooklyn that has come to be known as DUMBO (which stands for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass). Titled, “Dumbo Double Deuce: New York & Russian Artistic Détente,” the show featured more than 20 artists, including such staples of the New York art scene as Larry Rivers, Grisha Bruskin and Komar & Melamid. Despite the critical raves that the exhibition received, it may be a while before the Foundation again mounts a show as ambitious as that. Khidekel admitted that grants are harder to come by in the post-September 11 world. Still, she has her sights set on something grander. “Our strategic goal,” she declared, “is to create a museum of Russian collections. There are a lot of collections around, and Russian art unfortunately is not welcome in American museums. Not because it is bad, but because to open a Russian division in a museum is a big, bureaucratic procedure.”

Further north, on Fifth Avenue between 17th and 18th streets, is the office of the most influential Russian voice in the United States, the newspaper Novoye Russkoye Slovo (New Russian Word). Go to any Russian neighborhood in New York and in many other US cities as well, and this is the Russian-language newspaper of choice. It sits atop the Russian-language media as the oldest continuously published daily in the world. If the Russian language is indeed the unifying factor for immigrants from the former Soviet Union, then Novoye Russkoye Slovo is its primary vehicle in America and has been for decades. The newspaper was founded in 1910 to give voice to Russians in New York. Ironically, one of its founders was a Menshevik (who later recanted his politics). Each succeeding wave of immigration has brought new writers and issues to the newspaper’s pages and its list of contributors reads like a Who’s Who of émigré writers: Trotsky (somewhat of a surprise given the newspaper’s political stance), Kerensky, Bunin, Nabokov, Sakharov, Bonner, and Brodsky to name a few.

Historically anticommunist, the newspaper’s mission in the post-Soviet era is, in the words of Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Valery Weinberg, “to teach new Russian-speaking Americans to better understand the American judiciary system, political system, society, business and culture. And not to be separated and live differently. We are preparing new Russian-speaking Americans to take a big part in the political life in America, eventually to be elected. We will have our own representation. This is why some of the articles we have published were translated from English.”

Weinberg and the staff of Novoye Russkoye Slovo are not alone in that task. Besides her work at the Russian-American Cultural foundation, Regina Khidekel also co-founded the Russian-American Civic Association, with Elana Broitman. And, in the Brooklyn polyglot neighborhood of Sheepshead Bay, Dr. Oleg Gutnik has not only been working to help give Russians and Russian-speaking immigrants a political voice in New York, but has, himself, stood for election for the New York City Council from the 47th district. The area also has its own civic group—the Brooklyn Community Civic Organization—whose task is to register new voters and involve them in the political process.

While other Russian-speaking candidates have sought city council and general assembly seats, all had previously lost in primaries. Dr. Gutnik was the first to stand in a general election. He lost, but managed to garner 43% of the vote. The last Republican candidate to receive that high a percentage of the vote in this district, Gutnik noted in all seriousness, was Abraham Lincoln. Gutnik is also Special Assistant to the Governor of the State of New York for the Bureau of Refugee and Immigrant Affairs.

In New York terminology, anywhere in the city that is not Manhattan is an “outer borough,” and in the outer boroughs, the subway tracks are elevated. In Brighton Beach the Q Train rumbles loudly and frequently over the neighborhood’s main artery, Brighton Beach Avenue. The train’s approach is so loud, in fact, that people on the sidewalk below are forced to suspend conversation until the train comes to a halt. When you descend to the street from the platform, you are in the heart of Russian-speaking New York. The description, Russian-speaking, is never more apt because many of the people are actually from Ukraine. Brighton itself is locally known as “Little Odessa.”

Many of the shops on Brighton Beach Avenue draw their customers in with signs in Cyrillic and transactions are generally conducted in Russian, though shopkeepers and workers immediately switch to English when they spot a “foreigner.” The avenue, two blocks from the beach, runs East-West and the side streets off it are simply numbered Brighton 1st Street, Brighton 2nd Street, etc. up to Brighton 15th Street, with the lower numbers beginning in the western end. One of these side streets—Brighton 6th Street—even contains a Russian daycare center appropriately named, Detski Sad. There is one exception to these numbered side streets, Coney Island Avenue, a busier thoroughfare than Brighton Beach Avenue, which runs through many neighborhoods. On Coney Island Avenue, just north of Brighton Beach Avenue is located the Magazin Knigi “Chyornoye More” (Black Sea Bookstore), one of the area’s venerable spots. However it now has competition from Dom Knigi “Sankt Peterburg” (St. Petersburg Book House), a large, well-lit store on Brighton Beach Avenue that sells matryoshki, t-shirts and van’ki-vstan’ki (self-righting roly-poly toys) in addition to Russian-language books.

The avenue is dotted with newspaper kiosks of the kind found throughout New York City, with the exception being that the vendors, in addition to the local newspapers, sell a large variety of Russian-language newspapers and periodicals, published both in the US and Russia, including some week-old Moscow favorites like Izvestia, Nezavisimaya gazeta and MK. If you’re in the mood for a quick snack, then you can stop at one of the sidewalk tables in front of grocery stores, where men and women peddle bulochki, pirozhki and khatchapuri. There are also numerous fruit and vegetable stands on Brighton Beach Avenue and on some of the side streets as well. A fish market and a shoe store also cater to Russians, as do the restaurants that dot the avenue. The most notable of these is the National, Brighton Beach’s oldest and largest Russian restaurant. It has two floors, with the first floor containing a bandstand and a dance area—live music is ubiquitous in Russian restaurants, and often very loud. Music and video stores also abound; the best known of these is Mosfilmvideo, which is a mini-New York chain of six outlets including one in Sheepshead Bay.

While the National is one of the neighborhood’s older landmarks the Millenium Theatre, also on Brighton Beach Avenue, is one of the newer ones. Occupying the building that was formerly the Oceana movie theater, the Millenium’s stage features one of the widest ranges of acts in the city: from Russian rock star Boris Grebenshchikov to Ray Charles to the Brighton Ballet Theater (BBT), a children’s ballet group founded in 1987 by Irina Roizin.

The BBT is another interesting phenomenon. The school began with five students and within five years had expanded to 150 students. The first instructor, Galina Ryback, was a graduate of St. Petersburg’s prestigious Vaganova ballet school. The BBT also incorporated folk dance into its curriculum and presents a Russian Folk Dance Company that performs in New York City. While the vast majority of the students are Russian or Russian-speaking émigrés, or the children of such, the company is not exclusively so, making it a perfect reflection of the neighborhood.

For all of the commercial allure of Brighton Beach Avenue, the focal point of Brighton Beach will always be the beach itself and the boardwalk that runs along it. The boardwalk stretches from Coney Island to the eastern end of Brighton Beach. The Brighton portion of the boardwalk is lined with cafes, such as the Tatyana, where dining is al fresco and the atmosphere as relaxed as any seaside resort in the country.

When the weather is warm, Russians of all ages come out to sit on the benches, take in the sun and inhale the salt air. In mid-spring they are still pasty from the winter and often overdressed because of the tricky weather during that time of year. As the summer progresses, they will be tanned and oiled, especially the older men.

Many of the boardwalk regulars left the USSR during the Brezhnev era of stagnation, and their memories of their homeland are frozen in time. When they meet a Russian who still lives in Moscow, these locals eye him with a cautious curiosity. But it only takes a greeting in Russian to strike up a conversation.

“So, how is life there? Still the same old crap it used to be?”

“Well, no … actually things are booming in Moscow. In fact, compared to sleepy Brighton Beach, ulitsa Tverskaya is like your 5th Avenue.”

This raises eyebrows, but then talk warms up through reminiscences of cultural icons from the Soviet era…

“So why aren’t the local Russians swimming in the ocean?” the visitor asks. “The weather is sunny and the beach is not too bad.”

“Well, we are now Amerikantsy, remember? Besides, guys of my generation are too old to be big swimmers. And our children frown upon swimming here—like Americans, they prefer swimming pools to wild beaches.”

Just as it was in Soviet parks and squares, in Brighton Beach dominoes rule the playgrounds while chess is the game for the men on the boardwalk. These games sometimes draw crowds large enough to hide the players from the views of the casual strollers. The latter, mostly the elderly but often young lovers or just two friends locked arm-in-arm, are the ones who really fulfill the boardwalk’s purpose. Out for their daily exercise or an inexpensive date, their unhurried pace here on the edge of New York belies the city’s clichéd hustle and bustle. They ignore the occasional bicyclists or roller skaters who zip past them; the boardwalk, as its very name implies, is their territory.