Homelands: A Geography of Culture and Place across America

THIRTEEN: California’s Emerging Russian Homeland

c h a p t e r t h i r t e e n California’s Emerging Russian Homeland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Susan W. Hardwick Russians in California’s Central Valley are a distinct group of people with a common past, a unifying folk culture, and a well-established religious belief system. They are defined in this analysis as Slavic Russians, not Jewish Russians , who identify themselves more often as “Jews” than “Russians.” Most Slavic Russians belong to the traditional Russian Orthodox Church or have converted to Protestantism, usually the Baptist or Pentecostal churches. While Russian Jews have settled primarily in California’s largest urban centers in the San Francisco Bay area, Los Angeles, and San Diego, ethnic Slavic Russians have become prominent players in the formation of the emerging Russian homeland expressed in the landscape of smaller cities located in California ’s Central Valley (map 13.1). Russians in California’s Central Valley currently reside in a unified place, a contiguous and well-bounded region that stretches north and south of the primary node of Russian cultural and economic activity located in Sacramento. Despite their recent arrival in the United States, Russians in California have already bonded with place in their adopted homeland. The dream of “coming to America” filled the hearts and minds of the vast majority of these new arrivals on the American scene for most of their lives in their native land, no matter where they lived. The often acute political, religious, and economic challenges of their daily lives in the former Soviet Union forced many to leave in 210 search of a safe and sane new life far from the persecution of their religious belief systems. This unique set of push factors created a little-known yet vibrant incipient Russian homeland in California. The Russian sense of place and emerging cultural landscape in this new homeland has developed much more rapidly than that of most other immigrant groups. Of particular note is the deep Russian attachment to the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, underscoring a strong bond with place in the Central Valley (fig. 13.1). Despite sometimes stereotypically Slavic images of urban landscapes in neighborhoods such as San Francisco’s Russian Hill, New York City’s Brighton Beach, and West Hollywood, central California has become the most frequent destination for non-Jewish Russian refugees in the post-Soviet era. Indeed, in 1990, at least 60 percent of all Russian refugee destinations in the country were to California, followed by New York (20%), Massachusetts (6%), and Illinois (4%). Russians are among the oldest of all refugees in California, with a median age of 31.4 years for women and 30.1 for men. Eight percent are over the age of 65. Most are skilled blue-collar workers with large families (California Department of Refugee Services 1991). Exact counts of refugee arrivals in California and elsewhere in the United States, however, do not reflect the total number of people now living in Central Valley cities because many Russians arrived after 1990. The problem of quantitative documentation of Russians in various parts of the country is compounded by their relocation patterns after arriving in the United States. Many rapidly become secondary migrants, moving to Central Valley cities after their initial settlement in San Francisco or Los Angeles. It is estimated by refugee resettlement agencies and the Immigration and Naturalization Service Office in Sacramento that between 45,000– 50,000 people of Russian ancestry resided in the valley in 1998. The Russian experience in California also illustrates control of place. Although not yet involved in local or regional politics, Russian immigrant “control ” is expressed by a strongly felt and unifying set of attitudes about territoriality particularly through property ownership. Purchasing small houses in low-income suburban neighborhoods in such places as Sacramento, Fresno, and Bakersfield has been a primary goal of Russian immigrants since their earliest arrival in the region in 1912. A profound belief in the value of owning land is no doubt a response to their inability to buy property in the former Socalifornia ’s emerging russian homeland . . . 211 Map 13.1. California’s emerging Russian homeland, showing settlement nodes in the Central Valley, 1998. viet Union and their desire to establish roots in a new land they never intend to leave. Time is especially fascinating as a component of the Russian case study. Although it could be argued that the strongest...