United States EditionRUSSIAN REPORTER03/2012 №1

Presidential elections in Russian Federation • Special reportage about the Russian community in Brighton Beach • Medical Marijuana • Riverside Recession • Sea Sick A California dream disappears • Somali neighborhood • Biking in Philadelphia • The female experience in Chinatown New York City • Would you rather be black? •

Broken EnglishReflections of Little Russia in New York City

RUSSIAN REPORTER

Managing EditorEmine ZiyatdinovaTerry Eiler

Photo EditorEmine Ziyatdinova

Design and LayoutEmine Ziyatdinova

Editorial BoardTerry EilerMatt AdamsMitch CaseyCayce CliffordSamantha GoreshMadeline GrayHeather HaynesDarcy HoldorfWendy Junru-HuangJim McAuleyMaddie McGarveyRebecca MillerPatrick OdenJoel PrinceBecca QuintBryan ThomasPriscilla ThomasWayne ThomasPatrick TraylorAnita Vizireanu

Russian Reporter USAemine8zb7@hotmail.comemineziyatdinova.com

EDITOR’S LETTER

In the first issue of Russian Reporter’s United States edition we decided to explore the life of Brighton Beach, the most famous Russian neighborhood on New York City’s Atlantic shore.

Brighton Beach, home to the largest Russian-speaking community in the U.S., is a place where immigrants from the former Soviet Republics share space, language and common experience.

Brighton Beach has rarely “been depicted as anything more than thugs, criminals and outcasts,” says John Lisyanskiy, founder of the Russian-Speaking American Leadership Conference. The recent reality TV show about Brighton Beach, Russian Dolls, is a good example of that. In the 1990s Brighton Beach was known for its high crime rate, and many still avoid the area.

In this issue Russian Reporter’s portrays the neighborhood as a community with its own unique culture by showing a non-stereotypical, holistic image of Brighton Beach focused on daily life.

Sincerely,Emine Ziyatdinova

Managing Editor of Russian Reporter U.S. Edition

CONTENTS Issue 1//March 2012

Reflection of Little Russia in New York City 3Overview of Brighton Beach 9

Broken EnglishReflections of Little Russia in New York City

photography and story by Emine Ziyatdinova

The boardwalk between Brighton Beach and the Atlantic Ocean is lined with several Russian restaurants and, on a sunny day, it becomes a social hub. People come to the oceanfront to play with their kids, exercise and play cards.

Broken EnglishReflections of Little Russia in New York City

photography and story by Emine Ziyatdinova

The usual flow of thoughts freezes and my mind becomes silent for a half-hour walk towards

Brighton Beach down Neptune Ave. The scene begins to fill with more and more Cyrillic signs. The slogans and ads covering the buildings seem strangely familiar for a place that I have never been before. Old ladies sit in a row under a huge sign reading, “AПTEKA,” Russian for pharmacy. Their coats, hats, hair style, make-up and especially their sour facial expressions look like a vision from pre-collapse Soviet times. “What do you want?” challenges one of them, staring directly into my eyes.

The cold eastern wind and the trash cans scattered across the Boardwalk feel like home. Thousands of miles away from Ukraine, on a beach on the other side of the Atlantic, I feel connected to this place for the first time since I came to the U.S. I smile, but feel somehow

sad. What is this connection about? The shadow of the fallen Soviet Union and the dream of American freedom is a dual experience for most of the residents of Brighton Beach. Desiring wings of freedom, how many souls broke chasing you? How many were lost in the sick fog of change?

The waves crash onto the stones at the beach. A man walks out from Tetiana Grill Café, and throws the leftovers from yesterday’s banquet out onto the beach. The seagulls circle above the scraps of food along the boardwalk at the edge of the sea. Their freedom is caught in the changing human landscape; the endless scavenge for a meal has become their ceaseless lifestyle.

The people buying groceries from a street vendor under the subway line seem unfazed by the loud sound of the subway cars passing above every five minutes.

Pedestrians stare at a car accident in the intersection of Brighton Ave and Brighton 4th Street.

The Oceana luxury condominium is seen from the beach. The Brighton Baths Club used to stand in Oceana’s place. Despite spirited community protests, the baths were closed in 1994.

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Leva, a computer programmer I met through an old friend from Moldova, grew up in Brighton Beach. He explains that no one wants to live under the subway line and that’s why the neighborhood will never be a good place to live. “Only old people and people who can’t learn English stay there,” he adds.

Known as Little Odessa, Brighton Beach is home to the largest Russian-speaking immigrant community in the U.S. After a relaxation of emigration policies in the Soviet Union in 1980s, thousands of Jewish immigrants filled up the empty apartments in this neighborhood. Many believe the myth that Brighton is the heart of the Russian Mafia and illegal immigrants from Soviet Bloc. That they have vodka shots for breakfast after a wild night at the clubs. It is a place where the Soviet Union still exists and Mexican immigrants speak Russian.

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Thousands of miles away from Ukraine, on the beach on the other side of the Atlantic, I feel connected to this place for the first time since I came to the U.S.

Vadim, 20, does chin-ups at the Brighton Playground. Families come there to play with children; the elderly come to play dominos and cards. Non-Russian speaking teenagers usually occupy the basketball courts.

Brighton Beach is a unique place. It has its own character, culture and identity. It is stuck between two worlds. If you know the right people and places– a neighbor, a relative or a friend of a friend will open a lot of small doors, give you the privilege of being present.

Every time you bother random people on the street by talking to them, you never know how they will react – they might be nice, might be rude or might ignore you. You gamble until someone decides to trust you. Misha, a man in his late 50s, is one of these strangers. On the last Thursday of each month you can find him on 2nd Brighton Street. Once a month, a few dozen people line up with pink colored food cards in front of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty truck. “Do you like compote?” asks Misha as he hands me a plastic bag. There are a couple of bottles of juice, two bags of pasta and cans with marinated fruit inside. A short, grumpy woman who used to live next door to Misha’s apartment asks him if he has rice for her. “She takes only rice, a lot of rice,” explains Misha. “Who knows what she is doing with it.” I remember my old neighbors in Crimea and assume for no reason that she

is making samogon (home-made alcohol). If you have been in Brighton long enough and need

cigarettes, someone will point to two old ladies under the subway line. They usually stand with walkers for three to four hours a day at the intersection of Brighton Ave and 4th Brighton Street. The woman with dyed blond hair sells cigarettes for $5. The woman with black hair sells them for $6 per pack, half as expensive as the usual New York City price.

Sher lights a cigarette as he gazes up at the Statue of Liberty. He left Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, less than a year ago after being picked in the lottery for a United States Green Card. His roommates, Anton and Nikita, stand in front a red sports car wearing black jackets and pants. It reminds me of some movie about Russian gangs I cannot remember. Both of them came to the U.S. through a Work and Travel Exchange program and never left. Three hundred dollars a month is the price to register for the English language program that upholds their legal status in the U.S.

Nikita remembers that when they first came to the U.S. they were supposed to have a job somewhere in

Bentsion Fleishman, 89, poses for a portrait in his apartment in Brighton Beach. He is a professor and an author of six books about mathematics.

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OVERVIEW OF BRIGHTON BEACH

Brighton Beach was developed as a beach resort in 1868. It was named after the resort of Brighton, England.

Today it is known as ,“Little Odessa” after Ukrainian port city and resort on the Black Sea.

73.6% residents of Brighton Beach were born in another country.

53.6% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Russian at home.

16.5% of neighborhood’s residents have Ukrainian ancestry and 25.3% have Russian ancestry.

With 52,427 people per square mile this neighborhood is one of the most crowded neighborhoods in all of America.

The median age of residents of Brighton Beach is 45.1 years (34.2 years for New York City).

Brighton Beach is among the 15% lowest income communities in America.

Brighton Beach was rated 8 (on scale of 10) most educated neighborhoods (5 is the average for the U.S.).

A view of Manhattan from Brooklyn Bridge Park. (From left) Sher, 25, Nikita, 20, and Anton, 21, came to the U. S. a year ago. Sher got a Green Card while Anton and Nikita came with the Work and Travel Exchange Program.

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Maryland, but the jobs were cancelled and they ended up moving to Brighton Beach. “We stayed in the dorm in Brighton when we came. They are not as bad as some describe them. You get what you pay for. You share a room with three or four people. But we all knew each other before, so it was fine,” says Anton. A spot in, “the night-time and weekend dorms for people who have jobs,” as they market themselves in the online Russian Advertisements, costs $90 a week or $15 per night.

Everybody in Brighton is able to give you advice about how to deal with visa problems. Someone suggests getting married or doing volunteer social work for half a year. Others say to join an unpopular church back in your home country to get political refugee status or to enroll in some educational program to keep a student visa. Sometimes they tell you to stay illegally and figure out a permanent solution later. No one ever would suggest going back.

“Are you looking for husband?” wonders one of the girls I met in Brighton after I told her that my visa will expire this summer. “No visa marriages for me anymore” I say. I sip port wine from a plastic bottle and keep walking along the shore. They cost too much emotion. My marriage lasted less than a year after almost six years of dating. The decision to register for marriage came with my intent to study in the U.S. and a problem getting an American visa for him.

The beach is beautiful in the evening. The unseasonably warm winter evening gives hope for new love and blows away sad memories.

“I moved from Soviet Union to here and found myself in communism. I don’t pay for anything – they come with a car and take you wherever you need. The home at-tendant comes every day to cook, I go for free to the gym and can eat lunch for $2.”

–Bentsion Fleishman

An intermediate ballet class practices in the Bright Ballet Theatre which was created to preserve the tradition of Russian classical and folk dance in New York City.

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Barbara, 52, moved to the U.S. from Poland in 1989. She studied filmmaking and has a graduate degree in Fine Arts.

Nina is very nice and talkative for a stranger from Brighton Beach. While cleaning her home, a small, open space beneath a lifeguard station, Nina complains that guys are very messy and every time she comes back to her place she has to clean it. She neatly gathers newspapers, clothes and empty bottles from the sand under the lifeguard station. Nina says that she usually stays in a shelter in Manhattan in the winter, but because the weather is so warm this year, she occasionally comes to Brighton Beach to swim. Suddenly, she smells the dried sagebrush sticking up from the sand and stops talking. I wonder if her mental issues came with homelessness or if she became marginalized because of

her mental illness. I say good-bye and wish her luck as I walk away.

Are people really in control of their own destiny? Do they really have a chance to choose? The opportunities are limited for those starting their lives over in a new place. Intelligence easily gets lost in translation. “Everyone starts as a home attendant here, does not matter if you have been a doctor or a professor. I have been trying to get a job in some laboratory the last couple years, but it is useless,” says Azer. He is a physicist and a professor from Azerbaijan. He sits in front of me, his tie perfectly knotted. He shows me his research about the ozone measurements that he worked on back in Baku. Now, once a week, he attends the free English classes. Otherwise, he works, “here and there” doing construction, cleaning and sales jobs. He asks if I need a job, because a new restaurant just opened on Neptune Ave. and they might need a sales person.

Another professor, Bentsion, 89, is the author of six books in mathematics. He moved to the U.S. when he retired. “I am lucky! I moved from Soviet Union to here and found myself in communism. I don’t pay for anything – they come with a car and take you wherever you need. The home attendant comes every day to cook, I go to the gym for free and can eat lunch for $2,”

“No one wants to live under a subway line and that’s why the neighborhood will never be good place to live. Only old people and people who can’t learn English stay there.”

- Leva Epstein

Steven, 17, is baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church. He was inspired to join the church while listening to the Russian Orthodox music on radio station.

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exclaims the energetic, amusing man. “But my son probably pays more taxes than what I get for free from the government.”

On Saturday morning, I put on a long skirt and cover my head with a scarf. I see Bentsion sitting at prayer on the men’s side at the Synagogue. He looks very serious and dignified. His head is covered by kippah, the prayer shawl draping from his shoulders. After the prayer, he shows me his office on the second floor and shares his dream to open a school one day for kids with mathematical talent named after Pythagoras. He also believes that kids should be taught basic theology in school: the common elements of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Unlike the Synagogue, the rented building of the Russian Orthodox Church is packed. The church service goes slow, but strictly in order. Everyone in the church knows the routine. The order is disturbed and an argument erupts when a woman tries to light a candle at an inappropriate time. The church chorus sounds spiritual and beautiful. Steven, a 17-year-old non-Russian speaking, American, says that Pandora’s Russian Orthodox Church radio station inspired him to be baptized here and change his name to Vladimir. He and his best friend are the only non-Russian speaking

people in the church. I start nervously looking around and realize that I

don’t remember the address of this place. A strange man, who introduces himself as Yurius, locks the heavy, steel entrance as I follow him downstairs to the dark hallway in the basement. We enter a spacious room cluttered with a variety of objects, from a stuffed Tweety Bird hanging from the ceiling to religious artifacts from the Russian Orthodox Church. “All these once belonged to different people who lived in the building and moved out,” explains Yurius. He practices esotericism: he believes that numbers represent energy, and energy determines the nature of everything. He sips the tea he made with a special mix of herbs and milk. “Our meeting is destined,” he says and continues to write my fortune based on the date of my birth. This former official from the Kazakhstan Communist Party has been staying in the U.S. illegally for 14 years.

Yurius is proud of himself because he, “helped two people to heal from cancer.” He looks at the camera bag on my shoulder and says that it is too much stress on my back. He invites me to come for a massage and steam sauna. He is one of those people who is very logical in his explanations; the kind of person you trust and feel close to immediately and cannot explain why.

Nina smells the sagebrush under the lifeguard station where she sleeps on warm nights. She lives in a homeless shelter in Manhattan during the winter.

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Wanda, a Polish immigrant, gets a massage from Yurius. She comes to Yurius once a week to help treat her scoliosis and back trauma, saying that massages help with the pain. Yurius is a self-trained massage therapist who believes in numerology and spiritual energy. He has been in the U.S. illegally for the last 14 years.

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Rasputin Restaurant and Caberet is a popular Russian restaurant for family celebrations. Families pay a cover fee that includes food, drinks and entertainment.

Every Sunday, a group of friends come to Yurius’ basement to sauna, drink tea, play pool and table tennis. Yurius says it is the only place where the “old Brighton from the 90s” still exists.

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A double Jack Daniels does, not change the fact that the only young people in the Rasputin nightclub are Italians wearing Russian winter hats. The sculptured postures of elderly couples on the dance floor give way to dancers dressed as the famous Moscow church domes and Catharine the Great. The jazz show promised by the restaurant manager turns into a half-hour parody cabaret performance with mixed notes of imperialism, Christianity, Russian brides and Western culture. I finish my whiskey with the traditional Ukrainian toast “Bud’mo” (which translates as “We will be”) as I watch a multigenerational birthday celebration in one of the most famous Russian restaurants in Brooklyn.

Hanging out with “not Brighton characters,” as Leva described them, at a birthday party in his apartment, I feel that it could have been a party with my classmates

All of us– Crimean Tatars, Ukrainians, Moldovans, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Jews, Uzbeks and Koreans– become Russians in the U.S. Somehow Russia, which I would prefer to have never been a part of my people’s history, becomes my own identity.

Sergey, 25, greets Zlata, at a birthday party for Leva’s old friend Liolia.

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in Ohio or with old friends in Ukraine. The Russian-speaking generation of young artists, musicians, lawyers and computer programmers who grew up in Brighton are listening to Okean Elzi, the Ukrainian rock band. They drink sake, smoke from a hookah and make jokes in English. “Russian community? Probably no one is really Russian here. She is Jewish,” jokes Sergey, a Korean guy from Moscow, as he hugs his friend Zlata.

From the bank of the East River, between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, the sparkling city lights of Manhattan intimidate me. They make me feel small and lost. We survived the Russification of Imperial Russia and the Soviets, but all of us – Crimean Tatars, Ukrainians, Moldovans, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Jews, Uzbeks and Koreans – become Russians in the U.S. Somehow the Russian language

becomes the common thread of our regional identity. For some reason, Russia, which I would prefer to have never been a part of my people’s history, becomes my own identity. This makes other people interested in me. I would argue that this identity can be described as “post soviet.” My Japanese friend, who has been living in Ukraine and Kazakhstan for the last five years, calls it “SNG,” which stands for Commonwealth of Independent States.

Memories of home are not as clear as they were two years ago. I sit on the beach alone, gazing at the horizon. The line between sea and sky is vanishing in the dusk. Time passes; the new place becomes part of the routine. I think in broken English with a Russian accent.

(From left) Sher, 25, Nikita, 20, and Anton, 21, live in an apartment with two other friends in Brighton. Anton says that there is always someone else in the house whether it is friends who just moved to the U.S. or people who are just visiting.

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Ilhan, an illegal immigrant from Uzbekistan, lives and works in Brighton Beach. He comes to the beach sometimes and gazes at the horizon, remembering home. He says that he used to live alone and neither did he want to go back home nor did he want his wife and daughter move here. He says that culture is different and it is not right for his daughter.