Alef: The NEXT Conversation

To Brighton

By Rita Kreynin

One recent Friday afternoon, I headed south on the Q train to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, the Mecca of life for immigrants from the “old country.” The trip was inspired by a desire to speak with some old Russian people and collect their stories about moving to America. My own family is from Minsk (now a part of Belarus, but formerly a part of the Soviet Union), and I only moved to Chicago at the age of four, so I thought of it as a nice little project – a chance for me to flex some of my Russian-speaking skills, take a few photos of classic babushka-types, and answer the call of the hunger pangs that had me aching for some old-fashioned borscht.

Walking down Ocean Avenue I found myself immediately immersed in what felt like a town from the Eastern bloc – Russian deli‘s and restaurants lined the streets in this neighborhood dubbed “Little Odessa,” full of Ukrainian transplants. As I strolled along the Brighton Boardwalk, I thought it would be easy to strike up conversations with a handful of Russians. Questions and camera in hand, I was ready to ask them about where they were from, whether they were nostalgic for their former country, and if they missed the cold winters and the endless nights from back home? Since I had the Russian on my side (albeit somewhat “broken” in the delivery) and I’m friendly, polite, and pretty harmless looking, I figure this would be a cinch. Russian people love me, especially old ones, so how hard could it be?

Apparently, incredibly difficult. What I failed to realize is that a lot of these people came from oppressive societies, worlds run by Communist stooges, secret police, and spies, where neighbors rated out neighbors for the promise of a better job or apartment or just an opportunity to get a personal obstacle out of their way. It seemed that a lot of them still house discomfort and distrust for people who try to get information from them and then try to take their picture to go along with this information. The startled reactions I got when questioning the people I met made me feel like I was a spy myself, sent directly by Stalin’s ghost. It’s as if they feared that anything they said to me would get entered into some KGB database in Moscow. Or, worse yet, as my boyfriend ruefully joked, that one slip-up would get them deported back to the old country.

After explaining that I was merely writing a story on varying immigrant experiences and wished to include them, a few people candidly (and grudgingly) opened up to me, but were still vehemently against having their photos taken. The following are their stories:

Alexander V.

I met Alexander as he walked down the Brighton Beach Boardwalk gleefully handing out brochures for a get-out-the-vote rally to reelect Mayor Bloomberg. Alexander is an outgoing and animated man in his early 70’s, politically active, and very well traveled. He moved to Brighton Beach roughly ten years ago to be with his daughter and grandson who settled in Brooklyn in the 1980s. Since then he has been back to Moscow about a dozen times to visit his son who still lives there. A dual citizen, Alexander thinks of himself as Russian but is very invested in American politics. He could not believe that I was Jewish, arguing that I did not look Jewish at all! I proceeded to speak to him in a Hebrew intermixed with Yiddish and that convinced him.

Faina G.

Born in Kyrgyzstan, Faina moved to Nikolaev, Ukraine for school in her late teens. After forty years of living in Ukraine with her husband, she moved to Brighton Beach in 1999 when her son won a green card. She admits that she was not too keen on leaving all her family and friends in Ukraine, but decided that her son and his family would have more economic opportunities in the U.S. While Brighton Beach is the eminent Russian neighborhood in the U.S., Fayina kept repeating that it is simply just not the same as her homeland.

Inna K.

Inna K. is a lovely, energetic woman in her mid 60’s who I met in line buying chicken cutlets at a butcher shop. She told me how much she loves Brighton Beach, how she has made many wonderful friends here, and how her relationship to Judaism has flourished since moving to the United States. Inna left Minsk with her husband and two teenage children in 1987. In Minsk, Inna worked as a nurse but constantly faced hostility for being Jewish. When her family received exit visas to leave Minsk for Israel, they first went through Italy where they obtained visas to move to the U.S. Inna could not stop raving about how fortunate she is to live in the U.S. (her son is a doctor!).

Walking around Brighton Beach and meeting Alexander, Faina, and Inna gave me a clearer sense of the complexities of the immigrant story. It was striking to see just how much distrust a lot of these people had even though the negative experiences from back home were now decades behind them. I guess the past sticks with us whether we want it to or not, and as different as things might be in an adoptive country, the memories of the motherland are never too far from the heart.

With my work done as best as I could manage, I found myself incredibly hungry and was off to chow down some borscht as originally planned. Nothing seems to warm the soul more than a nice bowl of cold borscht. Oh the irony.

Thumbnail photo from homepage by genial23, licensed under Creative Commons. All photos on this page used with the permission of Rita Kreynin.

Tags: Old Country

Posted by Ruvym, Monday, November 9th, 2009, 5:41 pm, Old Country.