Former USSR Culture Workshop
6. FSU Immigrants in the Phoenix Area Today
Noteworthy FSU immigrants in Arizona today — athletes, Olga Korbet, dancers, musicians, artists, scientists, news worthy (Robert Daniels, ) , ...
Media — Phone books, newspapers, radio, bulletin boards, gossip, gathering places,
40,616 people of
Russian ancestry4,073 who speak Russian at home, age 5+
2,347 born in Russia
In 1990, 1153 Russian speakers were counted. In the 10 years, from 1990 to 2000, Russian speakers (age 5+) increased 253%, or 25.3% per year.
By 2004 there could be about 10,000 people in Arizona who speak Russian at home! In 2005, Rabbi Dan reports 700 on his mailing list, and 2000 served in 2001. The Bukhorian groups report 500 member families.
About half of the Russian-speakers in Arizona are refugees from Uzbekistan — Bukharian Jews — who migrated to Arizona from New York-New Jersy for the climate. All of the Russian Arizona stores and restaurants are owned by Bukharians, and over a dozen barber shops.
In the United States, there are more than 90 Russian-language print publications, more then a dozen Russian-language radio stations, and four Russian-language television channels. In 2004, two Russian radio programs were started in Arizona by Bukharians but were off the air in 6 months. A Russian Arizona Yellow Pages phone book was started in 2002, discontinued and published by a California company in 2007 and 2008. Four Russian language newspapers now provide mostly advertising media, and some local news coverage. The Jewish newsletters and various websites target sub-groups.
Bukharian Jews
Torah festival 2003, Photos: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
Molokan-Jumpers: Andy and Tanya Conovaloff, funeral
2000 US Census, there are about 1.3 million people living in Phoenix, of which there were 22,309 of Polish descent, 7418 Russian, 4182 Yugoslav, 2859 Czech, 1641 Ukrainian, 1607 Czechoslovak, 1436 Serbian, 1382 Croatian, 1308 Slovak, 415 Bulgarian, 386 Slavic, 276 Slovene, 157 Macedonian and 18 Carpatho-Rusyn.
Russian Restaurants in Arizona / Русские рестораны в Аризоне
Fleischer Museum will close on November 15, 2002
Fleischer Museum of California and Russian Impressionism
Rima Fine Art
077 East Main Street, Suite 1
Scottsdale, AZ 85251
480-994-8899
Several post-Soviet era Russian artists are represented and their creativity bursts forth in brilliant color, intricate detail, and incredible technique in realistic, surreal and primitive styles.
Don Cossack dancers visit northen Arizona, perform for Lion's Club at Senior high auditorium in Prescott. Some given holiday dinners by local families. "Troup Stays In City for Thanksgiving", Prescott Evening Courier, pages 1-2 , Nov 26, 1954
GCC Russian Club -- Calendar
NAU Russian Culture Club -- Russian Dinner and Cultural Evening
Russian Arizona NEWS -- Yulia Kumirova, Robert Daniels,
Founded: Nov 28, 2006
Members: 67
Meetings: 25 so far
These 94 people near Tempe
Russian Language Meetups in the Making
April 2, 2004 = The Business Journal of Phoenix
Oleg's birthday party in 2007
My Birthday Party on August 18, 2007, at Earl's in Scottsdale
Jessica Barranco, Phoenix Country Day School, Paradise Valley
Systema 2005, video
http://www.kettlebellgym.com/martial.htm
http://arizonakettlebells.com/
Coyotes Coach Wayne Gretzky , grandfather from province of Grodno, now Belarus.
Gretzky's paternal grandfather was an immigrant who came to Canada via the United States at the beginning of the 20th century from the former Russian imperial province of Grodno, now part of Belarus.
Korbut, Olga -- Teaches gymnastics in Scottsdale
http://www.saddoboxing.com/4171-don-king-2.html
Oct 30, 2006
Chase Field on Saturday when Don King presents the first world heavyweight championship ever held in Arizona. Sergei “White Wolf” Liakhovich (23-1, 14 KOs), originally from Belarus and now a seven-year resident of Scottsdale, will defend his World Boxing Organization crown for the first time against Brooklyn, N.Y., native Shannon “The Cannon” Briggs (47-4-1, 41 KOs), the No. 3-ranked WBO contender.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Liakhovich
http://www.myspace.com/sergueilyakhovich
Music
Kalinka
Silver Creek Players
Loca Rosa
Military
MiG-15bis Arizona Wing Commemorative Air Force
Howard F. ("Howie") Kale, Jr.
Russian-bred Arabian horses, Seattle, Washington farm home in Scottsdale, Arizona
Beware Russian Web-Order Brides
Many Men Falling For Online Scams, Giving Away Their Hearts, Money
TEMPE, Ariz., April 14, 2005
Laurel, Stan marry the Russian singer Vera Ivanova Shuvalova.
Yuma third marriage January 1, 1938.
UA
http://www.azrussianabroad.com/overview.htm
Dr. John Garrard
http://www.ic.arizona.edu/ic/atheneum/
The Brest Ghetto Passport Archive (Grodno gubernia)
"The Brest Ghetto Passport Archive represents the first phase of the Phoenix Project, a multi-year effort, directed by John Garrard (Professor of Russian Literature at the University of Arizona) to computerize data on the Holocaust drawn primarily from newly opened archives in the former Soviet Union."
http://www.intute.ac.uk/artsandhumanities/cgi-bin/fullrecord.pl?handle=humbul10803
http://jewishwebindex.com/belarus.htm
The Brest Ghetto Passport Archive
A searchable database, titled "Phoenix Project" and created by Professor John Garrard, Professor of Russian Literature at the University of Arizona, is available at
http://www.jewishgen.org/
The first phase of this project is a list of more than 12,000 persons 14 years and older who were required by the Nazis to obtain photo identification cards in order to live in the Brest ghetto. Dr. Garrard plans to recover Holocaust victims' names and as much information as possible about them and their families.
The database includes direct hyperlinks to the original source documents as retrieved from the archives, which are stored in scanned image files. The Brest passport photos are not digitized and are available at Yad Vashem and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. See also http://www.brestonline.com/
If you're ancestral search takes you to the City of Brest-Litovsk or Brisk,
Russian Poland now Brest, Belarus, then you may be interested in knowing that there are many other Brest (Brisk) descendents who are doing the same thing.
Petropolis by Anya Ulinich
Petropolis is a richly layered and luminous emotional epic in the mode of great Russian novels. From perpetually gray Asbestos 2 to the shocking green lawns of Paradise Valley, Arizona, where Sasha lands as a mail-order bride; from wealthy suburban Chicago to the streets of Brooklyn, New York, Petropolis takes on motherhood, religion, the promise of love, and cross-cultural perplexity, all set against Sasha’s harrowing yet hilarious search for a place to call home. The result is a magnificent work that will stand alongside the likes of Gary Shteyngart’s The Russian Debutante’s Handbook and Gish Jen’s Typical American in scope, immediacy, and sheer talent.
Although social class existed in Soviet Russia, it was defined not so much by material wealth, but by a person’s place of residence and education level. The class differences were much less pronounced than they are in the United States. I grew up middle class on the outskirts of Moscow. Everyone I knew lived in a small apartment, and I didn’t know anyone who hired domestic help. There were no servants, maids, or nannies. Then, when we moved to Arizona, my family ended up at the absolute bottom of the social hierarchy. We were doing menial labor for cash and eating donated food. So I wanted to write about class disparity and how it defines certain relationships.
http://www.anyaulinich.com/anthrop2.html
Chapter 1
http://www.anyaulinich.com/interview.html
When I came to the U.S., most of my past — my experiences, my memories, and the Russian language itself, the only language I spoke at that time — suddenly stopped being a part of my everyday life. I began to feel as if I was living split in two.
One part of me was mutely poking around Phoenix, Arizona, basically surviving. My family had come to the Arizona without an immigration status, without any money and with about 20 English words between the four of us. Because of this, my early years in the U.S. yielded many experiences that rivaled my Soviet childhood in their absurdity.
Meanwhile, I admired Repin and Surikov, Serov and Vrubel - Russian artists barely known in the West. I had a head full of Bulgakov and Pasternak, Mandelstam and Brodsky. I also knew how to bribe an HR manager with cognak, I knew that a pioneer scarf melts on contact with a hot frying pan, I knew how to fit a bicycle into a coffin-sized Soviet elevator, and how Moscow pedestrian underpasses smell in July. All these, and a myriad other formerly real things calcified inside my mind into a kind of dormant lump, a private culture that I had no choice but to lug around with me because it made me who I was. I felt like an alien with a suitcase full of stories. All these stories invaded my paintings and nearly destroyed them.
Like Sasha, the first place I lived in America was Arizona. I couldn't resist sending Sasha there because no matter where you come from Arizona has to be the ultimate culture shock destination. It's a little bit like moving to Mars — the landscape, the weather, and the outlandish ways people ignore the reality of it all: green lawns and golf courses in the desert, huge air-conditioned houses, Christmas lights wrapped around cacti. I have also lived in Chicago, and I now live in Brooklyn. At one point, I was a surly and ungrateful subject of charity. But I wasn't a mail-order bride. I wasn't a teenage mother. Petropolis is not a memoir. All the characters in it are invented, and most of them, men as well as women, have some part of me in them.
http://manoajournal.hawaii.edu/text/issues/descriptions/russia94.html
http://www.ilab.org/db/detail.php?lang=fr&membernr=871&ordernr=CR00173
Adele Barker lives with her son in Tuscon, Arizona, and has traveled extensively throughout Russia and the former Soviet Union. She is the author of The Mother Syndrome in the Russian Folk Imagination, and coauthor of Dialogues / Dialogi: Literary and Cultural Exchanges between (ex)Soviet and American Women.
LITERATURE AND CULTURE IN THE RUSSIAN FAR EAST
Adele Barker, Professor, University of Arizona
Russian visits to US increased 20% in Oct. 2007
Oct — "Industry News", Arizona Office of Tourism
I think 60-70% of them are Jewish.
Raisa Moroz
Florence Melton Adult Mini-School of Tucson Director
Adult Education and New American Program Coordinator