Hilltop
Russians
in
San Francisco
A Record of the Portrero Hill Colony
Introduction
THE WONDER OF PEOPLE IS ENDLESS, no matter who they are. The mirthful miracle of people endures every day, no matter where they have gone, or why.
Customs of people are quaint only when they are not our own, by even our won are sometimes quaint, even to ourselves.
Most of my own customs for example are very quaint to me. I am a smoker of Chesterfields--that is a custom with me. I also wear a hat--these last two years an expensive one which I bout in New York--ten dollars, with my name (Saroyan) stamped on the band, a gentle reminder most likely. It is a custom with me not to steal apples which I wish to eat. Instead I negotiate for them, making the acquaintance of the apple merchant, and giving coins for them. It is a custom for these coins to be American, of the following categories: pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, half-dollars, and dollars. I sometimes sit in an elevated chair and have my shoes shined, This is one of the most fantastic customs I have. In meeting somebody I know I try my best to remember his name and not confuse him with somebody else I know, or with somebody I do not know, and I generally say, Hi-ya, Mr. Winthrop Abernathy of Pacific Street, what's cooking? One of the quaintest of my customs is to sit at a table on which a typewriter rests and to tap out letters, words, spaces, sentences, paragraphs, pages and literature--or what I call belles letters. Little sticks of wood with which I thoughtfully poke around between my teeth after supper, are called toothpicks, and it is a custom of mine to put one of these in the corner of my mouth when I have NOT had supper, just to help me out with my thinking. My most fundamental custom and the one I share with everybody is breathing. This custom is so deeply established in me that there is scarcely a moment when it is interrupted. I have a good many other customs, but so far the National Geographic has not commissioned a half dozen explorers to come out from Fifth Avenue, New York, to make a study of them. Instead, they have invited me to become a member, which I have declined by remaining silent about he whole thing.
Now, this book of pictures by Miss Pauline Vinson is about some very wonderful people who live on Potrero Hill in San Francisco. They are not wonderful because like everybody else then can't help it. These people happen to be Russians. But that isn't what's wonderful about them. They have a style of living which is more or less peculiar to themselves, by that isn't what makes them wonderful wither. In Miss Vinson's own words, "They were originally Volga peasants who migrated to the Caucasus to escape the persecution of the Orthodox Imperial Regimes," but that isn't the wonder of it at all. The wonder of it is that they are alive, and that they have been notice with affection by somebody. If you sill notice anybody with affection he will be wonderful. It is simply that so many people go unnoticed. Their parents don't notice them, and they don't notice their children. The story of the arrival various peoples of America in this land is an old one, and on the whole it is the same story for reach of the various peoples, What they did was get up and leave the old country and come to American, and before they leave here another America will have to be discovered, These Russians of Potrero Hill have nice story, as stories go. As we know, they left the Volgan plains for the Caucasian heights and for the inner freedom without which all good people feel that they cannot enjoy life, but even after they had traveled all that distance somebody in Russia, or some congregation of people in Russia, decided to get after these people some more. It was asked of them to return to the Orthodox Faith and to SPREAD that faith in the Caucasus. This was out of the question for these people, who went by the name of Molokans. Fortunately for them, and for us, America was real when this demand was made of them, therefore they turned to America for escape. In 1904 some of these people reached San Francisco, and during the next couple of years the rest of them now in San Francisco on Potrero Hill began to arrive and settle down.
Besides the Molokani, some of the Russians on Potrero Hill go by the name Prigouni--which identifies their special style of worship. There are also a number of Russian Baptists on the Hill. But man for man, woman for woman, child for child, these people are alike, much the same as the rest of us. They do seem to have, however, certain admirable checks upon themselves, which they like to try to maintain. "They are puritanical, pacifistic and paternalistic. Apart from the simple necessities of life, most worldly things are considered evil, or forced of evil. Tobacco, alcohol in any form, dancing or frivolity or fastidiousness of any kind" are regarded as so much sin and nonsense.
I think the reader will be interested to know what else Miss Vinson has learned of these people, among whom she has lived for a year or so. "The father is absolute master of the house, with the woman calmly accepting an almost Oriental position." Now, I am not a Molokan. I am a Presbyterian. But I myself regard this particular household circumstance as correct by all standards, and the one most likely to lead to the ideal home state. However, we can bear in mind that no matter what the custom might be, or no matter what the intention might be, in the event that the father is an easy-going man as well a Molokan and the mother is a sort of leader, it is quite possible that she, and not he, is the master of the house. If female domination constitutes persecution , there is little hope of geographical escape from it, such as coming to America and living on Potrero Hill. What a man usually does is pretend not to notice.
Miss Vinson says, "They seem to have been highly successful in reducing consciousness to a minimum--thus their extreme placidity. Every trace of the child-like though profound imagination and genius so typical of Slavic peoples seems to be entirely submerged. All of this enables them to resist change more effectively than most such groups coming to this country, but that resistance will diminish as the old people die off. Then, and it will not be long, another picturesque phase of San Francisco life will become a part of the city's colorful past. Most of the young people are typical of the Mission district except that they are distinctly above average as physical types.
"The tumult of metropolitan San Francisco surges around Potrero Hill and washes almost to its crest. But the summit, comprising only a few populous blocks, still remains the refuge from the world which settlers intended it to be. Oblivious of time and change, they follow a solemn and quiet pattern of peasant life. Deeply religious, but protestant and puritanical. the first of these pilgrims reached San Francisco when the city had climbed only part way up the Hill.
"'It was all yellow flowers then and there were no houses,' one of the first settlers said. 'We wrote and told our people in the old country, and soon many families arrived.' "Then land was cheap and work in the nearby industrial districts was plentiful. They built homes and raised their large families in tranquility.
"Today the old people and many of those who were children when they arrived preserve an authentic bit of peasant life and culture unique in this country and almost certainly changed in their native Russia."
I feel that Miss Vinson has told us all that we need to know in words, and will tell us the rest in pictures.
WILLIAM SAROYAN
 |
NOTE:
Bill
Saroyan, was born to Armenian immigrant parents in Fresno,
California on August 31, 1908; and died in Fresno on May 18, 1981. He
authored about 100 books, stories, plays, and articles. He is known
as the "California Mark Twain." See a summary of his life
history and list of major works at: He was honored with a joint Russian and American postage stamps in 1991. Back to Hilltop Russians |
I could find little about Pauline Vinson. She has relatives buried in the Central Valley of California, and must have know many Molokans. She illustrated many books, and authored a few, including another which may mention the Molokans.
- The Flavor of San Francisco - A guide to the "City", James Ladd Delkin, Stanford,1946, sm 8vo, Soft Cover,G, illustrations by, Pauline Vinson... (and others)
- Willie Goes to the Hospital written and illustrated by Pauline Vinson, 1959
- Festivals in San
Francisco. American Guide Series. Prepared by the Northern
California Writers’ Project. Work
Projects Administration. Sponsored by International Institute. Stanford University: J. L. Delkin, 1939.
Considered to be one of the most handsome publications of the American Guide Series, this work was printed in a limited edition of 1,000 copies by the Grabhorn Press in San Francisco. The work, edited by Katherine Gorringe Justice, with an introduction by Walter McElroy, contains descriptions of forty-one festivals and celebrations held in the city of San Francisco by such various ethnic groups as the Japanese, Peruvians, Mexicans, Irish, and Russians. The book is printed in black and red with a colored frontispiece and three full-page colored drawings. The illustrations are hand-printed in various colors by a cut-out tissue paper process. Pauline Vinson designed the colored headpieces.
James Delkin, editor for Hilltop Russians, died in 1954. In 1993, Mrs. Berthe Delkin, donated original proofs of for Hilltop Russians to Stanford University. James Ladd Delkin Papers, 1918-1954, M0647, Dept. of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, Calif. Container List--Series II: Printing ephemera, proofs, and monographs from press -- Proofs for Hilltop Russians in San Francisco, Pictures by Pauline Vinson, Text by William Saroyan. Published by JLD, 1941. Includes also drawings, watercolors, woodcuts. [Box 1, Folder 6]; and, proof for work of prints by Pauline Vinson. [Box 1, Folder 5].