I was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, to paraphrase a comedian of local importance, when democracy had already started but the food was still missing: 1992. My family moved to New York for good in late 1998. My decision-making process to study in Macaulay Honors College involved largely the financial side of things (I happen not want to start my life with debt in the hundred thousands) and Brooklyn College’s humanities reputation. I am a history major with particular interest in British history, because the island is the source of many of the processes that still affect the world today (most notably industrialization) and because of its current peculiar geopolitical status in the world today (world’s largest financial hub, millionaire bolt hole, and one of the priciest housing markets for those very same millionaires because of some Switzerland-style taxing policies). I hope to develop my analytical skills, to understand the bureaucracy of libraries, archives and other troves of information that are the life-blood of a historian and most importantly to learn the dominant theories of human development through time (most academic work revolves around a couple influential papers that form the shoulders of Newton’s giants).
My parents came to America with the main goal of keeping my brother and me from the army and to study for a PhD (though that did not work out too well). Both are humanists and pedagogues by profession. In Leningrad/St. Petersburg they worked as teachers, private tutors, librarians, tour guides and translators (in a dozen languages) more or less at the same time. My father continues to work as librarian for YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. As former members of the Soviet intelligencia and former citizens of the “Cultural Capital” of Russia as well as its “Window to Europe,” my parents had always had certain cultural aspirations for their children. They should not only be successful financially in America (which translates into studying, going to college, getting a degree, and the whole traditional up-the-social-ladder mentality) but also be cultured (read 19th century literature, know Russian, appreciate the classics and in general fit the Russian idea of an intellectual).
It did not take long for my parents to realize that the majority of Russian American community in New York thinks of itself as more Jewish than Russian (my father is Russian and my mother is Jewish and both are involved with Jewish studies but this was never a defining quality in our mixed, secular, one might say Sovietized, family), came from southern Russia/Ukraine/Central Asia, and tried assimilate to standard American culture. Their children as a whole forget the language after a couple of years or remember bare husks of it (such as, “Mom food!”). Their verdict on the level of American education in general was also unsatisfactory. Their sons were growing up in an unfavorable environment. Something, in their opinion, needed to be done.
First, they would write articles for Russian newspapers in New York. They received little response. Then the need of making a living and the need to agitate combined with my mother giving private lessons in Russian to children. She did not shy away from teaching in other languages, of course, but did this without zeal. Over time this practice grew. About five years ago, our family began publishing a children’s magazine in Russian, Malenkaya Kompaniya (Little Company) for emigrants, which yours truly still typesets to this day. A few years later my parents decided to open a Russian children’s theater studio, which they still run. At around this time, a newer and younger generation of Russians emigrated. They came from a much wealthier country than the earlier immigrants and did not despise their mother country. They were less Jewish as a whole as they came with working visas and not as refugees (America took in Jewish refugees from the CIS for a decade after the fall of the USSR and the end of state-backed racism, one would guess by inertia). They were also richer than the earlier immigrants and can afford getting their children taught. In time, preserving the Russian language and culture attached to it grew more and more popular in Russian community (a process, I might add with a bit of pride, that my parents are actively engaged in).
