Final Draft: An American Family: Time Capsules of the Fourth Wave of Soviet-Jewish Refugees Resettling in Rogers Park
Earlier this week, I recorded a live Facebook video in which I discussed questions, discussion points, concerns, and more brought up by everyone who shared their thoughts with me on the second essay installment in my Identity Diaspora Essay collection: An American Family: Time Capsules of the Fourth Wave of Soviet-Jewish Refugees Resettling in Rogers Park.
I addressed comments that spoke about the rewarding feedback I received from Soviet Jewish refugees and their children, the lack of digital archiving in research facilities, the most interest piece of research I found in writing this essay, how the specificity of these stories and framing my family experiences in Chicago changed the way I looked at the project as a whole, and what resources are in place to help alleviate the infrastructural impact on immigrant/diasporic/refugee populations.
I took all these comments into consideration, as well as my own edits, and produced this, the second and last draft of the essay An American Family: Time Capsules of the Fourth Wave of Soviet-Jewish Refugees Resettling in Rogers Park:
Between 1987 and the early 1990s, the fourth and final wave of immigrants came from the former Soviet Union (also known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or the USSR) to the United States. Many of these individuals were coming to the United States as Jewish refugees, departing and arriving amidst Perestroika and the fall of the USSR. Perestroika was a political movement for reformation within the USSR in the 1980–1990s that was enacted under Mikhail Gorbachev and his glasnost, or openness, in which increased automation and labor efficiency was promised, but in actuality, there came to entail a greater awareness of economic markets and the end of central planning.
My family members and friends made their way out of the USSR one way or another; many were able to find a way to Chicago, others ended up in near Brighton Beach in New York City, the Richmond District in San Francisco, and near Sunny Isles Beach in Miami. More extended parts of the family found their way to Canada, Germany, and Israel; sometimes they stayed, or sometimes they found their way to the United States.
Mark Popovsky, a journalist with the Russian-language newspaper Novoye Russkoye Slovo, estimated that there may have been 30,000 illegal immigrants from the former USSR who had not applied for asylum in the United States, according to the article “Fourth Wave of Soviet Immigrants to U.S. A Breed Apart.”
My family was one of the 61,000 of Jews that were able to leave the USSR with refugee status. The waiting list for the visas to the United States had grown to about 500,000 in 1992. That same year, my family arrived in Chicago, when both my parents had just turned 27 years old. They, along with my maternal grandparents and great aunt, moved into a one-bedroom apartment in a building on Touhy Avenue in West Ridge, just next to Rogers Park. In that building already resided my uncle, aunt and my cousins, as well as my paternal grandparents and close family friends.
According to Igor Studenkov in the Cook County Chronicle’s “A look back at Devon Avenue’s Russian-American community,” mostly Russian-speaking seniors live near Devon Avenue nowadays. According to the 2010 U.S. Census for Chicago, 28,264 people identified as Russian/Russian-American and 4,561 identify as foreign-born. 1,180 of this population entered Chicago in 2000 or later. From this data, 2,095 people reporting Russian ancestry live in West Ridge.
In 1990–1991, the Women’s Auxiliary of the Jewish Community Centers of Chicago conducted interviews with Soviet Jews to create “The Internal Passport: The Soviet Jewish Oral History Project.” Their stories shared much in common with my own family’s stories.
“When we first came here it was hard to find an apartment of our own because we didn’t have any money,” Machine building engineer Yuri B. said, who was 37 at the time of the interview for “The Internal Passport.” “This apartment is not as comfortable as how we lived in Russia, but that is not important. I am so glad that we are here and my son eats fruit every day.”
Feeling American or something in-between
Between 1990 and 2000, Touhy Avenue and Devon Avenue became a neighborhood of Soviet diaspora refugees and immigrants, most of whom were Jewish. More than 20 percent of the entire Jewish community in Chicago were Russian-speaking Jews. The different businesses along the central parts of the streets had largely Russian-speaking staff, even if they were not managed by a Russian-speaking person or entity.
“On the one hand, [Russian-Jewish immigrants] [were] eager to integrate into the American Jewish community, but on the other, they want[ed] to maintain a degree of separation, a comfort zone enabling them to feel socially, culturally, religiously, politically, linguistically, and even economically distinctive,” Sam Kliger, Director of Russian Affairs, AJC wrote in his essay “Russian-Jewish Immigrants in the U.S: Social Portrait, Challenges, and AJC Involvement.”
Many of the interview subjects of “The Internal Passport” echoed and confirmed the sentiments of Kliger’s findings.
For instance, Tatyana Fertelmeyster, a journalist who was 32 at the time of the interviews, said that she had found very good friends in Chicago — all who were from the former USSR.
“I am not sure if I will be able to be so close with any American person as I am close with the people from Russia, because we are familiar with another kind of friendship,” Fertelmeyster said. “Maybe because of this history, we know that if you are my friend, we should be ready to stand back-to-back and to fight for each other. Here, it is maybe not so necessary.”
In addition to history, cultural differences and divides may have separated the refugees from their American neighbors. For instance, Asya Goldman came to the United States with her husband and young daughter; they first lived in her uncle and his girlfriend’s two-bedroom condominium before they helped them find their first apartment — which happened to be in the same building as my parents, my aunt and uncle, my grandparents, and my great-grandmother.
At the time, Asya’s daughter Annette was five years old. Asya remembers her first moment of culture shock, when Annette was thirsty and the girlfriend gave her a drink of cold water from the fridge.
“I almost had a heart attack because I thought she was going to get sick,” Asya said. “We would never drink cold water or beverages with ice in them back home. We thought that kids could get sick. If children were thirsty, we’d give them something warm.”
Asya was so nervous, but she wasn’t sure how to tell the girlfriend this because she didn’t speak English. Eventually, the girlfriend figured out what was bothering Asya.
“I was freaking out!” Asya said. “‘Nonsense!’ she had said to me, ‘You don’t get sick from drinking cold water!’”
Others felt distinctly separated from the United States and Americans, like electrical designer Rita Masis Blinstein, who was 35 at the time of the interview.
“My feeling is that I’m not really American,” Blinstein said. “I can’t get into American culture right away, because of language, because of a big wall between me and things I want — literature, cinema, trips. Not just to see something, but to talk to people, to be inside of the society.”
Despite not feeling like she belonged, Blinstein still had hope for what future generations of her family could have in the United States.
“A color(ful) life,” Blinstein said, when asked what she wanted for children in the United States. “You know, it’s like an old TV set. I didn’t believe in it. A lot of people who came to visit Russia said the same. ‘You have no colors here.’ And we didn’t understand it because we didn’t know. We lived in it. We couldn’t compare it with any other life.”
The novelty of shopping
For my family, so much of what they experienced when they first immigrated to the United States, and specifically Chicago, was punctuated by stores and shopping trips. Though they could only afford to purchase absolute necessities, everyone in my immediate family remembers their first visit to Venture, a retail/department store chain similar to Kmart or Walmart. Compared to what types of clothes and accessories one could find in the USSR, Venture wowed them. The vast selection and array of clothing and accessory options was unlike any other merchandise store they had experienced in the USSR. And though they couldn’t afford to shop there, they would still walk for 30 minutes to visit the store, window shop, and admire the bountiful selection.
My mom recalls that she had very stark reactions to retail and business, in general. After my dad earned enough from his first job as a pizza delivery person, they went to a car dealership in Rogers Park to see if they could find a car. She cried as they entered it.
“The car dealership was one of the most incredible things I had ever seen,” she said to me.
“Cars were so expensive,” my dad added. “So only people who were high up in the Communist party, had government-level positions, or who worked at a deficit trading position could afford or obtain a car.”
“But this wasn’t one car, it was many cars, maybe even hundreds, just standing there,” my mom continued. “I felt as if I had landed on another planet.”
My mom also knew that this could have never happened in the USSR: if a car dealership was to have an open lot like the one they stood in, the cars would have been stolen altogether or all car parts would be removed within 24 hours.
“And it wasn’t just the cars,” she continued. “It was all the stores. All the merchandise, the groceries. I got lost in an Aldi the first time I went inside. I was so fixated on the different pastries and cookies; I was trying to differentiate the prices at the front of the store and was separated from the rest of the family. I couldn’t find my way out of the store!”
My aunt, uncle, cousins, and grandparents arrived in the winter of 1991 (my parents arrived in the spring of 1992). One of my cousins, Liliya, was 11 years old at the time. She remembered her first trip to a grocery store, a Dominick’s, and how the sheer size of the store “freaked [her] and the family out.”
“In the USSR, I remember standing in a line for two hours that your mom had put you in so you could buy milk and eggs,” Liliya said. “I had to make sure that a neighbor’s daughter or son wouldn’t try to take it out of my hands.”
In that Dominick’s, they ran through the aisles of the store and grabbed as many items off the shelves that they could find.
“We were afraid they wouldn’t be there tomorrow,” she mused. “We were just wowed that things were readily available and that they would continue to be there tomorrow. I think about that now whenever I go to a grocery store.”
My parents and family would also go on treasure hunts through the alleys of Rogers Park. There, they would find other other people’s “garbage,” which ultimately became their treasure. My aunt, uncle, and cousins dragged home the entire Encyclopedia Britannica, and eventually an organ and an upright piano. My parents found couches, tables, and eventually an upright piano, as well.
“Our great-grandma [Riva] would guard the items from another treasure hunter, while I would go to fetch my dad or your dad, who both worked night shifts,” Liliya told me.
The multicultural Devon
In the areas within West Devon Avenue, North Western Avenue, Touhy Avenue and North Kedzie, my family and our friends spent time together by window-shopping or paying visits to the different stores and businesses they frequented.
West Devon Avenue has long been a carousel of communities. In the early 1970’s, Russian-speaking immigrants, Assyrians, Indians, and Pakistanis arrived in Chicago after the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965. These different communities settled in different parts of Rogers Park, opening up businesses and stores along Devon Avenue, between Fairfield and Francisco. Nowadays, the Eastern European presence has sprawled to the north suburbs of Chicago, but many of the South Asian businesses that were there during my family’s first years in the United States remain.
“Devon promotes both multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism in its own ways,” Chicago based historian Dipesh Chakrabarty, who teaches South Asian History and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, said.
My parents and their friends were gathered around our kitchen table in July 2018. Their friends had brought chocolates from a recent trip to Germany. My parents served different varieties of herbal tea (“I haven’t been able to drink black tea before bed for five years now,” my mom had said to me) and freshly cut watermelon.
They hadn’t seen each other for several years. Each of their kids had grown older and/or left the house. One of them had started working at a new company and purchased a house. My parents themselves were in the midst of looking at places to move for when my brother would graduate high school. They reminisced on their first years on Devon Avenue all together, when time felt like it moved so rapidly, when day to week to month brought new places and changes.
According to Julia Bikbova in “A look back at Devon Avenue’s Russian-American community,” the Russian-speaking immigrants who established the commercial spaces on Devon were part of the late 1960s immigration, when Israel lobbied the Soviet government to allow its Jewish population to immigrate.
They recalled Three Sisters Delicatessen, a Russian deli that specialized in deli items offered for carry out, like herring, smoked and fresh fish, smoked meats, salamis, red and black caviar, dumplings, spinach pie, stuffed cabbage, and blintzes. My dad remembered that it was owned by Russian-speaking people who had come over during the immigration in the 1980s. They also remembered Republic Bank, Gandhi Electronics, Argo Georgian Bakery, the Kedvon pharmacy, Elita Video for Russian movies and music, Moda clothing store, and Russian Books and Souvenirs (which most people in the community referred to as Ilya Ryudyak’s Russian Books).
My mom remembered the Patel Video Store, where she and my grandmother would go to make copies of documents needed for Medicaid and Public Aid. It was cheaper to make the the copies at the store rather than the nearby chain drug and packaging stores. My mom would speak in English with the owner of the video store, and after several months of them coming to the store, he asked if she wanted to work there.
“He had decided to expand his business to offer Russian films and videos,” my mom said. “We had been taught at the JCC that if someone offered us a job, we should say yes first, then think about whether or not we want the job later. I enthusiastically told him yes and gave him my number; even though, at the time, I was seven months pregnant and working at a video store was the farthest thing from my mind.”
A support system
There were a number of social services and synagogues located near West Ridge, where many Soviet Jews resided. The Bernard Horwich JCC was one of the several different organizations near and around Rogers Park that supported the fourth wave of Soviet-Jewish refugees; others included Temple Menorah, the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago (now known as Jewish United Fund), Cheder Lubavitch Hebrew Day Schools, Hillel Torah, Mather High School, Friends of Refugees of Eastern Europe (now known as Synagogue FREE), and more.
These organizations helped coordinate incoming Russian-speaking Jewish refugees with English courses, trade classes, and jobs. They all first went to Temple Menorah to determine their English levels.
They also went to Synagogue FREE, as it provided free services on Shabbat and holidays.
“This was our community synagogue,” Annette said. “Often, we would go as a way to connect with other Russian speaking immigrants.”
Mather High School also hosted Russian concerts and theatrical performances, which was an important way for the community to connect with each other.
“I think this helped the immigrant generation feel connected to culture they left behind,” Annette said. “It provided sweet nostalgia and a sense of comfort and familiarity. It was rare that [my family] turned down an opportunity to attend these events, even if the entertainment was of moderate interest. I think they just enjoyed attending to experience normalcy: their music, their poetry, their theater.”
Then, after the spring of 1992, my parents and family friends went to JCC’s vocational services to find job placements.
Like many other Soviet people, my parents both held university degrees; my mom specialized in chemical engineering whilst my dad specialized in civil engineering. My mom worked several positions in chemical and geological laboratories; my dad worked for a company that made structures for the city, like government buildings, shopping areas, etc. He was responsible for drawing projects, plans, and calculations.
A notable part of their immigration wave (they were no exception) consisted of scientists and engineers who created a strong “brain drain effect” in the United States. According to the National Science Foundation, there were 20,000 Russian-speaking scientists working in the United States in 2003, and the Russian-speaking software engineers were responsible for 30% of Microsoft products in 2002. The number of former Soviets with university educations was higher than that of US natives and other immigrant groups, according to the 2000 US Census Bureau.
For both of my parents, coming to the United States would make their former certifications and degrees invalid. In addition to getting re-certified in their engineering exams, they would need to pass the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) exam, a standardized test to measure the English language ability of non-native speakers. Both of these endeavors would take a considerable amount of time. They sought out other job and education options when they arrived in Chicago.
Vocational services saga
My mom, for instance, was quite certain she would become an accountant in Chicago. Before she left Kiev, her former coworkers worried for her, but she seemed unfazed.
“Among everything we had to figure out, I was so absolutely sure I would become an accountant,” my mom said. “My mom was a head accountant in her company. I knew the process for becoming a Certified Public Accountant in the United States was not as tedious as becoming re-certified as an engineer, and I knew I was good with numbers.”
At her first meeting with JCC, my mom was sure she would be sent to English classes and accounting classes, like she had planned and like so many others were told to do. Asya, for instance, was given a bookkeeping job and placed in a program for computerized accounting.
Instead, my mom’s caseworker, Ms. Kahn, determined that my mom had plenty of experience, based on her laboratory work, and that her English level was sufficient for her to get a job immediately. She matched her with a chemical laboratory, where she would be washing chemical dishes and equipment for eight hours a day, five days a week for $5.50 an hour.
On one hand, my mom was thrilled. This was a time in which all arriving refugees were racing each other to find a job, any job.
“It was considered like climbing Mt. Everest,” my mom said. “It didn’t matter what job it was or what the pay was. It just mattered that it was a job.”
On the other hand, realizing what the job entailed made her less thrilled. She was initially so excited for her first interview that she used some of the family money to buy an epic, “manager-worthy” suit and shoes from a secondhand store. When she tried the outfit on at home before the interview, she realized how the position she was going to interview for didn’t match the outfit she had on. So she changed into something much more plain.
The interview had gone well, and after, she was given a massive, chemical safety manual to read and study in preparation for an exam, which she had to pass in order to officially land the job. At the same time, she found out she was pregnant with me.
A few days after the interview and pregnancy, she told her mom, my grandmother, about the pregnancy. My grandma was the kindest, gentlest, and most pensive woman. At first, she didn’t say much in reaction to either pieces of news. Then, a few days later, she walked into a room where my mom was studying the manual and asked me what she was reading.
“I told her I was studying this chemical manual for the job,” my mom said. “And she said to me: ‘Ah, sweetheart, you’re wasting your time studying. You don’t have to read it.’ My mom was always so kind, so when she spoke so plainly and strictly, I paid attention. She said, ‘You will only work there if you’re able to pass through my umbilical cord.’ In other words, she would not let me work there. She told me that this pregnancy was the priority, not some job that could possibly endanger it. And I was so happy. Because to be honest, I didn’t want to wear those rubber gloves on my feet and hands and wash chemical dishes for eight hours a day. I immediately agreed with my mom, which she didn’t expect because I was typically very stubborn.”
My mom was nervous to go back to Ms. Kahn at the JCC, because for all intents and purposes, my mom’s case was completed and filed away. She had already gotten her a job.
“I was such an easy win for her,” my mom said. “She had already gotten me a job. I also didn’t want to tell her about my pregnancy; I didn’t want to share such private, intimate information with a stranger.”
So, my mom and grandma decided she would tell her that she didn’t want to work with chemicals, that she didn’t find it good for her health, long-term.
“Oh, how she yelled at me!” my mom recalled. “I’ll never forget how she yelled at me. She said she would not help me find anything: not a job, not a class, not a program. She told me I was ungrateful. What’s funny was that the case worker’s job, their purpose at work, was to help refugees, to help people like me. So that was ironic. After I basically blacklisted myself, I sought my own path. I decided if I wasn’t working, I would at the very least be studying.”
Back to school (again)
For the next year, my mom studied English at Hilliard Raymond Adult Education Center, as well as Harry S. Truman College in Uptown, where most Jewish refugees were awarded grants to study English. My grandmother and great aunt joined her in those classes; they were able to save money for themselves if enough people in a household took advantage of the English class grant.
Her plan was to learn English well enough so that she could take the TOEFL exam and then apply to a city college to pursue a degree in accounting. In her English class at Hilliard, she and her friend Sasha vividly remember the English teacher, who was brilliant and impassioned.
“He not only knew the language well, but he savored teaching every word,” my mom said.
In their English classes, Sasha initially knew English the best out of everyone.
Sasha remembered how some other Russian speakers struggled with learning English, but still somehow made it work for them. For instance, one woman in their English class spoke only in present tense, and would use her fingers to show past (pointing backward), present (pointed down) or future (pointed ahead).
The driver’s license conundrum
My mom would leave Rogers Park at 9 AM and walk to Uptown for classes. At 9 PM she would walk back home to save money on bus fare. Later that year, she got her driver’s license.
My dad had taught my mom how to drive, as he was using the car himself for work. He was able to buy a used car after his first job in the United States, working as a pizza delivery person his first spring and summer in Chicago. He had learned how to drive shortly before they left the USSR. Then, his brother found him a position working as a quality control inspector at the plastic plant Lustro Plastics, where he already worked. My dad continued to work on the side in pizza delivery.
While he worked at Lustro Plastics and the pizza shop, he, too, took English classes, as well as AutoCAD classes, at Truman College as part of the refugee grant. He hoped to learn enough English that he could look for a job elsewhere that was more closely aligned with what he was interested in and of course, paid more.
A month before I was born, my parents finished their English classes and my mom felt ready to take the TOEFL exam; it was the last scheduled exam she could take before submitting an application to a city college for the fall semester. My dad drove my mom to the Loop to take the TOEFL exam. He dropped her off and planned to pick her up two hours later, when the exam was scheduled to end. My mom was standing in line when she realized that she didn’t have her original, Soviet passport papers. She didn’t think she would need them, considering she had a driver’s license.
“Why would I need my old Soviet papers when I had a real, American driver’s license?” my mom said she. “I did have a few extra papers that proved that I was not born in the United States nor that I was a native English speaker. As if I my accent or my appearance wasn’t already a giveaway.”
The organizers of the TOEFL exam did not find this sufficient, nor did they find her pleas to bring the identification to them right after the exam fulfilling. She sat outside on the steps and cried until my dad came to pick her up.
Just make a new plan
My mom had to think of a new plan; without the TOEFL certification, she could not apply to schools in the fall to pursue an accounting degree. A month passed, and I was born. Another month passed, and the man from the video store called to ask if my mom if she was still interested in working there.
“I thought everyone was going to tell me no, that I had to be with you,” my mom said to me. “You were so little… But everyone, including your dad and your grandma, encouraged me to go to work. And I was like, ‘Oh… really?’ So, I went to work for four to six hours a day, three or so days a week. I remember the first $70 I earned. I was so excited. We could use that money to feed everyone for a week.”
While at work, she read a Russian newspaper advertisement that featured courses on programming through the Blitstein Institute. She passed this advertisement onto my dad, who was more than ready to get out of Lustro Plastics. He and one of our family friends, Sasha, went to sign up for the program and learned the full title of the institute: the Blitstein Institute for Women at Hebrew Theological College, for women exclusively.
My dad brought this information back to my mom and encouraged her to go study there herself. She was in the second-ever group of programmers for that course. There, she made a friend that she knows to this day, and following the nine-month program, she found her first programming job at the software company FiServ.
While my mom studied at Blitstein, my dad found an advertisement posting in the Chicago Tribune for a civil engineering position. He worked for a company that created panels for bridges and similar structures, where he would draw and calculate measurements and diagrams. He worked there for three years, before he decided to switch his career and take programming classes.
“Working there was good, but it wasn’t much of an advance,” my dad said. “I could draw the same diagrams for years. It became boring to me, even though I was working in AutoCAD on the computer, rather than drawing by hand. Programming seemed more advanced to me. You had to think about each problem and how you could solve it much more deeply.”
Everyone took similar yet diverging paths to learn English and find themselves in a new profession. My parents’ friend Natasha, for instance, learned English when she was hired to work as a nanny for an Orthodox Jewish family of 10 children.
“She didn’t know much English at all when she started, but now, she knows English better than any of us,” my mom said. “She’s not Jewish, her husband is, but she still learned all the holidays and Kosher laws on the job. She knew the laws better than all of us. In that moment, at that time: if we said we needed a job, we could be anyone.”
Another friend of theirs, Yuroslav, found himself a position working the night shift at the gas station.
“He liked it so much,” my dad said. “He was the king of the gas station.”
Children in the time of transition
I was born a little over a year after my parents’ first year in Chicago. My grandmas and great aunt would walk me around Touhy Park and other parts of the neighborhood.
My 11-year-old cousin Liliya and my 3-year-old cousin Dima lived in an apartment in the same building as my paternal grandparents, and later my parents and my mom’s side of the family. When my cousins’ parents were away for English classes or work, Liliya would become the ‘adult’ of the house.
“In the [USSR], being independent meant taking a train across town or walking two miles to music class,” Liliya said. “We all didn’t know that children weren’t supposed to be left alone without an adult.”
Annette’s family would find any other Russian-speaking neighbors to check in on her while she was alone, or she would stay at their apartment. She was 6-years-old at the time.
“The neighbors were usually older women or grandmothers who lived alone, sewed, and watched Star Trek religiously,” Annette said. “My mom would tell me, ‘stay here and don’t touch anything while I’m gone.’ She was especially afraid that I would start a fire. I did not. My mom would call and check in on me and I’d say, ‘I’m sitting here, not touching anything.’”
Later, her and her family moved to another building and she formed a close friendship with a girl her age next door. They kept each other company and would play at her house when Annette’s parents weren’t home.
Annette would also sometimes be dropped off at my uncle and aunt’s apartment. Her and Dima would play together while Liliya looked after them, cooked, or cleaned around the apartment. In the winter months, Liliya came up with a game for the younger children to play, where she would take a big, black garbage can, and either Dima or Annette would climb in and then slide down the apartment building stairs.
When she wasn’t looking after the younger kids or at home, Liliya found herself working odd jobs around Devon Avenue; she asked if people needed anyone to do some work. She walked a neighbor’s dog on her way to the park in the mornings. She washed dishes and toilets at a restaurant. At age 12, she was babysitting a boy that was 10 years old.
“I had my own earnings, and emotionally and mentally, I felt like I was on my way to becoming an adult, even though I was only 11 years old,” Liliya said. “I learned that there is no limit to what one could accomplish in this country, because if you ask, you could get what you’re looking for.”
Both her and Annette attended Russian Transitional School, where they spent the first several months in Chicago learning English and acclimating to living in the United States. Liliya didn’t feel like she got much out of the experience; it neither advanced her English abilities, nor did it make her feel more comfortable in the American academic environment. She did, however, find solace when the classes would get together for group prayer, though it not was related to religion.
“I just thought we sang really pretty, mostly in minor key melodies,” she said.
She connected singing the melodies to the time she had in school just before leaving the USSR. Liliya had just been accepted into Little Octobrists, which was a Communist youth group that children in the former USSR were obligated to join.
“I had that sense of belonging before, which in Chicago, I lacked,” Liliya said. “Getting together with all the girls who had a musical ear gave me a sense of belonging. I had a notion that I was a part of something and not just a random person.”
After the five months of school was over, she continued following some Jewish traditions, like washing her hands before a meal and lighting candles for Shabbat.
“It wasn’t even about God,” she said. “It was about doing things that all these other people in a group were doing. It made me feel special.”
After, Liliya attended Hannah G. Solomon Elementary School, when her parents’ good friends, Debbie and Steve, were able to convince the principal of the school that Liliya had good math skills and that language would not be an issue. This was a difficult time for Liliya.
“I could see that I dressed differently than the other kids,” Liliya said. “I was the kid that no one wanted to hang out with. I was just this new person, who couldn’t say a word in English, who couldn’t understand them, and only smiled when anyone said anything. I would come home and cry my eyes out.”
The school soon hired an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher, and another Russian-speaking girl joined her school. By the time Liliya entered seventh grade, she had placed out of the ESL classes and entered accelerated reading and math programs.
“I still didn’t have the cool FILA gym shoes, but suddenly, I began to make friends,” Liliya said. Later, her and her family moved the north suburbs, where she attended Niles North High School.
Annette attended Hillel Torah, a private Jewish school, as a result of a subsidized grant.
“I didn’t love the school experience, because upscale American Jewish kids, who were not exposed to foreigners, were not the most welcoming,” Annette said. “My wardrobe consisted largely of hand-me-downs and Salvation Army/thrift store items (before that was cool). It was not so easy in the school popularity department. Overall, though, I was happy as a clam. I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity I had. It kept me out of the Chicago public school system and helped me learn about my heritage, study Hebrew, connect with the Jewish community and speak to my grandparents in Hebrew when I visited Israel.”
Annette and her family moved to Buffalo Grove in 1995 to a middle-class, suburban neighborhood. She quickly realized just how glaring the socio-economic gap was between her own family and other Northshore families.
“Growing up, I was incredibly proud of my parents,” Annette said to me. “Like yours, they worked so hard to provide the best opportunities (like moving to the Adlai E. Stevenson High School district) and aligning with the Jewish community in Buffalo Grove. This shaped my work ethic and resilience in a significant way.”
What it was in Russia, and what is missed
On September 29, 1991, “The Internal Passport: The Soviet Jewish Oral History Project” became part of the permanent archives of the Spertus Institute Museum.
A play was written based on the interview project: “Internal Passport: A Journey Home,” by Joan Kohn and Marilynn Preston. It was first performed at Spertus College of Judaica on September 29, 1991, with an original cast including Peggy Goss, Gene Grillo, and Iris Lieberman, and with music by Peter Sadkhin.
The play touched on subjects like anti-semitism in the former USSR, which many refugees in United States remembered experiencing at a young age:
“It begins with name calling,” “Internal Passport: A Journey Home” reads. “When I was 6 or 7 my father first told me I was Jewish. It was terrible. I hated it. […] At school, they called me the worst, Zhid. In 5th grade, one of my classmates, Peter Yanko, I’ll never forget, he kicked me and told me I should go to Israel. Zhid. I was always afraid someone would say something to me about my nationality. I was ashamed of being a Jew.”
My mom distinctly remembers being outcast from her first day at camp after she revealed to her bunk mates that she was Jewish.
“In Russia, your nationality is always with you,” “Internal Passport: A Journey Home” continues. “Everyone must carry their identification card. It’s called the official Soviet Citizen’s Internal passport. Line by line is listed first your family name, then your first name, then your father’s name. Line 4 is where you were born, and on the fifth line, your nationality. In my passport, it was Evrej: Jew in Russian. Other passports might say Ukrainian or Byelorussian. We weren’t Jewish in our customs or in any other way. Just in our passports. What does that mean? Jew? It’s just a small word. But it marked us forever.”
That mark had its bad moments, but sometimes had its good. My parents and family friends recount stories to me from the USSR all the time. They remember the taste of fresh-picked wild strawberries, or the first bite of Kievski torte after having waited in line for several hours.
“I miss my friends, too,” “Internal Passport: A Journey Home” continues. “And I miss my grandmother. She’s very religious and my mom says it’s too hard for an old woman to leave the graves of her parents. And I miss fishing with my Uncle Yuri. It was against the law, but he took me anyway. I also miss parts of nature, like the little animals, the birds. There’s this small forest near Moscow filled with mushrooms, flowers, and berries. And the light and shadows… with the light, the way it shines in that small forest, well, it’s just the way nature should be. I miss that. I hope I can go there again someday.”
Coming to the United States and finding their own community within their new country was a new experience for my family, their friends. Their nationality was now American. They no longer felt like “the other.”
“Aside from the awareness that our lifestyle was frugal, it was good,” Annette remembered. “I did not know any different and was surrounded by love and community of friends (old and new, like your parents). We were all having the same ‘American experience’ and felt like extended family more than ‘friends.’ A strong support of each other.”
I have grown up with these stories, of waiting in long lines for toilet paper in the USSR, of camping adventures through Ukraine and farm volunteer hours in Russia, of how my parents came to know each at 13 and love each other at 20, of my family’s departure to United States and what it took for both sides of the family, of how they survived their first years in United States, of how happy this country made them. I have grown up with these stories, though they are not rightly mine.
I cannot help but feel as though my own memories are permanently entangled with my family’s memories. There are certain images in my mind; though they seem so vivid and real, they are just stories that my family shared with me.
I often imagine my mom’s memories of me as a child. She tells me over and over again about how I wouldn’t go to sleep when she would sing for me. In one of the rooms of our small, West Ridge apartment, my mom used to rocked me back and forth in her arms, singing Russian lullabies in an airy and melodic soprano. I would begin to drowse off then flick my eyes back open again, holding onto every note, every breath. Sometimes, when she repeats this story, I can almost feel her cradling my small form, the warm breath from her singing swooping over my little face.
“Identity Diaspora: A Collection of Essays by an American Daughter of Soviet Jewry” is JUF Russian Jewish Division’s Tikkun Fellowship project by Danielle Levsky, funded by Genesis Philanthropy Group.
