As the Russian Consulate Closes in San Francisco, a Community Reacts

For Father Stefan Pavlenko of the Church of All Russian Saints in Burlingame, the last three weeks have been filled with uncertainty since the closing of the Russian consulate in San Francisco. Ever since the Trump administration forced the Russian consulate in San Francisco to close, Pavlenko has worried whether he will be able to see his family in Russia as easily as before. “I’m just a dad,” Pavlenko says angrily. “Just a dad who has a daughter in Russia and we want to visit her and our grandchildren.”

The sudden closure of the largest and oldest Russian consulate in the United States, has left many in the Bay Area’s Russian community frustrated and confused.

Elderly Russian citizens living in the United States are now wondering if they will continue to receive their pensions from the Russian government. Nick Buick, director of Russian American Community Services, a Eastern European retirement home in the Richmond District which provides meals and care to Russian senior citizens, says a sense of panic has overcome the retirement home. “There’s a whole slew of senior citizens in San Francisco who collect a pension in Russia, because they worked there, and they get their version of what is called social security.” Now, Buick says, it will be much more costly and difficult for them to continue receiving these benefits.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many people who were eligible for retirement moved to America while still collecting their pension checks from the newly formed Russian government. Today, the Russian government still pays pensions to millions of non-resident Russian citizens who once worked in government jobs in the USSR or were in the Soviet military. When the San Francisco consulate was open, local pensioners had to visit several times a year to prove that they were alive and eligible to keep getting their pension checks.

“It’s inconvenient for U.S. Green Card holders or U.S. citizens,” Buick says. “We’re inconveniencing Americans!”

Maria Konakova’s says that everything is thrown up into the air for her grandparents who live in the Bay Area. Because of their age, she says, “It’s currently impossible to put them on a plane and fly them to Seattle or Houston” where the two closest Russian consulates are located. “We are unsure of the protocol.” Konakova has lived in California for 15 years and is a student at the University of California at Berkeley.

Along Geary Boulevard, the heart of San Francisco’s Russian community, market owners, restaurant waiters, shoe repairmen, and delivery boys expressed anger over the closing of the consulate. “It’s an idiocy!” says a man delivering produce. “It’s so childish,” says Elena Mironova, owner of the Eliseevski EuroMart. “There are so many things we could be working together on. In two days they were treated like criminals,” Mironova says in reference to the two days the Americans gave the Russians to close down the consulate.

Not everyone, however, along Geary Boulevard is sad to see the consulate go. One young man working behind the counter at Europa Plus, a eastern European grocery, was asked for his opinion on the closure of the Russian consulate replied, “I’m Ukrainian, I couldn’t be more happy.”

After the Obama administration shut down Pioneer Point, the Russian Embassy’s country retreat in Maryland in December 2016 in retaliation for Russian interference in the 2016 United States presidential election, the Russian government downsized American consular offices in Moscow in July of 2017. Since then it has been a tit-for-tat war between the two nations. Many American diplomats were given two months to move out of Moscow and the American government gave the Russians just two days to shut the consulate in San Francisco. During the short scramble to vacate the building, smoke billowed from the rooftop chimney, leading to speculation that documents were being burned.

Residents of the affluent Pacific Heights neighborhood where the consulate was located voiced their displeasure weeks after the closing of the consulate. “What can I say? They were really good neighbors,” said Betty Stillwach, who lives two doors down the street. “We’re sad to see them go. They used to do block parties for everyone. They served vodka and food. It was great.” Stillwach’s feelings were echoed by numerous neighbors, except one who said with the consulate gone, “The parking is so much better!”

Down the street at the Russian Center of San Francisco, Zoia Lu-Choglokoff, the director of the center, says she is saddened knowing that after years of good relations, Russia and U.S. are in conflict again. “And for what?” She says while shaking her head. “For what?”