Русские американцы: история и современность

Americans of Russian birth or descent

Russian Americans are Americans of full or partial Russian ancestry. The term can apply to recent Russian immigrants to the United States, as well as to those who settled in the 19th century Russian possessions in northwestern America. Russian Americans comprise the largest Eastern European and East Slavic population in the U. S., the second largest Slavic population generally, the nineteenth largest ancestry group overall, and the eleventh largest from Europe. In the mid 19th century, waves of Russian immigrants fleeing religious persecution settled in the U. S., including Russian Jews and Spiritual Christians. From 1880 to 1917, within the wave of European immigration to the U. S. that occurred during that period, a large number of Russians immigrated primarily for economic opportunities. These groups mainly settled in coastal cities, including Brooklyn (New York City) on the East Coast, and Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Oregon, and various cities in Alaska, on the West Coast, as well as in Great Lakes cities, such as Chicago and Cleveland. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922, many White émigrés also arrived, especially in New York, Philadelphia, and New England. Emigration from Russia subsequently became very restricted during the Soviet era (1917–1991). However, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War, immigration to the United States increased considerably. In several major U. S. cities, many Jewish Americans who trace their heritage back to Russia and other Americans of East Slavic origin, such as Belarusian Americans and Rusyn Americans, sometimes identify as Russian Americans. Additionally, certain non Slavic groups from the post Soviet space, such as Armenian Americans, Georgian Americans, and Moldovan Americans, have a longstanding historical association with the Russian American community.

According to the Institute of Modern Russia in 2011, the Russian American population is estimated to be 3.13 million. The American Community Survey of the U. S. census shows the total number of people in the U. S. age 5 and over speaking Russian at home to be slightly over 900,000, as of 2020. Many Russian Americans do not speak Russian, having been born in the United States and brought up in English speaking homes. In 2007, however, Russian was the primary spoken language of 851,174 Americans at home, according to the U. S. census. The New York City metropolitan area has historically been the leading metropolitan gateway for Russian immigrants legally admitted into the United States. Brighton Beach, Brooklyn continues to be the most important demographic and cultural center for the Russian American experience. However, as Russian Americans have climbed in socioeconomic status, the diaspora from Russia and other former Soviet bloc states has moved toward more affluent parts of the New York metropolitan area, notably Bergen County, New Jersey. Within Bergen County, the increasing size of the Russian immigrant presence in its hub of Fair Lawn prompted a 2014 April Fool's satire titled, "Putin Moves Against Fair Lawn". Sometimes, Carpatho Rusyns and Ukrainians who emigrated from Carpathian Ruthenia in the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century identify as Russian Americans. More recent émigrés would often refer to this group as the starozhili 'old residents'. This group became the pillar of the Russian Orthodox Church in America Today, most of this group has become assimilated into the local society, with ethnic traditions continuing to survive primarily around the church.

The territory that today is the U. S. state of Alaska was settled by Russians and controlled by the Russian Empire; Russian settlers include ethnic Russians but also Russified Ukrainians, Russified Romanians (from Bessarabia), and native Siberians , including Yupik, Mongolic peoples, Chukchi, Koryaks, Itelmens, and Ainu. In Hawaii there were three forts at Kauai. The southernmost such post of the Russian American Company was Fort Ross, established in 1812 by Ivan Kuskov, some north of San Francisco, as an agricultural supply base for Russian America. It was part of the Russian America Company, and consisted of four outposts, including Bodega Bay, the Russian River, and the Farallon Islands. There was never an established agreement made with the government of New Spain which produced great tension between the two countries. Spain claimed the land but had never established a colony there. The well armed Russian Fort prevented Spain from removing the Russians living there. Without the Russians' hospitality, the Spanish colony would have been abandoned because their supplies had been lost when Spanish supply ships sank in a large storm off the South American coast. After the independence of Mexico, tensions were reduced and trade was established with the new government of Mexican California. Russian America was not a profitable colony because of high transportation costs and the declining animal population. After it was purchased by the United States in 1867, most Russian settlers went back to Russia, but some resettled in southern Alaska and California. Included in these were the first miners and merchants of the California gold rush. All descendants of Russian settlers from Russian Empire, including mixed race with partial Alaskan Native blood, totally assimilated to the American society. Most Russians in Alaska today are descendants of Russian settlers who came just before, during, and/or after Soviet era; two thirds of the population of town of Alaska named Nikolaevsk are descendants of recent Russian settlers who came in the 1960s.

The first massive wave of immigration from all areas of Europe to the United States took place in the late 19th century. Although some immigration took place earlier – the most notable example being Ivan Turchaninov, who immigrated in 1856 and became a United States Army brigadier general during the Civil War– millions traveled to the new world in the last decade of the 19th century, some for political reasons, some for economic reasons, and some for a combination of both. Between 1820 and 1870 only 7,550 Russians immigrated to the United States, but starting with 1881, immigration rate exceeded 10,000 a year: 593,700 in 1891–1900, 1.6 million in 1901–1910, 868,000 in 1911–1914, and 43,000 in 1915–1917. The most prominent Russian groups that immigrated in this period were groups from Imperial Russia seeking freedom from religious persecution. These included Russian Jews, escaping the 1881–1882 pogroms, who moved to New York City and other coastal cities; the Spiritual Christians, treated as heretics at home, who settled largely in the Western United States in the cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Portland, Oregon; Pennsylvania, and New York. Because of the upheavals of World War I, immigration dwindled between 1914 and 1917. But after the war, hundreds of thousands of Jews began leaving Europe and Russia again for the U. S., modern day Israel and other countries where they hoped to start a new life.

A large wave of Russians immigrated in the short time period of 1917–1922, in the wake of October Revolution and Russian Civil War. This group is known collectively as the White émigrés. The U. S. was the third largest destination for those immigrants, after France and Serbia. This wave is often referred to as the first wave, when discussing Soviet era immigration. The head of the Russian Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky, was one of those immigrants. Since the immigrants were of the higher classes of the Russian Empire, they contributed significantly to American science and culture. Inventors Vladimir Zworykin, often referred to as "father of television", Alexander M. Poniatoff, the founder of Ampex, and Alexander Lodygin, arrived with this wave. The U. S. military benefited greatly with the arrival of such inventors as Igor Sikorsky (who invented the practical Helicopter), Vladimir Yourkevitch, and Alexander Procofieff de Seversky. Sergei Rachmaninoff and Igor Stravinsky are by many considered to be among the greatest composers ever to live in the United States of America. The novelist Vladimir Nabokov, the violinist Jasha Heifetz, and the actor Yul Brynner also left Russia in this period. As with first and second wave, if the White émigré left Russia to any country, they were still considered first or second wave, even if they ended up moving to another country, including the U. S. at a later time. There was no 'strict' year boundaries, but a guideline to have a better understanding of the time period. Thus, 1917 1922 is a guideline. There are Russians who are considered second wave even if they arrived after 1922 up to 1948.

During the Soviet era, emigration was prohibited, and limited to very few defectors and dissidents who immigrated to the United States of America and other Western Bloc countries for political reasons. Immigration to the U. S. from Russia was also severely restricted via the National Origins formula introduced by the U. S. Congress in 1921. The chaos and depression that plagued Europe following the conclusion of World War II drove many native Europeans to immigrate to the United States. After the war, there were about 7 million displaced persons ranging from various countries throughout continental Europe. Of these 7 million, 2 million were Russian citizens that were sent back to the U. S. S. R. to be imprisoned, exiled, or even executed having been accused of going against their government and country. Roughly 20,000 Russian citizens immigrated to the United States immediately following the conclusion of the war. Following the war, tensions between the United States and the then Soviet Union began to rise to lead to the U. S. S. R. placing an immigration ban on its citizens in 1952. Some fled the Communist regime, such as Vladimir Horowitz in 1925 or Ayn Rand in 1926, or were deported by it, such as Joseph Brodsky in 1972, or Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in 1974, some were communists themselves, and left in fear of prosecution, such as NKVD operative Alexander Orlov who escaped the purge in 1938 or Svetlana Alliluyeva, daughter of Joseph Stalin, who left in 1967. Some were diplomats and military personnel who defected to sell their knowledge, such as the pilots Viktor Belenko in 1976 and Aleksandr Zuyev in 1989. Following the international condemnation of the Soviet reaction to Dymshits–Kuznetsov hijacking affair in 1970, the Soviet Union temporarily loosened emigration restrictions for Jewish emigrants, which allowed nearly 250,000 people leave the country, escaping covert antisemitism. Some went to Israel, especially at the beginning, but most chose the U. S. as their destination, where they received the status of political refugees. This lasted for about a decade, until very early 1980s. Emigrants included the family of Google co founder Sergey Brin, which moved to the U. S. in 1979, citing the impossibility of an advanced scientific career for a Jew. By the 1970s, relations between the U. S. S. R. and the United States began to improve and the U. S. S. R. relaxed its immigration ban, permitting a few thousand citizens to immigrate to the United States. As a result, the U. S. S. R. was pressured into allowing those citizens that wanted to flee the U. S. S. R. for the United States to do so, with a cap on the number of citizens allowed to leave per year. The Jackson Vanik amendment made it possible for the religious minorities of the U. S. S. R. such as Roman Catholics, Evangelical Christians, and Jews to immigrate to the United States. The slow Brezhnev stagnation of the 1970s and Mikhail Gorbachev's following political reforms since the mid 1980s prompted an increase of economic immigration to the United States, where artists and athletes defected or legally emigrated to the U. S. to further their careers: ballet stars Mikhail Baryshnikov in 1974 and Alexander Godunov in 1979, composer Maxim Shostakovich in 1981, hockey star Alexander Mogilny in 1989 and the entire Russian Five later, gymnast Vladimir Artemov in 1990, glam metal band Gorky Park in 1987, and many others.

Russian speakers in the U. S. YearSpeakers 1910 57,926 1920 392,049 1930 315,721 1940 356,940 1960 276,834 1970 149,277 1980 173,226 1990 241,798 2000 706,242 2011 905,843
With perestroika, a mass Jewish emigration restarted in 1987. The numbers grew very sharply, leading to the United States forbidding entry to those emigrating from the USSR on Israeli visa, starting October 1, 1989. Israel withheld sending visa invitations from the beginning of 1989 claiming technical difficulties. After that the bulk of Jewish emigration went to Israel, nearing a million people in the following decade. However, the conditions for Soviet refugees belonging to several religious minorities including Jews, Baptists, Pentecostalists and Greek Catholics were eased by the Lautenberg Amendment passed in 1989 and renewed annually. Those who could claim family reunion could apply for the direct U. S. visa, and were still receiving the political refugee status in the early 1990s. 50,716 citizens of ex USSR were granted political refugee status by the United States in 1990, 38,661 in 1991, 61,298 in 1992, 48,627 in 1993, 43,470 in 1994, 35,716 in 1995 with the trend steadily dropping to as low as 1,394 refugees accepted in 2003. For the first time in history, Russians became a notable part of illegal immigration to the United States. With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the subsequent transition to free market economy came hyperinflation and a series of political and economic crises of the 1990s, culminating in the financial crash of 1998. By mid 1993 between 39% and 49% of Russians were living in poverty, a sharp increase compared to 1.5% of the late Soviet era. This instability and bleak outcome prompted a large new wave of both political and economic emigration from Russia, and one of the major targets became the United States, which was experiencing an unprecedented stock market boom in 1995–2001. A notable part of the 1991—2001 immigration wave consisted of scientists and engineers who, faced with extremely poor job market at home coupled with the government unwilling to index fixed salaries according to inflation or even to make salary payments on time, left to pursue their careers abroad. This coincided with the surge of hi tech industry in the United States, creating a strong brain drain effect. According to the National Science Foundation, there were 20,000 Russian scientists working in the United States in 2003, and the Russian software engineers were responsible for 30% of Microsoft products in 2002. The number of Russian migrants with university educations is higher than that of U. S. natives and other foreign born groups. 51% of lawful Russian migrants obtain permanent residence from immediate family member of U. S. citizens, 20% obtain it from the Diversity Lottery, 18% obtain it through employment, 6% are family sponsored, and 5% are refugee and asylum seekers. The Soviet Union was a sports empire, and many prominent Russian sportspeople found great acclaim and rewards for their skills in the United States. Examples are Alexander Ovechkin, Alexandre Volchkov, and Andrei Kirilenko. Nastia Liukin was born in Moscow, but came to America with her parents as a young child, and developed as a champion gymnast in the U. S.

On 27 September 2022, White House press secretary Karine Jean Pierre encouraged Russian men fleeing their home country to avoid being drafted to apply for asylum in the United States. In early 2023, the Biden administration resumed deportations of Russians who had fled Russia due to mobilization and political persecution.