November 01, 2019

The Last Soviet-Americans

In order to get from the center of the Black Sea port of Odessa to that city’s best stretch of beach, you ride for 40 minutes on a tram. To find the best beach in New York City, it takes about an hour from midtown Manhattan: you hop on the subway and cross all of Brooklyn to nearly the last stop – Brighton Beach.

Even before exiting the train, you can look through the window and see Russian-language advertisements plastered on the red brick walls of the mid-twentieth-century apartment buildings. A portrait of Healer Natalia gazes down from one wall. Faded Cyrillic script on another façade offers heirs help getting their inheritance. A newer poster offers a service for sending remittances to the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Brighton is not the realm of opulence and the Russian mafia that some imagine. Maybe it was back in the 1980s, the heyday of Russian-Jewish emigration. But those ambitious young Soviet pioneers who arrived between the brief democratization of the 1960s and the perestroika of the 1980s are now pensioners.

I exit the subway, hoping to find them and their descendants, to find out what Brighton Beach was like and what it has become.

The denizens of this shrinking island of Soviet America are likely to call themselves Russian-Americans, but upon closer questioning they turn out to be Soviet Jews, less often Russians and Ukrainians. They frequently speak of their Jewishness jokingly, in the idiom of Soviet anecdotes of the years when they left the USSR, most often through programs offering passage to Israel. Group leaders on those programs frequently attempted to confiscate participants’ passports while they were still on the plane, so that adventure seekers wouldn’t get it into their heads to jump ship mid-trip, in Europe. But in Vienna, or sometimes in Rome or other capitals, some pioneers of the late 1970s managed to extricate themselves from their groups, ready to leave everything Russian and Soviet behind and make a dash for America. They were daring, but in their haste brought across the ocean the very same “Soviet-ness” that now causes young “Russian Americans” to wrinkle their noses.

Yulia Levit lived in Brighton Beach in her youth and left the area before her parents did. Today she says candidly, “When I lived there, I despised all the parochialism, the absence of understanding of personal space. Everyone there considers your private life their business. The only good things about Brighton were good, cheap food, and bookstores. I fled at my first opportunity.”

The local color evokes mixed feelings of nostalgia and disdain from Valery Ponomaryov, with whom I was able to hang out after his jazz set in Manhattan. He remembers how he first ended up at Brighton in the 1970s: “I realized that I couldn’t live there! It was a miniature Soviet Union, and I had just left!” Having long since become well-known in American jazz, Ponomaryov confesses: “Now I like it there. I go out there a couple of times a week. I’ll wander around, walk on the beach, stock up on Russian food: salo, for example.”

RUSSIAN BEACH

Russian and Soviet – it’s hard to separate the two, particularly in a melting pot like New York.

The reality is that, having emigrated from Soviet Odessa, Kiev, or Leningrad, the current residents of Brighton brought with them a Soviet way of life, both in how they work and play, that can no longer be found in their homeland. And so we are in the twilight of an era when little scenes from Leningrad, or conversations out of Soviet Kiev, are still being reenacted on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean.

You’re unlikely to come upon games of dominoes, cards, or chess in the courtyards tucked behind Moscow’s older residential buildings, but this is how many male residents of Brighton spend their Saturdays. In St. Petersburg, sidewalk sales of pirozhki from open trays is a thing of the past, but at the subway exit in Brighton Beach a woman with dyed red curls and a crimson apron will hand them to you hot, filled with cabbage, potato, or sweet poppy seed filling.

In the street next to the subway station there is a “flea market” in the Odessa tradition: the market doesn’t have its own venue; instead, enterprising citizens with old dishes or jewelry display their wares directly on the sidewalk. One lady screeches into her mobile phone: “Angela, quick, come out to the street, they have some very interesting hair clips!”

The residents of Brighton like to live well and look good, but they have their own ideas about what that means. Natalia Neizhmakova, who made her way to New York from Odessa in 1996, says, “Some people here, in decorating their homes, chase after luxury that they couldn’t afford over there.” She tells the story of a local acquaintance who literally had to be stopped from festooning every corner of his house with decorative molding. “Leather sofas, faux gold and antiques, unbelievable… My husband and I call it ‘barbarian splendor,’” she says.

Neizhmakova herself left Ukraine with only her mother’s diaries, some letters, and… three bookcases worth of books. Hers is a family that treasures the memory not only of their parents, but of their former way of life and everything they went through. “You can talk about whatever you want in your article,” she says, “but it’s important to me that you photograph the pictures of my mama and papa in my album.” She is treating me to mushroom dumplings in the café Skovorodka.

Later, Neizhmakova introduces me to the President of the Odessa Community of New York, Boris Kazatsker, but even he is unable to express unequivocal love for Brighton. “I love Brighton and can’t stand it at the same time,” he says. “But the important thing is, the scenes I see here, they contribute to my sense of humor.” He laughs, leaning his elbows on his sparkling car, which sports the license plate “ОДЕССИТ” (Odessan).

Natalia Neizhmakova shares images from a family album.

UNBREAKABLE UNION

Everyone talks about the Soviet character of Brighton, but how can that be measured? Where is the boundary between Jewishness, Russian-ness, and the “Soviet” person? Many feel that it is exactly this boundary that defines the place. The children who left the USSR and grew up in America have already quit this big beach. They are now Americans. Having moved to central Brooklyn or to Manhattan, they make fun of their former neighbors: supposedly, those who stayed behind are simply too lazy to learn English.

Seva Kaplan, a radio host with a sizeable Russian-speaking audience in the US, left the USSR toward the end of perestroika, gained popularity on Radio Svoboda, and is now a principal at Davidzon Radio.

The denizens of Brighton, Kaplan says between sets, “used to be human rights defenders, dissidents, fighters for greater freedom, but now that’s all gone…” Brighton, he says, is a state of mind rather than geography. “In restaurants they eat up all the bread and dance to any kind of music till the last song is played, because it’s all been paid for,” he says, estimating that the Russian enclave will not exist 10-20 years from now. “Young Central Asia has arrived. And on top of that, any kind of business thrives here.”

I myself had noticed that emigrants from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are running circles around the older inhabitants: their mini-markets work around the clock. In Brighton you can buy anything, day or night.

Roman relaxes on the boardwalk in the morning sun, recounting how he used to be the supervisor of a bus terminal in Leningrad, then found himself in Brighton in 1976, when it was still a ghetto. Even sitting here with him, it’s hard for me to understand why, out of all of New York City, the first arrivals from the USSR chose this specific area, though any Odessan will give you a hint: they can’t live without the sea. What did these pioneers encounter when they first set foot on these crime-ridden streets 40 years ago and found a beachfront that, rather than a place for leisurely strolls, was a setting for robbery and rape? How did the Russians drive away the street crime? For some reason no one wants to talk about this, not Roman, nor Edward, another longtime Brighton resident, who prefers chess to street battles.

Roman eyes a family from Tajikistan, with its numerous children, that has occupied two benches on the beachfront near a group of Russian babushkas. “Russian Brighton is dying,” he says. “There are new residents here – Tajiks. They’ve fully taken over the ‘home attendant’ services. One comes, and their family follows. And now the main intersection has a store sign reading ‘Tashkent.’”

Across the street from the Tashkent supermarket I find the bookstore, Black Sea, which was once a gathering place for Russian-speaking New Yorkers. Its windows and doors are boarded up with plywood. It closed not long ago, as the book market has shifted to the internet. And so, for many, yet another reason for making the trip to Brighton has disappeared. The Saint-Petersburg bookstore hangs on, but it’s had to hire accordionist Nikolai to evoke Russian culture for passersby, if they can hear him over the roar of traffic. The window display behind him exhibits not literary merchandise, but kids’ scooters and Chinese-made toys.

Sometimes it seems like every second man you meet in Brighton is a former Soviet taxi driver. Perhaps the vigor, stamina, adventurism, and wide circle of contacts so indispensable to that profession was excellent preparation for the trans-oceanic leap.

I find a group of taxi drivers from Ukraine and Russia playing cards on a Saturday afternoon, and a curious thing becomes evident as they play: there is no evidence of the rift that has opened as a result of the current war between Kiev and Moscow. Valentin, a former chauffeur from Kiev, laughs: “In Brighton the Donbas doesn’t trigger conflict. Here we only quarrel over who did or didn’t pay for the drinks.” No one else I encountered in Brighton sported any national symbols, but Valentin’s knit cap is emblazoned with the Ukrainian coat of arms. “Well actually, in Brighton everyone pays,” his more serious friend clarifies.

International friendship has a great tradition here. It wasn’t just Russians, Ukrainians and Jews who set this beach as their destination. Kim Hachian arrived here from Yerevan in 1992 and has been mending clothes at a small tailor shop for 27 years. But he spends every annual vacation in his homeland. The vigorous tailor looks not a day over 65, yet reveals he is 83. “The doctors here don’t let you die,” he laughs.

Another hearty old-timer, 98-year-old Boris Feldman, walks several blocks after a morning meeting of veterans. A World War II vet and former physician from Lvov, he is full of stamina and conversation. “In Brighton, there is still friendship among nations,” he says, “because there’s a high percentage of Soviet people here.”

His comrade-in-arms, Leonid Rosenberg, sits in an armchair on the beachfront and lifts his gaze from his magazine, Время и место (Time and Place). “We veterans have held over 35 parades in New York,” he says. “The Americans gave us a warmer reception than they did to their own veterans.” After thinking a bit, he adds, “But now we just mark Victory Day at the Tatiana restaurant,” a sad testament to how few Soviet World War II veterans are left here, across the ocean.

IMMORTAL TATIANA

I decided to see how Brighton entertains itself at night and head to the National – a music-hall and restaurant.

At the entrance, I am greeted by posters and photos celebrating visits by Russian stars of the 1990s. The hall is half-empty and decorated in velvet and “barbarian splendor.” It is an unoriginal replica of the main hall and cabaret rooms of the worst Russian resorts. Where is the promised opulence and revelry of the National? Perhaps they went into decline after the owner and area icon, Sofia Vinokurova, passed away last year. A local street bears her name and that of her brother, Mark Rakhman, but how long can their National survive?

At the end of the evening, I spy a pair of shabby sneakers peeking out from beneath the faded dress coat of a gray-haired doorman. He gazes out the showcase window at the passing cars, as if remembering the carousing of bygone days. He’s eyeing the stretch of road beneath the subway overpass, of which a local once commented to me, “Brighton [Beach Avenue] is a street without sky.”

A different restaurant, the Tatiana, which Rosenberg mentioned, is a favorite venue not just for locals, but for visitors. It often happens that New Yorkers, taking the subway out to Brighton to enjoy the ocean, end up here, digging in to helpings of borshch and pickled herring, sauerkraut and crepes with caviar. At night, the Russian music never stops, and if it does, Russian karaoke takes over.

On my last evening in Brighton, I heard not songs of the Russian homeland, but sirens from fire trucks coming from the direction of the Tatiana. The restaurant, which only the day before was dispensing “100 gram” portions of vodka from a walk-up side window, was enveloped in smoke and flames. Could this be a final coda, signaling the sunset of Brighton?

No, in fact the Tatiana bounced back, and to this day promises on its website “a world of glamorous design, tasteful decorations, overwhelming scenery and perfect lighting for those dining moments.”

November 01, 2019