Russia

Stretching from Europe to Asia, Russia spans 11 time zones. Heartland of the former Soviet Union, Russia is today a democratic federation, with ethnic groups such as the Tatars and Bashkirs politically represented in their own autonomous republics. The capital is Moscow, and the official language is Russian.

Learn more about Russia

History

Russia has a long and rich history that can be grouped into the time periods presented below. The information presented below is taken from the following websites:

• Russia Interactive Timeline

• Russia Timeline

• The Soviet Era

Culture

Historical Russian and American Contrasts

“Both countries are multi-ethnic, continental, great powers, expansionist, tamed a wilderness, and settled by a variety of diverse groups. Both regard themselves as chosen nations with a messianic mission, destined to bring their own versions of enlightenment to less fortunate people, They are both Nuclear powers. The countries both think BIG, are energetic and inventive. The people appreciate casual, direct, and an often blunt way of speaking, and both show heartfelt hospitality to visitors from abroad.”

Cultural Characteristics of Russian Immigrants

The following excerts come from writing by Dr.Paul Robert Magocsi at the University of Toronto. 

Language

Russian is the largest of the Slavic languages and is spoken today by over 250 million people. For most first-generation immigrants, the Russian language was used to communicate with one's family and friends until they attained a knowledge of English. For others, the Russian language took on a symbolic function and was maintained to preserve a sense of Russian identity. For these reasons, the Russian language has never died out in the United States and, if anything, the number of native speakers and publications has expanded dramatically during the last two decades.

Russian Orthodoxy

For the most part Russian immigrants and their descendants have succeeded in assimilating into mainstream American life. A few groups have avoided acculturation and maintained the traditional lifestyle they brought from their homeland. Such traditionalists include the Orthodox Christian Old Believers and the non-Orthodox Molokan Christian sect. Whether these people live in large cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Erie, Pennsylvania; in rural towns like Woodburn, Oregon; or in the backwoods of Alaska, they have continued to use the Russian language at home and sometimes succeeded in having it taught in public schools. These groups' distinct dress and religious-based lifestyle keep them at a social distance from other Americans and distinguish them from the rest of the community.

Eastern Christianity and Russian Orthodoxy differed from the Western Christian churches in several ways. The Divine Liturgy (not Mass) was conducted in Church Slavonic instead of Latin; priests could marry, and the old Julian calendar was retained. This meant that by the twentieth century fixed feasts like Christmas (January 7) were two weeks behind the commonly used Gregorian calendar.

• The Christian Church which grew up in the eastern parts of the Roman Empire came to be called the Eastern Orthodox Church — especially after the split between the Roman Catholic West and the Byzantine East.

• Orthodoxy is also the term for the Christian community which, in all humility we are thankful to admit, has maintained correct worship and belief — (“ortho” means “right” or “correct” and “doxos” means “praise” as well as “doctrine”).

• That is to say, the Christian community which has not added anything unnecessary or deleted anything necessary in its essential world view and way of life and witness.

• The Orthodox Churches consist of 15 autocephalous (self-governing) local bodies throughout the world, all in communion and constant communication with each other, and all sharing the same dogmatic beliefs, spelled-out in the 4 th century Nicene/Constantinopolitan Creed.

• Finally, Orthodox Christianity has defined itself as the church community which has continued to preserve the Life of the Holy Spirit within it throughout time (since 33 A.D.) and throughout the world (all over the globe) — not in a wooden or petrified manner, but in a dynamic, living and vital way that (in its life and witness, its liturgy and worship) expresses Heaven on Earth.

Family

The Russian extended family structure of uncles, aunts, cousins, godparents, etc. that prevailed in villages and shtetls was difficult, if not impossible, to recreate in the United States. Therefore, families became more inner-directed and isolated than they had been in Russia.Russian immigrants tended to place greater emphasis on education.

Role of Women

In traditional Russian society, women were legally dependent upon their husbands. The Bolshevik Revolution radically changed the status of women. Under communist rule, Russian women were offered equal economic and social responsibilities, which resulted in a high percentage of females in the labor force. The majority of physicians and health care workers in general are women. In the family, however, a woman is still expected to perform domestic tasks such as cooking, cleaning, and shopping. Women have played a determining role in maintaining the cultural identity in the family, passing on knowledge of Russian language and culture to younger people and by participation in philanthropic work that affects the entire community.

Virtues

Webber & Webber (2002) list the following virtues describing Russian culture:

• Industriousness

• Patience

• Honesty

• Fidelity

• Optimism

Festivals and Traditions

Webber & Webber(2002) list the following holiday, festivals and celebrations in Russian culture.

• January 7th - Christmas

• January 14th - New Year's Day

• January 25th - Student's day

• February 14th - St. Valentine's Day

• February 23rd - Defender of the Motherland/Fatherland Day - Day to honour Russian men

• End of February/early March - Shrovetide - End of Winter festival

• March 8th - International Women's Day

• April 1st - Day of Laughter

• April - Orthodox Easter

• May 1st - May Day

• May 9th - Victory Day - Commemorates the end of WWII or the Great Patriotic War

• June 12th - Independence Day - Independence of the Russian republic from the USSR in 1990

• June - White Nights festival in St. Petersburg

• September 1st - Day of Knowledge - Start of the academic year

• November 7th - Great October Socialist Revolution Day - losing favor, but was the most important day in the Soviet calendar

Immigration to America

The following excerpts come from writing by Dr.Paul Robert Magocsi at the University of Toronto.

• Large-scale emigration from Russia to the United States only began in the late nineteenth century. Since that time, four distinct periods of immigration can be identified: 1880s-1914; 1920-1939; 1945-1955; and 1970s-present. The reasons for emigration included economic hardship, political repression, religious discrimination, or a combination of those factors. Both the tsarist Russian and Soviet governments placed restrictions on emigration. In 1885 the imperial Russian government passed a decree that prohibited all emigration except that of Poles and Jews, which explains the small numbers of non-Jewish Russians in the United States before World War I. By the early 1920s, the Bolshevik/communist-led Soviet government implemented further controls that effectively banned all emigration. As for the second-wave White Russian refugees who fled between 1920 and 1922, they were stripped of their citizenship in absentia and could never legally return home. This situation was the same for the post-World War II DPs, who were viewed as Nazi collaborators and traitors by the Soviet authorities.

• 1880s-1914, over 3.2 million immigrants arrived from the Russian Empire. Nearly half were Jews; only 65,000 were ethnically Russian, while the remaining immigrants were Belarusans and Ukrainians. Regardless of their ethnoreligious background, their primary motive was to improve their economic status. Many of the 1.6 million Jews who also left did so because they feared pogroms—attacks on Jewish property and persons that occurred sporadically in the Russian Empire from the 1880s through the first decade of the twentieth century. While many Jews from the Russian Empire did not identify themselves as Russians, another group of immigrants adopted a Russian identity in the United States. These were the Carpatho-Rusyns, or Ruthenians, from northeastern Hungary and Galicia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (today far western Ukraine, eastern Slovakia, and southeastern Poland). Of the estimated 225,000 Carpatho-Rusyns who immigrated to the United States before World War I, perhaps 100,000 eventually joined the Orthodox Church, where they and their descendants still identify themselves as Americans of Russian background.

• 1920-1939. The second wave of immigration was less diverse in origin. It was directly related to the political upheaval in the former Russian Empire that was brought about by the Bolshevik Revolution and Civil War that followed. Over two million persons fled Russia between 1920 and 1922. Whether they were demobilized soldiers from anti-Bolshevik armies, aristocrats, Orthodox clergy, professionals, businesspersons, artists, intellectuals, or peasants, and whether they were of non-Jewish (the majority) or Jewish background, all these refugees had one thing in common—a deep hatred for the new Bolshevik/communist regime in their homeland. Because they were opposed to the communist Reds, these refugees came to be known as the Whites. The White Russians fled their homeland. They left from the southern Ukraine and the Crimea (the last stronghold of the anti-Bolshevik White Armies) and went first to Istanbul in Turkey before moving on to several countries in the Balkans (especially Yugoslavia and Bulgaria; other countries in east-central Europe; Germany; and France, especially Paris and the French Riviera (Nice and its environs). Others moved directly westward and settled in the newly independent Baltic states, Poland, Czechoslovakia, or farther on to western Europe. A third outlet was in the Russian far east, from where the White émigrés crossed into China, settling in the Manchurian city of Kharbin. As many as 30,000 left the Old World altogether and settled in the United States. This wave of Russian immigration occurred during the early 1920s, although in the late 1930s several thousand more came, fleeing the advance of Nazi Germany and Japan's invasion of Manchuria. During this period, approximately 14,000 immigrants arrived in the United States.

• 1945-1955. The third wave of Russian immigration to the United States (1945-1955) was a direct outcome of World War II. Large portions of the former Soviet Union had been occupied by Germany, and hundreds of thousands of Russians had been captured or deported to work in Germany. After the war, many were forced to return home. Others lived in displaced-persons camps in Germany and Austria until they were able to immigrate to the United States. During this period, approximately 20,000 of these Russian displaced persons, the so-called DPs, arrived

• 1970s-present. In contrast, the fourth wave of Russian immigration that began in late 1969 was legal. It was formally limited to Jews, who were allowed to leave the Soviet Union for Israel as part of the agreements reached between the United States and the Soviet Union during the era of détente. In return for allowing Jews to leave, the United States and other western powers expanded the economic, cultural, and intellectual ties with their communist rival. Although Jews leaving the Soviet Union were only granted permission to go to Israel, many had the United States as their true goal; and by 1985 nearly 300,000 had reached the United States. After 1985 the more liberal policy of the Soviet government under Mikhail Gorbachev allowed anyone to leave the Soviet Union, and thousands more Jewish and non-Jewish Russians immigrated to the United States. Because Russia is an independent country with a democratically elected government, newcomers cannot justify their claim to emigrate on the grounds of political or religious persecution. This has resulted in a slowing of Russian emigration during the last decade of the twentieth century.

Implications for SLPs

Before working with any client it is important to remember that every individual is unique and has their own personal and family cultures. Russia is a large country with a dynamic history, and multiple ethnicities and languages. To get an idea of the geography and typography of Russia please link to the Russian Maps page. The following information may be helpful when working with Russian-speaking and/or multi-lingual individuals.

• A bilingual speaker may experiences speech and language differences in English resulting from differences between Russian and English grammar and pronunciations. If differences observed in a client's English are consistent with the effects of Russian on English they may not indicate disorder. For more information on Russian language and the influence speaking Russian may have on English syntax and phonology please link to the Russian Language page.

• Russians have immigrated to America throughout the past two centuries. During this time period Russia's politial, economic, and religious climates have varied. For more informaiton on Russian history please link to the Russian History page. Immigrants have moved to America for a variety of reasons. General information about immigration is presented on the Russian speakers in Portland page.

• For a variety of reasons, some immigrants have chosen to fully assimilate into mainstream American culture and adopt English as their home language while others have chosen to maintain their Russian culture and preserve Russian as their home language. An in depth interview about cultural perspectives can help the SLP plan culturally appropriate assessment and treatment for individual clients.

• Literacy and education have been and are valued in Russian culture. School speech-language pathologists may wish to discuss with the family how therapy will help their child succeed academically in the United States.

• Russians typically use direct language similar to Americans. Clinicians may feel comfortable using direct language with their clients and their families.

• If Russian culture is an important part of a client's life, SLPs may want to incorporate Russian holidays into therapy. A list of Russian holidays and festivals is included on the Russian Culture page. Russian-Americans may celebrate holidays such as Christmas and Easter on different days based off the Julian calander.

Original Contributor: Jenny Weber, Winter term 2007