Queens - A Patchwork Of Cultures

Strength in Numbers
In the 2000 Census, 51,192 Queens residents identified themselves as being of Russian ancestry, 10,306 Ukrainian, and 4,164 people claimed Lithuanian. (Earlier censuses lumped all different Soviet republics under the heading of “Russian.”)

Where They Live
Sections of Forest Hills and Rego Park and, to a lesser extent, Kew Gardens and the Rockaways, have evolved into mini-Moscows, with Russian language filling the air, and Cyrillic lettering widely visible on the streets.
Bukharan Jews, an offshoot of Middle Eastern and Persian Jewry dating from the 6th Century A.D., consider themselves socially and culturally different from the other East European Jewish sects.

During the 1990s, approximately 30,000 Bukharan Jews found homes in the area of Rego Park, Forest Hills, and Kew Gardens.

Today, many Bukharan shops and synagogues—most bearing Cyrillic lettering—court residents along the length of 108th St., providing a taste of Uzbek culture to all area residents.

How They Got There
Vast migration to the United States began in the late nineteenth century, but Russian culture began to emerge in Western Queens throughout the early 20th century. Socialist Revolutionary Leon Trotsky even spoke several times at Urban Hall in 1917, in the area then known as Winfield.

Although the number of Russian immigrants in Queens increased throughout the 20th century, the explosion of Russian and former-Soviet immigration to the borough did not truly begin until the early 1970s, when hundreds of thousands of Jews fleeing Communist oppression made the borough their home.

What Makes Them Who They Are
It’s important to note that all immigrants from the former Soviet Union can’t necessarily be called Russian. Many hail from other former Soviet republics, including Uzbekistan, Lithuania, Georgia, and Ukraine. Collectively, these Soviet émigrés have loaned a distinct and memorable presence to the streets of Queens.

Immigrants from Eastern Europe and Russia surged in numbers in the late 20th Century. Tribune photo by Ira Cohen

The Good Life
Throughout the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s the United States government and Jewish aid groups sponsored the exodus of many oppressed Russian Jews.

On one monumental day in 1989, a total of 1,750 Soviet refuges—1,356 of them Jews—landed at John F. Kennedy airport in an extraordinary airlift exodus that involved eight different planes. The cost of resettling each immigrant was split between Jewish aid organizations and the U.S. government.

The Not-So-Good Life
“Housing, jobs, language barrier, acculturation, adjustment, and schools,” have traditionally been some of the biggest problems for Russian immigrants from the 1970s onwards, says Lali Janash, a caseworker at the Esther Greenblatt Russian Service Center.

Also, though many immigrants may have been well educated back home, they have been forced to take drastic job cuts in order to make their way in Queens.

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