The first Russians to land on the New World were explorers who reached Alaska in 1648. More than 200 years later, in 1867, Czar Alexander II sold Alaska to the United States. Many Russian settlers returned to Russia, but a small number of them remained. In 1882 16,918 Russian speakers lived in the US, and that number gradually increased to 387,416 by 1899.[6]
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries many Russian Jews migrated to the United States, fleeing persecution at home. Though many spoke Yiddish, most knew Russian.[7] Millions also left Russia after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. The 1920 US Census identified 392,049 United States citizens born in Russia; the statistics from a decade before that showed only 57,926 Russian-born Americans. Most of the newcomers were White émigrés.[7] Russian immigration slowed in the 1930s and 1940s due to restrictions imposed by the Stalin government in the Soviet Union. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service listed 14,016 Russian immigrants entering the country from 1930 to 1944.[7] Most of those people were citizens of the USSR who refused to return to their country from trips abroad, so-called nevozvrashchentsy (non-returners).
The next big wave of immigration started in the 1970s. If they were allowed to leave, Soviet Jews had little difficulty entering the U.S., and many did so.[7] Russian-speaking Jews constitute about 80% of all immigrants from the former Soviet states.[8]
Since 2012, New York State institutions provide free interpretations from/into Russian. Also, some state and elections documents are translated into it.
[9]
Demographics
Education
Russian speakers are more likely to have a higher education degree than the national average. 92% of them have a high school diploma and 51% a bachelor's degree. 75% of Russian-speakers speak English "well" or "very well" according to the 2007 data of the U.S. Census Bureau.[10]
Like most Russian Americans, Russian-speakers are mainly concentrated in major urban areas.[10] The New York metropolitan area contains by far the largest number of Russian-speakers. Brooklyn became home to the largest Russian-speaking community in the United States; most notably, Brighton Beach has a large number of recent Russian immigrants and is also called "Little Odessa".[11] The New York state's Russian-speaking population was 218,765 in 2000, which comprised about 30% of all Russian-speakers in the nation. California came second, with 118,382 speakers, followed by New Jersey (38,566), Illinois (38,053), Massachusetts (32,580), Pennsylvania (32,189), and Washington (31,339), Florida (19,729), Maryland (17,584), and Oregon (16,344).[12]
In California, as of 2000, the highest density of Russian speakers (21% of total population) was observed in the ZIP code 90046, corresponding to the city of West Hollywood and the Hollywood Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles. Statewide, the city of San Francisco accounted for about 14% of all Russian speakers, the ZIP codes of Hollywood and West Hollywood accounted for 12%, and northeast Sacramento accounted for 8%.[13] Alaska holds the title for having the oldest Russian-speaking community (some Alaskans even still speak the old Russian colonial dialect, though it is in steep decline[14]) and even its own unique dialect, dating back to the 1700s, although in much smaller numbers than other areas in the United States. In Nikolaevsk, Russian is spoken more than English.
Viability
In terms of viability, the state of the language in the United States is much better compared to some other European languages, although a considerable minority of the children born to Russian-speaking parents are raised as monolingual English speakers. According to the 2010 Census data, 14.7% of the Russian speakers in the United States are aged between 5 and 17. This is significantly lower than the English speakers (18.8% aged 5–17), but much higher when compared to speakers of Polish (11.3%) and Hungarian (6.8%). The Russian-speaking population is younger in states with large Old Believer or former-USSR Evangelical concentrations, such as Alaska and Oregon.
Table: Percentage of people aged 5 to 17 years among the Russian speaking population in the US, according to the 2010 Census[15]
Note: Total excludes children under 5 years of age, living in Russian speaking households
State
Total
Aged 5–17
Aged 5–17 (%)
New York
216,468
24,531
11.30%
California
141,718
19,503
13.80%
Washington
49,282
13,975
28.40%
New Jersey
46,094
6,636
14.40%
Illinois
41,244
4,871
11.80%
Massachusetts
37,865
5,180
13.70%
Pennsylvania
35,029
5,275
15.10%
Florida
31,566
4,002
12.70%
Oregon
21,443
5,622
26.20%
Maryland
19,892
2,175
10.90%
Texas
17,310
2,108
12.20%
Ohio
15,672
1,847
11.80%
Minnesota
14,427
3,104
21.50%
Virginia
13,922
1,846
13.30%
Georgia
13,091
2,332
17.80%
Colorado
13,090
2,228
17.00%
Michigan
12,363
1,553
12.60%
Connecticut
11,457
1,496
13.10%
North Carolina
9,288
1,699
18.30%
Missouri
7,831
1,566
20.00%
Arizona
7,685
895
11.60%
Wisconsin
6,817
770
11.30%
Indiana
5,722
962
16.80%
Tennessee
4,270
933
21.90%
Utah
4,218
730
17.30%
Alaska
3,912
976
24.90%
Nevada
3,808
436
11.40%
South Carolina
3,806
991
26.00%
Maine
2,408
849
35.30%
Kentucky
2,208
236
10.70%
Idaho
1,966
283
14.40%
Kansas
1,919
288
15.00%
Oklahoma
1,774
270
15.20%
Rhode Island
1,740
90
5.20%
Iowa
1,683
238
14.10%
Louisiana
1,576
267
16.90%
New Hampshire
1,447
263
18.20%
Alabama
1,437
177
12.30%
District of Columbia
947
48
5.10%
Montana
893
332
37.20%
New Mexico
887
109
12.30%
Hawai'i
814
136
16.70%
Nebraska
807
60
7.40%
South Dakota
762
153
20.10%
Mississippi
725
81
11.20%
Vermont
637
80
12.60%
Delaware
550
77
14.00%
Wyoming
519
130
25.00%
North Dakota
429
88
20.50%
Arkansas
415
34
8.20%
West Virginia
338
47
13.90%
Total
836,171
122,578
14.70%
Media
Newspapers
The first Russian-language newspaper in the United States, Svoboda (Freedom), was published in 1867–1871; it was known as the Alaska Herald in English. Dozens of short-lived Russian newspapers were published until 1940.[16]Russkaya Reklama (Russian Advertisement) weekly, founded in 1993 in Brooklyn, New York, is the largest Russian-language newspaper in the US, with a circulation of over 100,000.[17] It consists of yellow pages with classified ads.
Novoe russkoe slovo (The New Russian Word), published since 1910, was the longest published Russian daily newspaper until 2009, when it went weekly.[18] In the 1920s, it stopped being communist and pursued the wider audience of the Russian diaspora.[19] Its 1918-2001 archive is available for digital access at the National Library of Finland.[20]
Two years later, in 2011, the only Russian-language daily, the Reporter[21] (Репортер), began to be published in New York.[18]
Vecherniy New York[22] (The Evening New York) serves Tri-State area Russian-speakers, and Panorama, published since 1980, serves the Russian-speakers of the Greater Los Angeles area.
Kstati Russian American Newspaper (To the Point) serves the Bay Area.V Novom Svete (In the New World) covers mostly international news and is circulated nationwide,[18] while Evreiskii Mir (The Jewish World) is targeted at Russian-speaking Jews.[23]
Television
Some Russian television stations in the United States include NTV America, Russkii Mir (Russian World), RTR Planeta, RT News, RTVi, Channel One, Israel Plus.[23] However, as of the beginning of the military actions by Russia, all Russian broadcasting on cable and satellite had been dropped temporarily. After a week of no broadcasting any Russian Television due to mounting public pressure from the Russian Speaking community TV providers restored access to both RTVI and RTN which were based in NYC. Some access to Russian State Media channels is still possible through the Internet/streaming.
Radio
There are local Russian language stations such as DaNu Radio, Davidzon Radio, Radio Russkaya Reklama in New York, New Life Radio in Chicago, Slavic Family Radio, RussianTown Radio and many more are available online.[23]
The Slavic Sacramento and Slavic Family are the only two online sources that publishes daily news in Russian in California, Oregon and Washington. The main majority visitors of this web site reside in Sacramento and its surroundings, Bay Area, Washington, Oregon, Texas, Florida and New York.
Potowski, Kim (2010). Language diversity in the USA. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN9780521768528.
Reagan, Timothy G. (2002). Language, Education, and Ideology: Mapping the Linguistic Landscape of U.S. Schools. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN0-89789-752-8.
Isurin, Ludmila (2011). Russian Diaspora Culture, Identity, and Language Change. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, Inc. ISBN9781934078457.