According to the United States Census Bureau, 600,000 Russian-speaking Americans lived in New York City in 2019, or 8% of the city’s population. If we include the suburbs, the number exceeds 1.6 million. AT the day before the presidential election and in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, we went to meet Russian emigrants who arrived in New York at the turn of the 1990s.
For many immigrants, it all starts with love at first sight… “In 1990, I came to visit friends. But when I saw Times Square, I fell in love! I fell in love with the city. I had to live here, this is where I would succeed! Remembers Vlad Lavrinovich, now artistic agent and owner of the Steak and Lobster restaurant.
A story similar to that of Alexandre Gertsman. In 1992, director of an architectural firm in Dnipropetrovsk, he flew to New York, tourist visa and 200 dollars in his pocket. Once there, he decides to stay. Clandestinely. “I did all the jobs in the dark possible and imaginable, remembers the man who now runs a prestigious contemporary art gallery in Manhattan. Over time, I was able to regularize my situation before finding a job as a guard at the Guggenheim Museum. It was a bit humiliating, for the architect that I was, to find myself planted in a room to watch visitors … But I survived! I made contacts, and it was at this time that my vocation as a collector was born. Today he specializes in Russian painters …
For other immigrants, Big Apple was first synonymous with refuge, hope and freedom. “Between the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, everyone who could left [d’URSS], testifies Inna Barmach-Jourbina, lawyer and singer from Vilnius, Lithuania. The period was unstable, the future uncertain, we did not ask ourselves whether to emigrate – but when and where? “
“When we, the Jews of Riga, began to see the Latvian nationalists parading through town in the evening with their torches and swastikas, we understood that it was time to pack our bags …”, testifies for his part Anna Gourvitch, beautician. In America, the first times were hard: “The refugees received a small financial aid… It was not much: at one point, I ate a banana a day! », Says Tatiana Komarova, dental assistant. “I collected the expired cakes from the pastry shop where I worked! “,
