A BIT OF THE OLD COUNTRY SOVIET JEWS PUT DOWN ROOTS AND A CULTURAL MIX GROWS
BY LESLIE KATZ, Special to the Mercury News

BEHIND a makeshift boutique selling brightly painted Russian folk dolls and KGB-issued watches, triangular Lenin banners flutter in the breeze.

The smell of steaming stuffed cabbage and piroshkis wafts from a stand offering dollar shots of Stolichnaya vodka. And the strains of a balalaika lend cadence to the hugs and kisses of friends greeting each other warmly with Russian salutations.

Surprisingly, this is no Moscow street scene, but the Albert L. Schultz Jewish Community Center in Palo Alto on a recent Sunday afternoon. Hundreds of Russian speakers converged on the site for a daylong fair of Russian food, music, dance and carnival games - a zestful taste of the old country here in the new.

The spirited scene is far from unusual. In the past several years, as thousands of emigrants from the former Soviet Union have streamed into the Bay Area in search of economic opportunity and religious freedom, Russian cultural life on the Peninsula has blossomed like Gorki Park in spring.

Just walk into the Russian Media Club in Mountain View. Opened nine months ago by Alex Alshvang, an emigrant from Baku, Azerbaijan, the store offers the latest in Russian music, publications and computer software. Customers can purchase everything from centuries-old Russian folk ballads to the newest recording by Alla Pugachova, a red-haired pop superstar who croons breathy odes to love.

Not long ago, notes Alshvang, ''to get a Russian CD, I had to go to New York. Things are picking up.''

In the past two years, WMNB, a 24-hour Russian television station in New York, became available to local viewers via satellite. So did an hour of daily programming by the Los Angeles-based Russian Television Network of America. Russian newspapers abound; a number of Peninsula libraries have opened Russian-language sections.

Meanwhile, at the Palo Alto Jewish community center, which many consider the hub of Russian life on the Peninsula, the new immigrants pack the auditorium regularly for performances by traveling Russian theater, song-and-dance troupes and readings by Russian-speaking authors.

Silicon Valley has drawn an abundance of Russian-speakers with backgrounds in engineering and computer programming. Many hail from urban centers where those industries thrive - Moscow, St. Petersburg, Odessa.

''These are cities with great cultural traditions,'' says Boris Vladimirsky, director of the Jewish Community Center's Russian department and a former professor of performing arts history at Odessa University. Emigrants from those places, he adds, ''have a desire for lectures, theater, music, concerts.''

Best and brightest

The Peninsula's Russian roster, in fact, reads like a who's who of the former Soviet Union's cultural elite: Boris Bernstein, a world-renowned art scholar from Tallin, Estonia, lives in Palo Alto; Rosa Lysaya Gaby, a choreographer who directed Chora Mare, a well-known folk dance ensemble in Kishniev, Moldavia, now teaches dance to students of all nationalities at Lysaya Dance School on the Peninsula; and Camilla Kolchinsky, who once served as assistant conductor of Moscow's Bolshoi Theater, since 1994 has been music director of the El Camino Youth Symphony in Palo Alto.

One of a handful of female conductors in Russia, Kolchinsky saw glimpses of a luminous career back home, but the Jewish musician also felt downtrodden by anti-Semitism. As a result, she left her native land in 1976 and arrived in this country six years ago, after stays in Israel and Scandinavia.

Today, the 49-year-old Mountain View resident is pleased with her life and work, spilling an arpeggio of pride for her gifted young students.

''They perform such difficult and interesting pieces; the level is very high,'' she says. ''Russia has top music education, but they don't have a system of youth orchestras as in the United States.''

Immigration flow grows

Since 1989, when the Soviet Union relaxed its emigration policies as part of Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika, the United States has seen a steady flow of emigrants from the region. The influx has increased since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991; like other major urban areas, the Bay Area has proved a favorite destination.

Today, an estimated 35,000 Soviet immigrants live in the Bay Area, with at least 2,500 based on the Peninsula. Palo Alto and Mountain View have attracted particularly large contingents. San Mateo, Redwood City, Belmont and Foster City have drawn their share, as well.

Some of the immigrants left home for economic reasons. A great majority - some say more than 90 percent - are, like Kolchinsky, Jews who emigrated to escape the anti-Semitism that hindered their education and professional lives. U.S. immigration law affords Soviet Jewish emigres refugee status, which gives them full work authorization, medical benefits and food stamps.

''We were always given the feeling we were not welcome,'' says Mikhail Portnov, an affable 41-year-old who emigrated from Moscow in 1990 and owns a computer school for Russian students. For Jews back home, ''whatever you do, there is a barrier.''

New barriers

On arriving to the United States, Portnov found barriers of another sort. A digital design engineer with one degree in telecommunications and another in mathematics, he could not find a job to match his background.

''I applied for many jobs; nobody wanted to talk to me,'' the Los Altos resident says. ''I had zero American experience, no marketable skills.''

Eventually, a Russian friend here helped Portnov land a job in software quality-assurance testing. He excelled, finding the field so ripe that in 1994, he established a school to train other Russians to enter it; all classes are conducted in Russian.

In the small suite of a Mountain View office complex, students at Portnov Computer School learn not only the skills needed for software testing, but also the finer points of job searches and interviewing in the United States.

To successfully accomplish those tasks, certain cultural disparities must be understood.

For example, where aggressively highlighting one's strengths is standard procedure for U.S. interviews, in Russia, ''it is very important to be considered a modest person,'' Portnov says. ''I teach my students to sell themselves.''

Portnov boasts a high job-placement rate, noting that graduates of his school work at such companies as Oracle, Informix, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and Cannon.

Still, he acknowledges the inherent difficulties even the most highly educated immigrants face when trying to negotiate the U.S. job market maze.

Roadblocks vary

For some, language emerges as a major obstacle. Some find no niche for their skills. Others, such as doctors, cannot immediately transfer their abilities, but instead must undergo extensive additional training and pass licensing exams.

Stories of physicians, engineers and academicians who end up delivering pizzas, making piroshkis or selling flowers are not hard to come by, but neither, ultimately, are stories of triumph.

Arkady Sobolev, a native of St. Petersburg with a doctorate in mathematics, immigrated to the Bay Area five years ago and tried for more than four years to land a job in his field. With his family on welfare, his frustration rose while his self-esteem plummeted.

''I can't express how hard it is to not have a job,'' says the 56-year-old. ''It's terrible. You don't feel like you are a man.''

Earlier this year, however, the tide turned for Sobolev. After graduating from Portnov's school, the San Francisco resident landed a position as a software quality-assurance consultant to C A T S Software in Palo Alto.

He finds the daily commute taxing and misses working as a mathematician, still, the new job has lifted Sobolev's spirits immensely. ''I feel better,'' he says. ''It's a great difference.''

Copyright 1997, The San Jose Mercury News. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

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