The
first Russians reached America in 1747 when fur traders arrived in
Alaska. Some settled in the area and the Russian Orthodox Church became
active in the region in 1795. When Alaska was purchased by the United
States in 1867 most Russians living in the area returned home.
It was not until the later stages of the 19th century that large numbers
of Russians emigrated to the United States. The main reason for this
was the wave of pogroms in southern Russia against the Jewish
community that followed the assassination of Alexander
II in 1881.
Research suggests that over half settled in New York and Pennsylvania.
Most were unskilled and were forced to accept low-paid jobs in factories
and mines. Some unions refused to accept them as members and this
resulted in them joining organizations such as the International
Workers of the World (IWW).
Large numbers of Russians settled in the Lower East Side of New
York. One trade union activist, Abraham
Cahan, emerged as the leader of this group and played a role in
persuading a significant number to join the American
Socialist Party. Others, such as Emma
Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Senya
Fleshin
and Mollie Steimer, became involved in
the emerging anarchist movement.
There were several very important books written about Russian immigrant
life. This included Yekl,
a Tale of the New York Ghetto (1896) by Abraham
Cahan and the The
Promised Land
(1912) by Mary Antin.
Russian immigrants also contributed a great
deal to the development of science and industry. Important figures
included the aircraft engineers, Igor Sikorsky
and Alexander de Seversky, the biologist,
Selman Waksman and the pioneer in the
development of television, Vladimir Zworykin.
In 1919 Woodrow Wilson appointed A.
Mitchell Palmer as his attorney general. Worried by the revolution
that had taken place in Russia in 1917, Palmer became convinced that
Communist agents were planning to overthrow the American government.
Palmer recruited John Edgar Hoover as
his special assistant and together they used the Espionage
Act (1917) and the Sedition Act
(1918) to launch a campaign against radicals and left-wing organizations.
A. Mitchell Palmer claimed that Communist
agents from Russia were planning to overthrow the American government.
On 7th November, 1919, the second anniversary of the Russian Revolution,
over 10,000 suspected communists and anarchists were arrested in what
became known as the Palmer Raids. Palmer
and Hoover found no evidence of a proposed revolution but large number
of these suspects were held without trial for a long time. The vast
majority were eventually released but Emma
Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Mollie
Steimer, and 245 other people, were deported to Russia.
Between 1820 and 1920 over 3,250,000 people
emigrated from Russia to the United States. The 1920 the Census revealled
that there were 392,049 American citizens that had been born in Russia.
By 1930 the Russian Orthodox Church claimed to have 120,000 members
in the United States.
An investigation carried out
in 1978 revealled that since 1820 over 3,374,000 people emigrated
to the United States from Russia. This amounted to 6.9 per cent of
the total foreign immigration during this period.
Jacob Mithelstadt and his family from Russia at Ellis
Island in 1905.
(1) Mary
Antin, The Promised Land (1912)
The Gentiles used to wonder at us because
we cared so much about religious things about food and Sabbath and
teaching the children Hebrew. They were angry with us for our obstinacy,
as they called it, and mocked us and ridiculed the most sacred things.
There were wise Gentiles who understood. These were educated people,
like Fedora Pavlovna, who made friends with their Jewish neighbors.
They were always respectful and openly admired some of our ways. But
most of the Gentiles were ignorant. There was one thing, however,
the Gentiles always understood, and that was money. They would take
any kind of bribe, at any time. They expected it. Peace cost so much
a year, in Polotzk. If you did not keep on good terms with your Gentile
neighbors, they had a hundred ways of molesting you. If you chased
their pigs when they came rooting up your garden, or objected to their
children maltreating your children, they might complain against you
to the police, stuffing their case with false accusations and false
witnesses. If you had not made friends with the police, the case might
go to court; and there you lost before the trial was called unless
the judge had reason to befriend you.
The czar was always sending us commands - you shall not do this and
you shall not do that - till there was very little left that we might
do, except pay tribute and die. One positive command he gave us: You
shall love and honor your emperor. In every congregation a prayer
must be said for the czar's health, or the chief of police would close
the synagogue. On a royal birthday every house must fly a flag, or
the owner would be dragged to a police station and be fined twenty-five
rubles. A decrepit old woman, who lived all alone in a tumble-down
shanty, supported by the charity of the neighborhood, crossed her
paralyzed hands one day when flags were ordered up, and waited for
her doom, because she had no flag. The vigilant policeman kicked the
door open with his great boot, took the last pillow from the bed,
sold it, and hoisted a flag above the rotten roof.
The czar always got his dues, no matter if it ruined a family. There
was a poor locksmith who owed the czar three hundred rubles, because
his brother had escaped from Russia before serving his time in the
army. There was no such fine for Gentiles, only for Jews; and the
whole family was liable. Now the locksmith never could have so much
money, and he had no valuables to pawn. The police came and attached
his household goods, everything he had, including his bride's trousseau;
and the sale of the goods brought thirty-five rubles. After a year's
time the police came again, looking for the balance of the czar's
dues. They put their seal on everything they found.
There was one public school for boys, and one for girls, but Jewish
children were admitted in limited numbers - only ten to a hundred;
and even the lucky ones had their troubles. First, you had to have
a tutor at home, who prepared you and talked all the time about the
examination you would have to pass, till you were scared. You heard
on all sides that the brightest Jewish children were turned down if
the examining officers did not like the turn of their noses. You went
up to be examined with the other Jewish children, your heart heavy
about that matter of your nose. There was a special examination for
the Jewish candidates, of course: a nine-year-old Jewish child had
to answer questions that a thirteen-year-old Gentile was hardly expected
to answer. But that did not matter so much; you had been prepared
for the thirteen-year-old test. You found the questions quite
easy. You wrote your answers triumphantly - and you received a low
rating, and there was no appeal.
I used to stand in the doorway
of my father's store munching an apple that did not taste good any
more, and watch the pupils going home from school in twos and threes;
the girls in neat brown dresses and black aprons and little stiff
hats, the boys in trim uniforms with many buttons. They had ever so
many books in the satchels on their backs. They would take them out
at home, and read and write, and learn all sorts of interesting things.
They looked to me like beings from another world than mine. But those
whom I envied had their troubles, as I often heard. Their school life
was one struggle against injustice from instructors, spiteful treatment
from fellow students, and insults from everybody. They were rejected
at the universities, where they were admitted in the ratio of three
Jews to a hundred Gentiles, under the same debarring entrance conditions
as at the high school: especially rigorous examinations, dishonest
marking, or arbitrary rulings without disguise. No, the czar did not
want us in the schools.
(2)
Emma
Goldman
and Alexander
Berkman
often considered returning to Russia
Russian hearts
dwelt more in Russia than in the country they were enriching by their
labour, which nevertheless scorned them as "foreigners."
All through the years we had been close to the pulse of Russia, close
to her spirit and her superhuman struggle for liberation. But our
lives were rooted in our adopted land. We had learned to love her
physical grandeur and her beauty and to admire the men and women who
were fighting for freedom, the Americans of the best calibre. I felt
myself one of them, an American in the truest sense, spiritually rather
than by the grace of a mere scrap of paper.
(3)
In her book Promised Land, Mary
Antin described what it was like to be Jewish in Russia
during the 1880s.
I
remember a time when I thought a pogrom had broken out in our street,
and I wonder that I did not die of fear. It was some Christian holiday,
and we had been warned by the police to keep indoors. Gates were locked;
shutters were barred. Fearful and yet curious, we looked through the
cracks in the shutters. We saw a procession of peasants and townspeople,
led by priests, carrying crosses and banners and images. We lived
in fear till the end of the day, knowing that the least disturbance
might start a riot, and a riot led to a pogrom.
(4)
Emma
Goldman,
Living My Life (1931)
The hated
Romanovs were at last hurled from their throne, the Tsar and his cohorts
shorn of power. It was not the result of a political coup; the great
achievement was accomplished by the rebellion of the entire people.
Only yesterday inarticulate, crushed as they had been for centuries,
under the heel of a ruthless absolutism, insulted and degraded, the
Russian masses had risen to demand their heritage and to proclaim
to the whole world that autocracy and tyranny were for ever at an
end in their country. The glorious tidings were the first sign of
life in the vast European cemetery of war and destruction. They inspired
all liberty-loving people with new hope and enthusiasm, yet no one
felt the spirit of the Revolution as did the natives of Russia scattered
all over the globe. They saw their beloved Matushka Rossiya now extend
to them the promise of manhood and aspiration.
Russia was free; yet not truly so. Political independence was but
the first step on the road to the new life. Of what use are "rights,"
I thought, if the economic conditions remain unchanged. I had known
the blessings of democracy too long to have faith in political scene-shifting.
Far more abiding was my faith in the people themselves, in the Russian
masses now awakened to the consciousness of their power and to the
realization of their opportunities. The imprisoned and exiled martyrs
who had struggled to free Russia were now being resurrected, and some
of their dreams realized. They were returning from the icy wastes
of Siberia, from dungeons and banishment. They were coming back to
unite with the people and to help them build a new Russia, economically
and socially.
The Russian-Jewish
market in Hester Street, New York
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