Russian Emigres Hungry for News

In the continuing aftermath of the deadly siege of a school in southern Russia, only one thing can satisfy the cravings of Los Angeles’ Russian-speaking community: news. But many wonder where to get information and, moreover, what to believe.

Scouring the Internet, reading Russian-language publications, tuning into Russian radio and television broadcasts via cable, and inundating international phone lines with calls to their homeland has provided some relief, but also caused confusion and frustration.

“It’s a horror and people want answers,” said Eugene Levin, host of a Russian-language radio talk show in Los Angeles that has been devoting six hours a day to the carnage in the southern Russian town of Beslan. Callers have flooded the station with questions, most of them beginning with “Why?”

Why were the Russian authorities releasing seemingly erroneous information in the initial stages of the siege? Why didn’t the government do more to negotiate with the hostage-takers? Why have scores of missing people still not been accounted for?

At least 326 people are known to have died -- half of them children -- when explosions erupted inside the Beslan school and government security forces stormed the building Sept. 3.

“It’s not new for our audience that such an event took place. But it’s the scale of the event and the fact that children were involved,” said Levin, who also publishes two local weekly Russian-language newspapers, Panorama and Friday Express, both of which saw their circulation spike after the tragedy.

Callers and readers are also grasping at how to help relatives back in Russia. “They want to know what they can do,” said Levin, whose subscribers receive weekend editions of The Times in a partnership established in 2003.

Though some members of the Russian-speaking community have launched efforts to raise relief funds or have gathered to offer prayers for the dead and injured, many have become impromptu journalists, trying to collect or pass on information across the globe. Few in the community expect the true story of what really happened in Beslan to ever be revealed -- at least not by the Kremlin or the state-dominated media.

“The Russian government has continued to cover up these kinds of acts,” said Sofia Komskaya, 72, a volunteer in the activity office at the West Hollywood Comprehensive Service Center of Jewish Family Services of Los Angeles. She emigrated from Russia in 1995. “People just don’t believe the government anymore. And what our Russian television shows us, we don’t know if it’s true or not.”

Indeed, the editor of Izvestia, one of Russia’s largest dailies, said he was forced to resign last week because he questioned the casualty figures and ran harrowing full-page photos of the bloodbath. One state-run newspaper reportedly described the carnage more mundanely, with a tone reminiscent of the former Soviet era. There had been an attack on the school and some losses, it said.

Getting accurate information has been critical for Santa Monica resident Lyubov Burban, who has spent much of the last week on the phone with friends in Moscow. The calls have mostly ended in frustration.

“They know less than us in the U.S.,” said Burban, who has doubted much of the information garnered from cable news beamed directly from Moscow. “There is no hope of getting the truth from news there. They try to hide information. The government tells lies.”

When the terrorists took over the school in Beslan, Burban’s access to U.S.- and Los Angeles-based Russian media drew her to immediately conclude that a major terrorist crisis was underway, but friends in Moscow were still wondering about the severity of the siege several hours after it began.

For Burban, 65, a naturalized American from Ukraine, the Beslan tragedy reopened a painful wound.

Her son Grigory, 39, was killed almost two years ago when Chechen rebels seized a Moscow theater and Russian security personnel sprayed potent gas into the auditorium before storming the building. In the aftermath of the mayhem, 129 hostages lay dead.

“When I first heard about the situation in Beslan, the first thing I thought was ‘Please, God, not again. Please, God, don’t let them storm the building. Let those children live,’ ” recalled Burban. Her son, a former electronics salesman and permanent U.S. resident, left behind a 16-year-old son.

Russian officials say the decision to storm the building was unplanned and taken after the attackers started shooting children. But it is hard to find anyone in L.A.’s vocal and politically savvy ex-Soviet emigre community who believes that.

Many also blame the Kremlin for the deaths at the Moscow theater and for negligence in connection with the bombing of a Moscow apartment building by Chechen terrorists in 1999. Burban has petitioned the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, to investigate the circumstances surrounding the theater tragedy, and she is suing the Russian government over the death of her son. The leadership in Moscow has denied culpability in both affairs.

And this is why many Russian immigrants are trying to sort out fact from fiction for themselves.

Fourteen-year-old Maria Kutilova has supplemented what she has seen on Russian television via cable, and American broadcasts, with information from her grandmother. The matriarch called from Moscow, waking Kutilova in the wee hours one morning, to report as she watched television images of hostages fleeing the school.

In West Hollywood, Larisa Brizinova and her husband, Semen, go online at 6 a.m. each day to download the Russian newspapers. They are able to compare what they read in the U.S. press and try to piece together the whole picture. Although most of their close relatives live in Ukraine, from where they emigrated eight years ago, worry about their safety remains paramount.

“The issue is that it’s not safe anyplace anymore, our life has changed,” said Olga Bronstein, a social worker at the Jewish service center, where a large percentage of the clientele is Russian-speaking.

The typically bustling Jewish center has seen fewer patrons in recent days. Workers there believe that many have stayed home, searching for news on TV. But counselors said they are bracing for a wave of unease once the facility’s predominately Jewish clientele begins to trickle back in.

“I think they are going to feel they are being targeted as well,” Bronstein said. “They are always upset about bombings in Israel. We are going to have to provide emotional support. For those who survived World War II and the Holocaust as children, it is going to cause flashbacks.”

And, no doubt, the emigres will come in seeking answers.

Burban is determined to provide some of those answers and to ensure that the Beslan disaster and others are not allowed to fade from the news, so that the memory of those who perished does not die.

In honor of her son and the other victims of the theater raid, Burban and her grandson have created a website called Nord-Ost Justice,

www.nordostjustice.org, named for the romantic World War II musical that was playing on stage the night of the tragedy.

The site keeps readers updated with news pertaining to the aftermath of the theater siege -- how many survivors have received compensation, what human rights groups are saying, where to attend group meetings about the affair. Its homepage provides links to lists of victims, and photographs and eulogies posted by relatives eager to pay tribute to their deceased loved ones.

“My son was a lovely, kind man,” Burban said. “He didn’t deserve to die. Neither did those schoolchildren.”