A Russian Vote of No Confidence : Local Emigres Say Hardships Endured in Homeland Give Them Little Reason to Care About Election

Russian voters are stepping inside polling booths today to choose between Democratic reforms and a dark Communist past.

You might expect such a historic event to captivate fellow Russians in Los Angeles. After all, when other countries hold critical elections, local emigres--whether Mexicans, Koreans or Salvadorans--anxiously await the results.

Yet many Russians in West Hollywood and other enclaves are approaching the hotly contested election with cool indifference. Most of them are Jews who recall a land where authorities squelched their religious life, then hounded them when they sought freedom. “For me, Russia is a foreign country. It doesn’t deserve my concern, my love,” said Irina Kertsburg, 49, who fled St. Petersburg with her husband and son 16 years ago. “Russia was never our land, as Jews.”

Although the vast majority of Russian emigres are ineligible to vote, about 500 who retained their citizenship can cast ballots, according to officials at the Russian Consulate in San Francisco.

The consulate has advertised the election in local Russian newspapers. Officials have converted a travel agency on Melrose Avenue into a polling site, one of about a dozen nationwide.

But the efforts have failed to motivate some potential voters, who see little reason to get involved in an election half a world away.

“I could vote, but it doesn’t make any sense. Nothing is going to change,” said Alex, 28, who arrived in West Hollywood four years ago and still distrusts outsiders so much that he refused to use his last name. “I know the system by the books. The people suffer no matter who is elected.”

Alex is among an estimated 40,000 to 60,000 Russian Jews who fled the former Soviet Union and settled in West Hollywood and in pockets of the San Fernando Valley over the last two decades.

Here they started their lives anew--learning English, seeking jobs, opening businesses and gaining citizenship.

“Here you get to follow your true passion,” said Eugene Levin, an electronics engineer in Russia but now the owner of KMNB, a Russian-language radio station in Hollywood where he analyzes world events. “I always was dreaming of having this type of job. I would never have this kind of opportunity in Russia.”

To many of these emigres, Russia is synonymous with corruption, and its politics a kind of clownish spectacle. Today’s presidential election, they say, will bring little relief for a troubled country, no matter who among the 11 candidates wins.

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin and Communist Party challenger Gennady A. Zyuganov are considered the front-runners in a field that includes former Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and ultranationalist firebrand Vladimir Zhironovsky.

While American diplomats and other outsiders see hope for continued reform in a Yeltsin victory, many emigres see another regime ready to plunder the country’s riches and leave its masses hungry.

“We’re talking about a power struggle [with] a lot of crooks from both sides,” said Vladimir Ferkelman, 39, a journalist and professional interpreter who left the Soviet Union 13 years ago. “With Russia, you never know what is going on behind closed doors.”

Another emigre offered his own caustic assessment.

“Yeltsin is garbage and Zyuganov is garbage,” said Ivan, 60, who asked that his last name not be used. “If I was citizen of Russia, I would not vote for anyone. In Russia, there will never be democracy.”

Others are more generous, seeing Yeltsin as the lesser of many evils.

“All my life I stood in long lines to buy food. People remember these times. These people support Yeltsin,” said Mark Skibinsky, 70, who came to the United States seven years ago.

Abram Vais, who survived both the Soviet system and the German-run Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, said he favors Yeltsin because he helped bring about the end of communism.

“I know what Russia was like,” said Vais, 73, who has been a U.S. citizen for 12 years. “I think Yeltsin will be the candidate people like most.”

Vais and others fear that a Communist victory will bring a return of government repression and an end to free market reforms that experts argue are so crucial to the health of Russia’s ailing economy.

“[Yeltsin] is the best way for Russia, the most realistic way to keep reforms going,” said Alexander Polovets, publisher of Panorama, an American Russian weekly newspaper on Fairfax Avenue. “I cannot see any alternative.”

Some emigres say they are interested only in how the Russian election will affect relations with the United States. Others have turned their interest elsewhere, closely following the recent elections in Israel, which is now home to several hundred thousand Russian immigrants.

And many are awaiting the presidential election in this country, so they can vote in a free election, something they have yet to experience.

“What’s for me in Russia? Nothing,” Lili Spencer, 70, said as she enjoyed a day in West Hollywood’s Plummer Park. “Russia hates our Jewish people. We live in America. God bless America.”