Russia Crisis No Shock to Emigres

On the stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard where the store signs turn to Cyrillic script and the market cases bulge with sausage, Russia’s economic and political crisis evokes dismay, fatalism, even indifference.

But one thing emigrants from the former Soviet Union don’t express when they scan the headlines is surprise. No, they shrug, this is all too predictable, a mess that will not go away, even if President Boris N. Yeltsin does.

“It’s going to be the same anyway, maybe worse,” said Natalya Moshlyak, a young bank clerk who left Ukraine 18 months ago and has relatives there.

At the Los Angeles-based Russian language weekly newspaper Panorama, general manager Lilia Sokolov said members of the local Russian community “knew sooner or later something of the sort would happen.”

“They are cynical,” she added. “They think Yeltsin’s time has gone long ago. And as far as the government is concerned, there is so much corruption. Until something is done about the corruption, nothing good is going to happen. They think foreign loans from anywhere are dropped into a bottomless pit.”

Next week’s Panorama will be largely devoted to Russia’s economic collapse and political instability. The ruble is in free fall, the stock market is dropping faster than a leaden piroshki and Yeltsin is scrambling to hold on to power.

“I’m so upset with these events,” said Lida Rozenbaum, 72, whose two sisters live in Moscow. “I am sorry for Russian people. The country should be rich. They have oil, forests. But there are no good professional leaders.”

When Rozenbaum made her weekly phone call to Moscow, her sisters, retired factory workers, asked if her children could send money. “Their pension is down, down. They’re only thinking about food. I know they’re suffering,” said Rozenbaum, who worked for the government tourism agency in Moscow before she immigrated to the United States in 1989.

She says her friends in Russia “don’t know what to do and what will be.”

Others seemed as distant from the Russian crisis as they now are from the country itself.

“For me it doesn’t matter what happens in Russia. I’m from the Ukraine,” insisted the owner of a Russian bookshop in West Hollywood, while in nearby Plummer Park, Simon Povoloty, a U.S. resident for 22 years, said, “We have nothing to do with Russia. This is my country now.”

For some, bad news from the former Soviet Union can be oddly comforting, an affirmation that they were right to leave, however difficult their lives may be here or however nostalgic they may be for the past.

“Many people who live here feel kind of, ‘Ah, it’s good we’re here,’ ” said Eugene Alper, who works for the city of West Hollywood and emigrated from Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, nine years ago. “Anyone who might have nostalgia might be relieved. The worse it is there, the better here.”

Sokolov agreed that those who remain ambivalent about their move to America “find justification each time something bad happens there.” She views the apparent indifference of some as a form of resignation. “They feel very helpless. One answer is to say, ‘Who cares? I’m not there anyway.’ ”

People send money occasionally, such as on birthdays and holidays, Sokolov said, but most cannot afford to wire extra dollars to help Russian relatives survive the ruble’s steep drop in value.

In her grandparents’ letters from Kiev, “they say they have enough money,” Moshlyak said. “But I think they just don’t want to bother us.” When she gets more settled, she will perhaps try to send them some, she said.

At the Russian-language radio station KMNB, owner Eugene Levin said he had to send his Moscow news correspondents a quick raise. “They’re desperate now.”

Though Levin, who also has a cable television show and is president of the Assn. of Soviet Jewish Immigrants, is propping up his Russian employees, he does not think the same should be done for Russia.

“It’s not a matter of giving another $10 billion to Russia. This money will disappear as before,” he said, adding that he has always thought reports of reform in recent years were exaggerated.

Bella Bril, a social worker at Jewish Family Services who works with immigrants, said now is the time for those who can to leave Russia--before the economic troubles heighten anti-Semitism.

But Levin doubted that the country’s domestic disarray will produce a new wave of immigration.

“It’s my personal opinion, those who wanted to immigrate already did. Those who hesitated, they would rather stay there,” he said. “They had this chance for many years.”