Southland Russians Express No Surprise

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 Moscow Deli in Costa Mesa, Victor A. Voronel, 69, of Tustin stopped by late Friday afternoon for a fresh herring for his dinner. The talk turned to issues he has trouble tracking from this distance. But the miles do not lessen the concern.

“I spent two-thirds of my life there,” said Voronel, a retired Russian languages teacher who immigrated to the U.S. 19 years ago. “My best friend is there. My immediate family is here, but the rest of my family is there. It is impossible to imagine. It is a very, very hard situation.”

Voronel said the current troubles represent a second round of problems. With perestroika, he said, many Russians’ life savings achieved under the Soviet regime dissolved. And now savings gained in the market economy are dissolving.

Voronel laid blame for the collapsing Russian economy on ignorance.

“Power came to the people who made money overnight,” Voronel said. “They don’t care about the economy. They’re ruining the country.”

The few experts in Russia trained in economics, he said, aren’t in the government. And with high levels of corruption--a legacy of the Soviet regime--the nation is operating under a system that was bound to stumble. “They can’t even collect taxes,” he said.

But distance is an unreliable prism.

A clerk at the shop, who would identify herself only as Lena, recalled living in Moscow a few years ago and receiving a telephone call from her mother, who had already moved to the United States. The mother told her about the dire media reports here of life in Moscow.

“And it wasn’t that bad,” she said. “It was no big deal. Maybe it’s hard for some people.”

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 said. “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.

Times staff writer Scott Martelle contributed to this report.