Finding stability: Post-Soviet Russian immigrants in Portland, OR

Rachel L. Uthmann

The United States has a long history of receiving immigrants from Russia and the Soviet Union. While the majority of these immigrants who arrived in large numbers have been ethnically Jewish, a unique, Protestant segment of Soviet and former-Soviet immigrants have settled throughout the West Coast of the United States. Largely because it is a regional and relatively recent historical phenomenon, these communities of Evangelical and other religious minority groups have not figured prominently in the academic immigration literature. For this thesis project, the author conducted a series of oral history interviews with post-Soviet Russian-speaking immigrants in the Portland metropolitan area. The purpose was to better understand the changing composition of post-Soviet arrivals to the Russian-speaking immigrant communities in Portland and thereby to shed light on the other urban Russianspeaking groups in the Pacific Northwest. The post-Soviet immigrants who arrived in Portland in the 1990s and early part of the 2000s represent a more complex and diverse stream of immigration than the Russian-speakers who immigrated prior to 1991. Many of them were participants in a chain migration pattern. However, others immigrated in search of better educational or economic opportunities. All of them came in search of stability - whether social, economic, or civic. After settling in the Portland area, many of the post-Soviet Russian-speaking immigrants have maintained and modified their networks of support. Although the traditional extendedfamily structure of Soviet homes has had a significant influence on the former-Soviet immigrants in this study, these post-Soviet immigrants have adapted their living decisions to take advantage of the availability of housing choices in the Portland area. Also, this thesis addresses the complexity of identities borne by these former-Soviet immigrants. The categories of national, ethnic, and religious identity employed by the immigrants in this study are the result of Soviet ethnic policies and the dissolution of their country. Portland-area former-Soviets reported viewing each other as bound together by their common past experience as Soviet citizens. This finding leads to the conclusion that it is more reliable to speak of characteristics and experiences of former-Soviets and Russian-speakers, rather than Ukrainians or Russians as national categories.

Finding stability: Post-Soviet Russian immigrants in Portland, OR

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