Brighton Beach: NY's Russian-Speaking Enclave

Brighton Beach is a beachside neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It is known for its large population of Russian-speaking immigrants.

Yuri (kneeling on Brighton Beach Avenue) said he grew up in Kazakhstan and worked at a laboratory in the Moscow Suburbs.



He claims he helped relaunch the eagle hunting tradition in Kazakhstan in the late 1980s, early 1990s. He said he came to the United States to meet eagle hunters when fighting broke out in Moscow in 1993 in front of the White House.



He never went back.

Russian state television plays in the background of a hair salon of Brighton Beach Avenue.

Arkady was born in Dagestan during World War II. His mother gave birth to him at the fish factory she was working at with her husband.



Now in his 70s, he plays the violin on Brighton Beach Avenue dressed in a suit and shoes.

Russian pirogi on sale on Brighton Beach Avenue. The workers wear the same hats that food industry workers in Russia wear.

Action on the Brighton Beach boardwalk, where every third person seems to speak Russian.

Ivan sporting a "Straight Outta Russia" shirt while walking along Brighton Beach Avenue. He moved to Brighton from Rostov-on-Don about five years ago.

"Taste of Russia" food store on Brighton Beach Avenue offers plenty of products from the home land.

The kiosks on Brighton Beach Avenue offer dozens of publications in the Russian language.

Valentina (dressed in a colorful jacket and holding a dog as she looked out onto the ocean in Brighton Beach) said she was a lawyer from Kiev and lived in the center of the Ukrainian capital. She left after winning the U.S. green card lottery a decade ago. Despite being a great-grandmother, she still works, caring for an 86 year-old Ukrainian woman … and the woman's dog.



Valentina, who takes free English lessons, said she closely follows developments in Ukraine and worries about her family there. She said she was thankful to the United States … and not just for the opportunity to live here … she recalled how her and other Ukrainian children were fed U.S. powdered egg during WWII. She said she can still recall the taste of it.

She was sitting in a life guard chair at Brighton Beach reading aan English grammar book as the sun set.



She said she likes to travel in the United States and has been here several times, but added her children prefer Europe. We talked about many things, including problems in Ukraine. She said such a revolution won't happen in Belarus (where she came from), that everything is under tight control. To support her argument, she mentioned the following anecdote. She was talking on the phone with a friend in Europe in December, during the currency turmoil. As soon as she began to talk about the currency problems in Belarus, the line went dead. She said she won't do that again.

A Russian-speaking couple returning from the beach.

He was flipping in the air at Brighton Beach as the sun set. He said he was practicing parkour, a sport he took up in his native Georgia. He has broken quite a few bones, including his nose twice.



He recently moved to Brooklyn from Georgia, dreamed of speaking English without an accent and wondered if he would ever go back home.



He added that the Russian youth are the best in the world at parkour.