Nelya S - Ukraine to the Bay

🔴 Nelya S. was born in 1971 in Khmelnvtskyi, Ukraine and immigrated to San Francisco when she was 16 years old. She moved with her older brother, mother, and father, in hopes to reunite with her cousins, aunts, and uncles who had immigrated years prior. Upon her arrival, she spoke no English and had to start her life all over again. In the 10 years, she would learn English, become a citizen, get married, and have two kids (my brother and myself).

Full Interview (With Questions);

"California... It has always been a multicultural frontier and is likely to remain so" - (Sex, Gender, Culture, and a Great Event)

Segments

Religion- How did you feel about the different religions you encountered when you first arrived in the United States versus how you feel now? Do you feel that you have grown more or less religiously tolerant? 

"... Soviet policy toward the Jews clearly violates these principles. It is tantamount to a policy of discrimination for it denies to the Jews such ethnic- cultural rights as are generally accorded all other Soviet nationalities." (Foreign Affair Article "The Status of Jews in the Soviet Union")

Education- How important was education to your family? Give a positive and negative experience about your childhood education. 

Because Education was so limited for Soviet Union children my grandparents made sure to make education a primary for my mom. When she came to America she could not even proceed with higher education because she didn't even understand how the education system was set up for native speakers and immigrants.

"Higher education, suffering from uneven academic standards and unnecessary duplication of institutional missions and programs, also needed attention [in late 1900's California](pg. 317) " (Competing Visions Second Edition)

Patriotism- After years of living in the United States and experiencing American culture, to what extent do you identify yourself as American and what were your goals in America? 

Identity- How has lived in the United States shifted your point of view of your homeland? Do you still associate with the ethnic group of your home country?)Do you consider yourself American? Why or why not? How do you maintain a sense of identity and your cultural roots while living in a foreign country? 

"When Ukraine's departure from the Soviet Union became irreversible in the dramatic summer of 1991, the breakup of the Soviet Union became all but inevitable. Moscow's rulers were simply not interested in keeping together a union in which ethnic Slavs would constitute a minority." (International Business Times Article) 

Immigration- What are the roots of your immigration? How were you able to immigrate? Did someone petition you? 

"According to the 1990 US. Census, 2.95 million Americans are claiming Russian ancestry, but a more realistic view suggests that there are only 750,000 Americans of ethnic Russian descent, which means that they were either born in Russia or have at least one parent or grandparent of ethnic Russian heritage.

• 44 percent of this number reside in the Northeast, (40-50,000 Russians in Boston area)
• 16 percent in the Midwest
• 18 percent in the South
• 22 percent in the West Areas 

🔴 Map of World 🔴 (Give a sense of her travels during immigration process)

Ukraine-Italy-Austria-USA

                                                        Work Cited

Dector, Moshe. "The Status of the Jews in the Soviet Union." Foreign Affairs. N.p., 28 Jan. 2009. Web. 08 Dec. 2016.

Cherny, Robert W., Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo, and Richard Griswold Del Castillo.Competing Visions: A History of California. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005. Print.

"Russians and East Europeans in America." Russians and East Europeans in America. Harvard Edu, n.d. Web. 08 Dec. 2016.