By KATYA ZAGVOZDKINA

Tatiana Osipovich, professor of Russian at a Portland-area college for nearly three decades, has seen what Census trends understate: The Portland area's Russian-speaking population has grown to more than 40,000, making it one of the largest in the country.

If you know where to look, the impact of the large Slavic immigrant community can be seen in the many churches and shops where Russian is spoken and the culture of the Old Country still tasted and embraced. The art of handwriting in Cyrillic is passing to a new generation at the public elementary school where hundreds of children write and speak Russian each day. You can hear the language, too, on the Portland radio station that broadcasts around-the-clock in Russian.

No official government source says the number of people living in Portland who trace their ancestry to Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and nearby parts of Eastern Europe has surpassed the 40,000 figure, acknowledges Osipovich, a professor at Lewis & Clark College. Some Russian-speakers get overlooked in official counts because, as Caucasians, they are not tracked by schools, the Census Bureau or similar government surveys in the same way that blacks, Latinos and Native Americans are, she and other researchers say.

But even the Census Bureau says recent immigrants from Eastern Europe play an outsize role in Oregon. The agency's American Community Survey found that during the most recent period it measured, from 2008 to 2013, Russian and Ukrainian together formed the third most common languages spoken in Oregon after English and Spanish.

No other state is so dominated by Russian speakers, it found.

So why haven't you noticed?

The big waves of Russian-speaking migrants have tended to cluster tightly together as they settle. The most recent influx, of religious refugees in the 1990s and early 2000s, concentrated in East Portland and Gresham. Old Believers came decades earlier and settled in farms around Woodburn. Nearly 14,000 live in Vancouver and nearby parts of Clark County, the American Community Survey found. Those Clark County residents represent a significant share of the Portland metro area's Russian-speaking residents, census figures show.

Their numbers, when combined with 25,000 Slavic immigrants in Multnomah County identified by Portland State University researcher Ann Curry-Stevens and 2,000 more identified by the Census in Washington County, total 41,000 and likely exceed that.

Many Eastern European migrants first settled in particular neighborhoods of East Portland, notably Foster-Powell and Gateway. Those areas have lost much of their Slavic population in recent years, however. Amy Whitney, principal of Southeast Portland's Kelly Elementary, says that is largely because many Russian speakers have prospered in their new country and could afford better rental housing in other neighborhoods or even to buy their own homes. Vancouver, which offers relatively affordable large homes that fit big families, appears to have been a big magnet.

Other Russian and Ukrainian immigrants moved further east in Multnomah County to follow their churches, such as Emanuel and Sulamita Evangelical churches, which relocated in pursuit of bigger venues.

SHOPS, BY MIGRANTS FOR MIGRANTS

Although many Russian-speaking people have moved away, shops in Southeast Portland still sport signs in Russian. The area has a number of traditional Eastern European groceries with a whole range of items for those missing their home country – from colbasa sausage and Russian sweets to bath brooms.

If some Portland spots with Russian cuisine, like the hip Southeast Grand Avenue restaurant and vodka bar Kachka, are mostly for Americans who want to try something new, the Foster Road-area shops are run by migrants for migrants. You can hear salesmen speaking in Russian or Ukrainian, shop with the local Russian radio playing in the background and see leaflets offering insurance from a Russian-owned company.

In one such grocery, Elena, a mother of six who came to the U.S. more than 20 years ago on a religious visa, choses colbasa for her friend.

Walking between the benches of the Good Neighbor shop in Southeast Portland, which vendors says it is the best in Portland, the woman who prefers not to give her last name says in Russian that she has no regrets about migrating to Oregon.

"Thanks God for that!" she exclaims. Life in America demands a lot of hard work and English is a big obstacle, she goes on, but three of her children are in college here. Elena complains that her younger kids who were born in Oregon got Americanized and don't speak much Russian.

And what about friends and connections in Portland? "Everybody here is Russian," she jokes. In fact, many Russian-speaking migrants are Americans: They've got

a

citizenship now.

After finishing up at the shop, she drives to the nearby cemetery on Southeast Holgate Street where her dad was recently buried. There are rows of Slavic-style gravestones with photos and Russian names. Pointing to them, Elena says with a sigh: "There are thousands of ours buried in Oregon already."

She takes out her cell phone to show photos of the funeral, then other pictures of her large family – their celebrations, gatherings and journeys. Are there any pictures from her hometown Odessa in Ukraine? "Haven't been there for ages," Elena says. But she and the family have been to Hawaii several times, and she proudly shows photos of her youngsters wearing leis. They smile happily and seem to appreciate their American homeland.

RUSSIAN SCHOOL APPEALS TO RUSSIANS, AMERICANS

Southeast Portland is home to Kelly Elementary, which houses the Portland area's only Russian immersion program, launched with a federal grant. Almost half of Kelly's 570 students take part in immersion classes, which started in 2007 and are celebrating their 10th anniversary. In some classrooms, Russian and American flags hang side by side. Signs, posters and student writing in Russian line the walls, including the big sign on one door, Dobro pozhalovat', or "welcome." In two years, the program will grow to cover the whole range of grades, up through senior year, and have its first high school graduates.

Irina Blekhman, the assistant principal, moved to the U.S. from Russia more than 20 years ago. She explains how the program operates: About half the students are native Russian speakers and the rest are native to English. In kindergarten, 90 percent of instruction and activities take place in Russian and only 10 percent in English. The share of the schedule spent in Russian drops with each successive grade to two subjects in middle school and just one in high school.

Is it hard for the American children to understand 90 percent of their day in a foreign language? Blekhman walks into a classroom as the pupils sing a song about the cheerful Russian-dolls – Matryoshkas -- for their promotion ceremony. None of them seem to have any difficulties.

And what about their parents? Don't they think that their children should be taught English first?

"They are very proud that their kids could study the other language from the very beginning," Blekhman says.

CHURCH DRAWS MORE THAN 1,000

For religious Russian-speaking migrants in Oregon, church is not only center of spiritual life, but of community. One of the biggest Russian-speaking groups in the Portland area are Evangelicals.

On Fridays, hundreds gather at Pentecostalist Slavic Church Emmanuel on Southeast 82nd Avenue. Elegantly clothed, the women wearing shawls on their heads, they head into the hall and greet each other. During the service, they sing songs and listen to their pastors preach – all in Russian.

Elder Stepan Chapsky, mixing English and Russian words, explains that although the parish has many Ukrainians, Russian is the chosen language of the service because migrants, no matter what part of former Soviet Union they've come from, understand it.

Since the church moved more than 10 years ago from Southeast 64th Avenue to its larger location, a former Southeast 82nd Avenue movie theater, it can have host more than 1,000 people at a service. And it is not even the biggest Slavic church in the Portland area. Sulamita church in Faiview holds services for 1,500 people.

Eastern Europeans in Oregon also have an around-the-clock religious radio station, Svet (meaning light), that broadcasts in Russian. Different Christian denominations – including Evangelicals – share on-air time and have their own programs. The station, which has operated for more than three years, has features religious talks and preachers and also science and cuisine shows and for-sale and help-wanted segments.

APPETITE TO KEEP THE LANGUAGE



This fall, Kelly School will have one Russian immersion kindergarten class, not two. Russian-speaking families already in the program and those who hoped their preschoolers would eventually join it fought hard to prevent the cutback.

But school district officials said there simply aren't enough Russian speakers living in the old neighborhood who want to enroll their children anymore.

But the appetite to keep Russian alive in the next generation is fierce, as Church Emmanuel leaders know all too well. For parishioners who want their children to hold on to the language of their ancestors, the church opened a language school, during which volunteers teach youngsters grammar and vocabulary. Elder Chapsky says it's very popular; all the classes are packed and the school has waiting lists.

Katya Zagvozdkina is a journalist for the Russian news agency Interfax, based on Moscow. She spent two weeks working in the newsroom of The Oregonian/OregonLive.