To Harrisonburg With Hope
Hundreds of Russians immigrate to the Valley to begin a new life
From Curio, Summer 1993
Article by Jennifer Rissler
Photography by Lynette Chewning
Nadezhda Mazur sits in a barren room on the second floor of the Campbell Street house which is home to the Virginia Council of Churches Refugee Resettlement Program. Her coarse brown hair is swept up at the nape, a dramatic contrast to her simple red sweater and blue denim skirt.
She pauses to converse in Russian with a woman seated in front of a computer beside her. It is late in the afternoon and as part of her job with the program, Nadezhda is helping a compatriot learn English.
Nadezhda is one of approximately 500 citizens of the former Soviet Union to come to Harrisonburg and Rockingham County through Church World Service. The service’s goal is to resettle anyone accepted into the United States Refugee Program, which is administered by the U.S. State Department.
Once accepted into the program, each person or family is sponsored by an American church and congregation and brought to the United States. According to Rev. Joseph S. Roberson, program coordinator of the Refugee Resettlement Program, the first Russian family came to Harrisonburg in June 1989.
In Harrisonburg and Rockingham County, the Mennonite, Church of the Brethren, United Church of Christ, Presbyterian, Methodist and Southern Baptist denominations have all been sponsors.
“Our goal is to help people who are in trouble and need a new place to live,” Roberson says. “We give them a good start in the United States so that they can become self-sufficient and get on their way.”
He adds that although the sponsoring churches help with finances and settlement, once in America the émigrés are not bound to any congregation or denomination. The sponsoring church is, however, responsible for offering financial support for 90 days. After the first month the families gradually assume responsibility for the bills.
“The church is also responsible for getting initial employment and finding housing,” Roberson adds.
To make this a reality, the Resettlement Program maintains contact with local employers to find jobs for newly resettled families and works with them to develop new jobs.
“Employers in the area like to hire [the Russian émigrés], because they are hard-working and dependable,” says George Fletcher, pastor of West Side Baptist Church.
The poultry industry is a popular place of employment among refugees. Approximately 30 former refugees are employed as line workers with Rocco Turkeys, Inc. in Dayton.
“They are wonderful employees,” says Sonia Mongold, Rocco’s human resource specialist. “They are very warm, friendly and cooperative folks,” she adds.
Vitaliy and Anna Konovalchik, former Belorussian refugees who came to the United States in November 1990, are both employed with Wampler-Longacer. In Russia, Anna worked for a local department store, which was a hard job to acquire.
“In Russia, you must train for a very long time for a job,” she says. “Here, [employers] take you from the street.
Church World Service defines refugees as “people who are forced to flee their homes, leaving behind all that they have known for an uncertain future … In their homelands, refugees may have feared persecution by repressive governments due to their political or religious views.”
This April, Nadezhda Mazur will have lived in Harrisonburg for three years, but she remembers well what she, her husband and two children went through before arriving in the United States.
“We rode on a bus with other refugees to Czechoslovakia,” she says, her voice cracking slightly. Then we waited for a train to Vienna. We stayed in Vienna for two weeks, while we waited for some documents. After that, we stayed in Italy for four and a half months while we waited for a ticket and a sponsor.”
Fletcher understands that persecution several of the refugees have endured.
His church sponsored the Klopot family, who initially worshiped secretly in the woods near their home in Brest, Russia before gaining more freedom and acquiring a warehouse, which they turned into a Baptist church. Ivan Klopot was one of the pastors.
When the Klopots arrived in Harrisonburg on Dec. 12, 1992, all 11 family members were welcomed into the Russian Baptist community, whose meeting place is West Side Baptist Church. Shortly after arriving, Ivan was designated as the pastor of the Russian Baptist Church, as it is now called.
To date, its congregation has surpassed 100 and it continues to grow.
Fletcher says, “They are a very close-knit group, as they share a lot in common: they’re from the former Soviet Union, they’re Christians and they’re here in the United States on the basis of persecution. It’s really remarkable to see that after what they’ve endured, they have a deep commitment to Christ.”
Every Sunday afternoon, well before the designated 3 p.m. worship time, cars begin to pull into West Side Baptist’s parking lot on West Wolfe Street.
Worship begins with a group prayer and then the children are dismissed to the basement for Sunday school. In the sanctuary, the adults stand individually to read and discuss scripture while in the basement, the children are taught in different age groups.
Both activities have elements similar to most American services, including singing hymns and studying scripture. One of the few defining characteristics is that the congregation worships in Russian.
But outside of this close and accepting church community many refugees, including Nadezhda, must work to assimilate into American culture by overcoming the English language barrier.
According to Dr. Elizabeth Neatrour of James Madison University’s Foreign Languages and Literatures Department, Russian is not the native language of many of these refugees. In fact, the majority of emigrants from the former Soviet Union are Ukranian or Belorussian.
Neatrour has been called upon to translate several times, and although she speaks Russian, the immigrants can understand her.
Most of her translating has been done in hospitals, and she recalls one specific incident vividly.
On New Year’s Eve 1991, a Russian man suffered a heart attack and she was called to Rockingham Memorial Hospital to translate. At the same time, his granddaughter was brought into the emergency room for treatment. She had arrived at Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia that very same day, and her grandfather did not know she was in the United States, let alone the same hospital.
“It was like a Pasternak novel,” Neatrour remembers. “I was interpreting for the entire family. Not only did I have to ask what his reactions were and explain what the doctores were doing, but I also had to explain modern technology, such as a heart monitor. In the emergency room there was only room for two people, but sometimes there were as many as 10 family members.”
The man was eventually taken to Charlottesville for further treatment, and the family thanked Neatrour for her help.
“It was a very special privilege for me, and a very memorable New Year’s Eve as well,” she says.
Some of Neatrour’s students translate for immigrants as well. Beth Skolnicki, a senior Russian major at JMU, works with children through a tutoring program offered by Rockingam County.
Skolnicki tutored two Russian boys at Mt. Clinton Elementary School. Her first student was a kindergartner named Igor, whom she worked with during the other students’ nap time.
“He could talk with me and get out his frustrations that he couldn’t express in the classroom,” she says.
“At times it was difficult, like when he would go out on a tangent and I couldn’t understand all of his Ukrainian. At times, though, when he was enjoying telling a story, I’d let him tell it,” she adds, smiling.
Sklinicki’s second student was Sergey. She became and active part of his assimilation into American schools, following him to music and gym class, acting as a classroom liaison. Sergey was excited about learning and was less self0conscious than Igor, she recalls.
“It’s easier for the younger students to learn, because their minds are more flexible,” Skolnicki notes. “In the fifth grade, for example, they are old enough to be embarrassed, and they know that they are different. But for the most part, I’ve found … they do better than American students. They are bright and they are assimilating well.”
Older émigrés, including Nadezhda and the Konovalchiks, are also assimilating by learning English.
Their classroom is at the Dayton Learning Center, where every Tuesday and Thursday evening the English as a Second Language program’s highest level class meets.
The classroom is very open, with tall, vertical windows occupying every wall. One one particular February night, Nadezhda is one of the first students to arrive. Marlene Webb, the instructor, is busy giving some lasagna recipes to Anna Konovalchik, and she odes not notice Nadezhda at first.
Before the class begins, Webb often talks with her students and answers their questions about everyday American life.
“These are first-time experiences for many of them,” Webb says. “Someone may get a bill or a note from their child’s school that they don’t understand.”
When Webb finally sees Nadezhda, she pauses in her conversation with Anna, as she notices that Nadezhda has worn her hair down.
“You have hair tonight,” Webb says teasingly to Nadezhda.
Nadezhda shakes her head and her cheeks become slightly flushed. She sits at the end of the first row beside a Russian friend.
The class begins with a review of some familiar idioms, and then moves into high gear with a lesson in English grammar.
Nadezhda is the first student called upon, and she reads a sentence in broken English.
“Only 12 student were in class yesterday,” she says slowly,
She pauses, and then quietly reads her corrected version of the sentence,” Only 12 students were in the class yesterday.”
Nadezhda’s positive response in her English class is as positive as her attitude in this new country which has become her home.
As she works in the Refugee Resettlement Office beside a fellow refugee, it is clear that Nadezhda has assimilated well into her new homeland.
“I left Russia for a better life for my children, and some for me,” she says, gazing out the Campbell Street office window. “I left what I had before and it’s OK for me. Here I have much more than what I used to.”
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Jennifer Rissler graduated from JMU in December 1993 with a double major in mass communication and Spanish.
