(Click here, if you are unable to view this photo gallery on your mobile device.)
WALNUT CREEK — Leonid Malkov remembers the date of his arrival in the United States, from Tashkent, in what is now Uzbekistan — Oct. 28, 1993. “We literally celebrate it every year, the day we came to America,” he said.
But why did he land in Contra Costa County? “Russians like new and good places, and Walnut Creek is one of the best places for living,” said Malkov, who opened the Babushka Deli and Restaurant in Walnut Creek in December 1996.
He was part of a wave of immigrants to Contra Costa in the early 1990s, with arrivals starting in earnest shortly before the collapse of the Soviet bloc in December 1991.
According to U.S. Census Bureau data, as of 2015, there are an estimated 1,000 to 1,400 people of Russian descent living in Walnut Creek, and another estimated 6,000 to 7,000 living in Concord, Pleasant Hill, San Ramon and other Contra Costa cities.
It’s a community large enough to help support not only Babushka, but at least five Russian/eastern European grocery stores (including one in San Ramon) and doctors, dentists and other professionals who speak Russian. At first they came mostly to escape persecution in eastern Europe, but eventually the primary lures became tech jobs, good schools and suburban living.
“Some of the best computer science institutes in the world are in Russia,” said Andrei Obolenskiy, who lives in Pleasant Hill with his wife Daria and two young children. “And they still come because, in Walnut Creek, they know somebody.”
It’s not unusual to hear conversations in Russian in central Contra Costa — young moms pushing baby strollers along the Contra Costa Canal Trail, friends talking in the sauna at a Concord gym, along the streets of downtown Walnut Creek. They and their parents have come from several countries, but almost all share a common second (or first) language. Of its 3,583 students this school year, the Walnut Creek School District has 109 students whose primary language at home is Russian.
Mila Wichter left her native Uzbekistan for Dallas, Texas, in 1974, part of the earliest group of “refuseniks” granted permission to emigrate.
“It was us leaving for a place where we could be free,” said Wichter, a Walnut Creek resident. She and her husband ended up there in 1983, and helped welcome the 90s wave of immigrants to Contra Costa. Jewish Family Services, which established a Walnut Creek office largely to help these new arrivals, still operates locally today.
In 2001, Wichter founded the Contra Costa Jewish Day School, where about a quarter of the 140 students in grades K-8 are Russian. It is a Russian community touchstone, but for Wichter far beyond that. “Part of my Jewish community is the Russian community,” said Wichter, recently retired from Genentech as a program manager.
Lena Tashkevych ended up in Contra Costa when her husband landed a job with Genesys in 2000. It was a company where many Russian immigrants found employment, and the Daly City-based company had a Walnut Creek office for several years.
Tashkevych soon started teaching a small group of Russian kids, including her own, in the ways of Russian drama. Fifteen years later, the nonprofit called Teatr Skazka Russian Drama Club holds drama and language classes for 55 to 60 students three nights a week at the Shell Ridge Community Church in Walnut Creek.
The classes are to introduce Slavic cultural traditions, history, literature and music to help encourage these kids to retain their Russian roots.
“The language class is like going to school, and the drama club is more like socializing,” said Tashkevych, shortly before she led a group of about a dozen 5- and 6-year-olds one recent Friday night in some basic theatrical exercises — in Russian, of course.
In another Shell Ridge Community Church room, Daria Obolenskiy teaches Russian to kids at Teatr Skazka, where they come twice a week for classes.
“Many of us work hard to preserve the Russian culture, but also keep a foot in modern (American) culture,” Daria said. Added husband Andrei, “We have our own culture, but it’s a very open circle.”
Dima Brodskiy said the Russian community still embraces its roots, but as with many ethnic groups that have come to the United States, has moved beyond its own culture.
“The younger you were when you came, the more integrated you are into society,” said Brodskiy, an Odessa, Ukraine, native and head of the Russian Speaking Professional Group, a Walnut Creek-based business advocacy group. The older generation, he said, may or may not know English, but the high school generation is now learning Spanish, “just like other Americans.”
Leonid Malkov, a native of Tashkent in what is now Uzbekistan, was once a commercial pilot, flying Aeroflot jet liners for 15 years. He also was a Russian Army pilot, flying fuel, supplies and and weapons to soldiers fighting in Afghanistan in the early 1980s. For that work he received the Red Star (Medal of Honor) from former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. But he wanted something else.
“I saw no future for my kids there,” said Malkov, known to his family and friends as Leo. “I spent three years working with the (American) embassy to get permission to come here.”
His son Zoriy turned 7 a week after the family arrived in California, and he still has memories of his family’s 15th-floor apartment in Tashkent. Unlike the stereotype of a harsh Russian winter, Tashkent’s climate is relatively warm, Zoriy said, much like the East Bay’s except that it does have snow a few weeks a year.
“Same weather, same fruit, same vegetables, same people — we just talk in a different language,” said Zoriy, now 32 and chef/owner of Babushka Restaurant, which he operates with his girlfriend Varvara Koshkina and his father.
The various subgroups of Russian immigrants don’t always agree on political matters. Several acknowledged topics such as President Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin, or the Russian Federation’s 2014 invasion of Crimea, can be divisive; such discussions, several people said, are often avoided.
Conversation at the Babushka deli, a stone’s throw from the Kaiser Permanente hospital, stays friendly. Malkov often works the counter, with its meats, cheeses, caviar, beers and other Russian and eastern European specialty items. He welcomes customers warmly, and often hands out advice on what to get. His wife Maya helps out both at the restaurant and at their daughter’s daycare business.
“We try to help each other every day because family is family,” Leo said.
