sikorsky diss. on russ-americans

[Natalie O. Kononenko]

Here's moi dve kopeiki on the topic of Russian-Americans and
their sense of a national identity, or lack of same.  I, too,
feel that Russians do not have much of a sense of national
identity, that parents do not encourage their children to speak
Russian or maintain other markers of their "Russianness" and
that they even encourage their children to assimilate to the
dominant (American) culture.  Could this be because Russians
were the dominant culture back home?  Could this be because
Russians, in Soviet times and subsequently, did not sense much
of a difference between themselves and the various
natsional'nosti that they dominated, or assimilated, or
whatever you want to call it?  They just assumed that the
various peoples would somehow be russified, assimilated, etc.
This is kind of the ugly American syndrom, only, of course, we
are not speaking about Americans.
        Anyway, I am a Ukrainian-American, here since the
50's.  My first language is Russian, though my Ukrainian is now
fluent.  My family would probably have chosen to be part of a
Russian community, although I myself would not have, but there
was none.  I have been active in the Ukrainian-American
community for years and I feel that some of the need to
differentiate Ukrainians from Russians that arose in the
homeland, in Ukraine, transferred itself here and prompted
Ukrainians to seek and maintain a Ukrainian identity in the
American context.  Russians have no experience with developing
and maintaining a Russian identity in Russia and so do not do
so in the United States.

Natalie Kononenko
nkm at UNIX.MAIL.VIRGINIA.EDU