“Cultivating their Russianness”: Russian-Americans in Philadelphia, 1876-1976
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2024
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Haverford College. Department of History
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Thesis
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The History Department Senior Thesis Prize
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eng
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Tri-College users only
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Abstract
On July 4, 1976, Americans celebrated the nation’s 200th birthday, enjoying familiar Independence Day motifs including parades, barbecues and, of course, fireworks. However, owing to the special Bicentennial occasion Americans also participated in a variety of locally sponsored events, including an exhibit about Russian-American history organized by the parishioners of St. Andrew’s Russian Orthodox Church, Philadelphia. Using St. Andrew’s as a case study my project examines the history of Russian immigrants and their descendants in Philadelphia. I argue that the emergence of a Russian-American identity in 1976 was contingent upon an earlier process whereby a diverse group of Slavic immigrants became Russian in the United States. I follow immigrants from the borderlands between the Russian and Austro- Hungarian Empires to the United States where, spurned by the Catholic Church, they entered Russian Orthodox churches undergoing a national and religious conversion. I examine the various influences which shaped this Russian identity in the United States during the 20th century including Palmer’s Raids in 1919 and 1920, White-emigre Russophile activism, and the Cold War. Of particular interest is ROVA Farms, a 1400-acre resort property in central New Jersey opened by the Russian Consolidated Mutual Aid Society in America. ROVA Farms was a site for Russians in America to disown Russia’s communist present and embrace the Tsarist Christian past. Russian-Americans developed their identity at ROVA Farms and ceremonially introduced themselves to the American public at the Bicentennial. Not necessarily the descendants of immigrants from Russia, Russian-Americans’ connection to Russia is a complicated matter. Indeed, the Russian-American identity debuted at the Bicentennial represented the remnants of a Russian identity that would have been mostly unfamiliar to the exhibit planners’ ancestors before they immigrated to the United States. Yet, the exhibit demonstrated that this identity persisted across generations, defying expected patterns of assimilation and Americanization.