The 1990s saw a major influx of immigrants into the United States, with New York again proving to be the quintessential immigrant metropolis. A typical grocery store in New York's Brighton Beach neighborhood is well-stocked, bustling, and thoroughly Russian. On an afternoon before the recent Jewish celebration of Passover, our correspondent saw an abundance of unleavened bread, dried fish, and potato pancakes.
Store signs are in Cyrillic.
All conversation is in Russian. And there is much more than food in this neighborhood, part of the city's borough of Brooklyn. On block after city block in Brighton Beach, music stores, book shops, and other establishments cater to a Russian-speaking population of at least 50,000 people. For Inna Stavitsky, a Russian Jew from St. Petersburg, Brighton Beach represents a marketplace ideal never realized in Russia. It's not a piece of Russia because we have never had in Russia anything like that.