“In the Year 1796, in the month of January, this bell was cast on the Island of Kodiak by the blessing of Archimandrite Joaseph, during the sojourn of Alexsandr Baranov.” 

We still do not know exactly how this Russian Orthodox artifact from Kodiak, Alaska made its way to a Catholic mission in Southern California, but the peripatetic bell provides a suitable emblem of the Russian diaspora on the Pacific Rim and its intertwining with Spanish and native American cultures. 

The embryo of the Russian diaspora is to be found in the expansion of the Russian Empire into Siberia and the Far East in the sixteenth century, an expansion motivated in large measure by the fur trade. This eastward thrust reached its logical conclusion in the first half of the eighteenth century when an officer in the Russian navy, a man by the name of Vitus Bering, mounted an expedition to find out whether Asia and America were connected by a land bridge. Bering, whose name graces the straits in this area, died during his second expedition in 1741, but his comrades went on to explore the Aleutian islands and the coast of Alaska. Their report of an abundance of fur-bearing mammals led to a flurry of activity that might be called ‘the Alaska fur rush. ‘ Thus, unlike many other major immigrant groups of those years, Russians first appeared on the west coast of the American continent, rather than the east coast. And they came initially seeking economic profit, rather than on a religious mission, like the Spanish, or on a quest for religious or political freedom, like the Russians who would appear on much of the early Russian activity came under the auspices of a Russian enterprise called the Russian-American Company, which dealt primarily in furs. Since it needed native workers and trappers, however, and since the Orthodox Church was the crux of Russian culture at the time, the outposts of the Russian-American Company were inevitably marked by missionary ventures and, occasionally by intervention of the Church on behalf of native workers. Violence and coercion were hardly alien to the settlements, but it is significant that Orthodox missionaries followed several principles that fostered a certain degree of spiritual independence among those they sought to convert. For one thing, they did not require the total denial of native religions, but rather made use of structural similarities in Christianity and these systems of belief. In addition, the missionaries worked in the local vernacular, translating church materials, rather than imposing a foreign language and foreign conceptual structures on the native population. Finally, from relatively early on, the missionaries promoted the development of native clergy, so that Orthodoxy would continue as a native tradition, rather than an alien tradition continuously imposed from outside. 

This effort was successful. Even after Alaska was sold to the United States in 1867 and the early Russian diaspora abated, Russian Orthodoxy survived as a major element in religious life of the North American Pacific Rim. Witness the fact that the first Russian Orthodox Church on the American continent, the Church of the Holy Resurrection founded on Kodiak in 1794, is still an active church today, some two hundred years later. The number of Orthodox churches in Alaska grew from a small handful in the early years, to fifteen in 1906, and to more than seventy in 1990. 

The settlements in Alaska are hardly the whole story of the Russian presence on this side of the Pacific Rim. California also plays a role. In 1806 the Russian-American Company mounted an expedition to the Spanish mission in San Francisco, presumably to secure provisions, though perhaps just as much to see what the Spanish were up to. Two members of the expedition found California so much to their liking that they jumped ship, thus becoming the first representatives of the Russian diaspora to settle permanently in California. 

But more important for our present purposes is the fact that six years later, the Russians returned to found a settlement they called ‘Ross-Slaviansk’ somewhat north of a river they called ‘Slavianka’ and a bay they called ‘Port Rumiantsev.’ Today we use a melange of Russian and English and call the settlement ‘Fort Ross.’ In an interesting sidelight, it has been suggested that the Spanish and English added ‘Fort’ to the name of the settlement to increase the sense of a military threat from the Russian presence. Indeed, according to Spanish documents, it was in order ‘to guard the [Spanish] dominions from all invasion and insult’ from the Russians that the Spanish padres were given permission to move north from the Baja Peninsula and found the California missions that formed the backbone of the future state. Moreover, the San Rafael Mission in northern California was established quite specifically to prevent the spread of Russian influence below Fort Ross. Today however, we call the river ‘Slavianka,’ simply the ‘Russian River’; and, switching to a Spanish mode, we call the erstwhile Port Rumiantsev ‘Bodega Bay.’ In these names, as well as in the names of properties such as ‘Khlebnikov Rancho’ and ‘Kostromitinov Rancho,’ we see the melange of Russian, Spanish, and English culture that shaped the development of much of California. 

As a final note to this early period, let me mention that the Russians made an attempt to establish a settlement in Hawaii in 1815 because of its advantageous position between Asia and America. Apparently the remains of a Russian Fort can still be seen at Waimea on Kanai, and documents related to the (ultimately unsuccessful) attempt at colonization are housed in the Bancroft Library at Berkeley. 

Subsequent variants of the Russian diaspora generally resulted from political upheaval and religious oppression. The major political event was, of course, the Russian Revolution of 1917. Some Russians who had mutually unsympathetic relations with the Bolsheviks escaped to Europe, sometimes working their way to the east coast of the Untied States thereafter. Other exiles, however, continued the ‘Pacific Rim’ tradition, escaping by means of the Trans-Siberian Rail Road into China and establishing flourishing Russian colonies in Shanghai and Harbin. Some of these émigrés came to the United States relatively directly, arriving in the 1920s, while others established a life for themselves in China and left only when a second communist revolution turned their lives upside down. 

Most crossed the pacific and settled in San Francisco or Los Angeles, especially in Hollywood, where the impact of the émigré communities can be documented by the founding and growth of Russian Orthodox churches, Russian language newspapers, and, in the case of Hollywood, the number of Russian names that appears in film credits from the twenties through the sixties. There were twelve Russian Orthodox churches functioning in San Francisco in 1980, most or all presumably functioning still today, and there are others in Berkeley and farther down on the San Francisco Peninsula. The first Russian Orthodox church in Southern California was the Church of the Holy Virgin Mary on Micheltorena Street in Hollywood, which was founded in the twenties and continues today as a hub of Russian cultural activity. It is primarily through the parishioners of this church and other Orthodox churches in the area -- there are two more in Hollywood and several others elsewhere in Southern California -- that my colleagues and I plan to document the foundations of Russian culture in Los Angeles.