Slavic/Eastern European communities in NA
 

What is the Slavic/Eastern European presence in your city? Most Europeans who have arrived in the last 30 years or so have probably come from east side of the old iron curtain. Obviously there's wide variation between say the Parma and Cheektowaga-type "Polish American" suburbs and recent immigrants.

I get the sense that beyond the immigrant generation Slavs seem less distinctive and blend into the "white mainstream" more than say southern European groups like Italians or Greeks (or obviously Jews).

little bosnia or bevo, but the community has spread to the southern suburbs of st. louis. its supposed to be the largest population of bosnian immigrants and people of bosnian decent in the u.s. close to 100,000 now. this wave started in the 90s so is quite recent.

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019...s-01-jumbo.jpgnytimes.com

^ wikipedia says chicago has one of the largest bosnian populations in the US after st. louis.

apparently 40,000 refugees came here from the war in the '90s, but they were mixed into an existing bosnian community that had been here since the early 20th, so the total number gets a bit fuzzy, what with assimilation, intermarriage, and all of that.

ive also heard/seen bowling green, ky anecdotally. not sure why although the corvette plant went there from st. louis.

In Metro Detroit, Slavs & Eastern Europeans mostly live on the Eastside, so mostly in Macomb County, and bordering parts of Oakland County (Troy, especially). There's also a community in some Wayne County suburbs, especially Downriver around Wyandotte and in Livonia. There's also small Russian (Jewish) community in West Bloomfield (Oakland County).

There's no significant Metro Detroit Slavic/EE immigration in recent years. The EU put an end to that. There's some Albanian and Romanian immigration, but not Slavic.

In the NY area, it's too complicated to detail, but generally speaking, you'll find Slavic/EE presence in working class white ethnic areas throughout the tri-state, and some of it will be of more recent vintage. Really sizable, visible communities are still present in Brooklyn and Queens. Places like Greenpoint, Ridgewood, Middle Village, Glendale, Maspeth. The former Soviet communities are elsewhere, but most visible in Southern Brooklyn and Central Queens.

for poles in chicago, that's been my experience.

after a couple generations, they're just regular old white people for the most part, though some can still get weirdly proud of their polish heritage (kinda like some "irish" folks).

what is a bit different, is that chicago still does get some immigration from poland (a drop in the bucket compared to the old days, but still there) to keep things in the polish community a tiny bit "fresher" than say for the italians or greeks, whose immigrant wells have gone dry.

I know you mentioned North America, but my family has some slavic roots via South America.

Brazil has millions of Polish and Ukrainian descendants. If I'm not mistaken, the largest Ukrainian diaspora in the world is in Brazil. They are sprinkled throughout the country, but have a very dominant presence in places like Curitiba and the rest of Paraná state. There are also lots of Russian descendants, including Russian mennonites in the Savannahs of Mato Grosso state (Primavera do Leste).

Personally, I have Ukrainian ancestry mixed in with a bunch of others via Rio de Janeiro. Rio has a good population of Ukrainians who fled during the War, a big percentage of who are Jewish. This is restricted to Rio mainly, as the rest of them are Catholic or Orthodox.

The slavs in metropolitan settings have fully integrated in Brazilian society, but those in rural settings/towns are still very traditional and most people are bilingual Ukrainian/Portuguese. Below is the city entrance to a town mainly of Ukrainian ancestry in Paraná.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ntopolisPR.JPG

yeah, i’ve worked with younger people FROM poland in my chicago office.

Chicago is known for its Polish population, and Polish immigrants continued to arrive in very large numbers until very recently. Polish American enclaves have a lot of Polish immigrants still. I suspect the descendants of the earlier waves are mostly living in the collar counties and aren't particularly distinctive at this point though.

yeah, i've got two friends in my wider social circle who were born in poland. both came to chicago with their families as kids back in the '80s/'90s.

Looks like we cross-posted.

Yeah, Italian and Greek immigration pretty much completely dried up 40 or 50 years ago, so most of the immigrants are senior citizens at this point. Their cultural distinctiveness depends less on immigration as the case of Eastern Europeans I think. Irish and Poles may be a good comparison. Proud of their heritage, yes, but you only know about that heritage because they tell you.

I guess the difference in Chicago is that the Parma/Cheektowaga equivalents are actually filled with immigrants.

Appearantly quite alot of people with background in the former Yugoslavia (Mainly Serbs) live in the town of Juneau, Alaska.

I heard a few Serbs also stayed in New Yorks Hells Kitchen back in the days.

Also parts of Chicago and Eatonville in Toronto

San Francisco has a legacy Russian enclave in the Richmond District, but I've read that the Sacramento area has a much larger and more recent Russian/Ukrainian diaspora.

You’ll find the lions share of Polish and Eastern European businesses in Chicago on the NW Side and NW suburbs.

Miami's NE suburbs grow more Russian by the day though its always hard to pin down the exact population since so many are wealthy individuals who generally live part time in Russia and the US. Sunny Isles Beach is the center of the Russian community but it also extends into Aventura and Hollywood and Hallandale Beach as well.

Mississauga has a sizeable Polish population and one street in Torontos west end.

The Port Richmond neighborhood in Philadelphia has been historically a magnate for Polish immigrants and continues to be so, though less so than in the past. Northeast Philadelphia generally (no specific neighborhood) has attracted immigrants from Russia and the former Soviet Union in the past 30 years. I recently met a group of young recent arrivals from Kazakhstan living in NE Philly.

All tend to land here then within a generation sort of melt into the general populace and shift between NE Philly and the close in Montgomery and Bucks County suburbs.

the last old school specifically polish sausage shop (that i know of in the city limits - not counting german or bosnian sausage shops) is in a neighborhood as close to NE as you can get in st louis, also hugging industry, a major expressway, and the river the same way as port richmond. the ancient polish falcons hall/mansion is nearby too which is an immense labyrinth. sometimes there are weird demographic geographical similarities with philadelphia - the street system was also originally americanized to emulate philly.

https://umission.org/wp-content/uplo...agemaker-4.jpg umission.org

Cleveland has a rich history of Slavic immigrants (ex Slavic Village neighborhood). We have the largest population of Slovenian descendants outside of Ljubljana. More recently, we have a growing Ukrainian population to the south of the city (Ukrainian Village in the very Polish suburb of Parma), and a larger Russian community on the east side (Mayfield Rd corridor thru Cleveland Hts, South Euclid, Lyndhurst, with the largest community in Mayfield Hts. There is some overlap with the Jewish community centered on Beachwood. My own ancestry here goes back to the Russian Empire, with my great-grandpa coming as part of the first wave of Slavic immigrants, settling in Slavic Village. Today though, in my day to day life living on the east side, I hear Russian spoken in public as often as I hear Spanish in other cities. Here's a demographic report recently released by the County. Page 29 shows first languages. Mayfield Hts is 14.8% "Other Indo-European", which includes Russian. https://www.countyplanning.us/wp-con...ok_3-31-21.pdf