Voice of New Americans: About Us in the Kansas City Star

In the former Soviet Union, Mikhail Lapidus felt important. He had many friends. He had a top job in banking and a keed sense of his place in the world.

That would cahnge in 1992, when Lapidus left to be nearer his two daughters and five grandchildren in Johnson County.

Here, he felt lonely, depressed, useless. Unable to speak English or practice his profession, Lapidus did att that was left to him.

"No language. No job. I can only sleep," he said.

Even worse, though, he had few Russian-speaking friends in the United States with whom to commiserate. He knew there were roughly 3,000 émigrés in the area, but few opportunities to meet them, having come from a country where church and synagogue attendance had been discouraged for 70 years.

Enter Peter and Sabina Shapiro. About a year and a half ago the Shapiros decieded it was time to bring together the Russian-speaking minority in Greater Kansas City. They didit for people like Lapidus, and for immigrant families like their own, who wanted their children to learn about their heritage.

"That is why we decided to make the newspaper," Sabina Shapiro said. "Like the club, it was a bridge."

The paper to which she refers is Voice of Russians, and through it was born the club, known simply as the Russian Club.

The Shapiros started Voice of Russians by running off 100 copies on legal-size paper and asking that fellow immigrants from the former Soviet Union pass them around. Now, 10,000 papers are printed monthly, or whenever enough money is raised to cover expenses. Half of each eight-page issue is in Russian, half in Eglish. It's distriibuted free at 100 locations, including public libraries.

The reason he publishes three times as many copies as there are immigrants, Peter Shapiro says, is so other Kansas Citians can read and learn more about their Russian-speaking neighbors.

"We want itto go everywhere," he said.

The Shapiros have been here longer than most, They came from Moldova in 1979 and built a good life. Theirs was, in a sence, the classic immigrant story.They learned English and made a living from their training as engineers. They had two children, and raised them in a house in the suburbs.

But like other immigrants, the Shapiros and their Russian-speaking friends felt the need to hold on to some of their culture. They regretted that their children, born in America, could speak no Russian. They wanted a connection.

"To unite all immigrants from the former Soviet Union and build our own community, integrate with the community at large and other organized societies of the Greater Kansas City."

That is the mission statement printed at the top of each issue of the newspaper. It might as wee be the sign over the door of the New Haven Seventh Day AdventistChurch in Overland Park, where the Russian Club meets each Sunday afternood at 2:30.

Then is a time to tell stories, to gossip and learn. But Peter Shapiro, who describes himself as a former atheist, also has introduced God into the discussions, both at the club and in the newspaper, seeing religion as one more way of building a connection.

"They're struggling," New Haven minister Jerry LaFave said, "struggling to find faith."

Struggling, too, to become Americans without losing a sense of who they are. As waves of immigrants before them have found, it's a struggle not easily won.

Note from the editor: Our Russian-American Club is an independent secular organization and is a division of RUS Publishing, Inc.

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