• The Russians and former Soviet Citizens

The Russians and former Soviet Citizens (transcript)

by Dave Barasoain

Each Thursday night members of the Atlanta Balalaika Society gather to practice. The balalaika is a traditional Russian instrument. Its written history can be traced back about three hundred years, but its real popularity only took off in the late eighteen hundreds. The balalaika is similar to a guitar, but with a large triangle shaped base, made of wood. The Atlanta Balalaika Society is made up of performers of all ages. There are those who are older, but then there is Ian who’s twenty four. Mark and Sasha are both seventeen. The Balalaika Society are not just people with links to the former Soviet Union. There’s a Swede, a Greek and even a Croatian. The Society’s director is David

COOPER: We had an orchestra that played in the Westin Peachtree Plaza hotel for thirteen years believe it or not. But that was the core of what became the Atlanta Balalaika Society. We enjoy having an orchestra and we’re about thirty-five members in the orchestra now.

The Balalaika Society actually found their youngest member at one of their performances. At nearly six feet and two inches, fourteen year old Kirill Chernova is surprisingly tall; he has a voice to match. Kirill says his first experience with the balalaika changed his life.

KIRILL CHERNOVA: Well, when I first saw it, I thought ‘what is this?’, I’ve never seen anything like this. I’ve never heard anything like this. So when I heard it, it sound so amazing to me that it just comes from three strings. So that’s the first thing I’m going to do. I’m going to learn this instrument.

The Chernova family moved to the United States in 1992 from St. Petersburg, Russia. At their home in Decatur, Krill’s parents, and especially his mother, Tatiana have taken a keen interest in passing on an understanding of Russian artistic culture to their son.

TATIANA CHERNOVA: We go quite often, every time the Russian production company comes over we go to the Fox or we go to the Symphony. Last time we went to the Fox to see the Russian folk dance ensemble. So every time something happens culturally in Russian, we are right there.

KIRILL CHERNOVA: I like to think of it as like one of those instruments that you just go to a very urban town, or somewhere in the country side. And you see some people just sitting there and just playing it, just for fun. Like a country guitar or anything like that.

But it’s not just groups like the Atlanta Balalaika Society and kids like Kirill that are learning the artistic culture of the former Soviet Union. Oksana Gomas is Ukrainian. By day she teaches American kids in Atlanta, but on the weekends she spends time with teenagers who have Russian or Ukrainian roots, teaching them grammar ,spelling and Russian poetry. Today’s subject is the 19th century Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin.

GOMAS: If I teach my children Russian poetry, let’s say Pushkin, something will have a place in their hearts and mind and it will be built up differently from a person who has never heard it.

It’s a common requirement in Russian schools that kids not just learn, but memorize oems. Today for class, eleven year old Anastasia has memorized Pushkin’s “Winter Morning”.

ANASTASIA: The author is trying to get this girl to go outside and just have fun. Enjoy winter. Here in Atlanta there is never any snow. It makes me want to go to Russia, go outside and jump outside and play in the snow.

David Cooper’s wife, Zhanna, also helps to create an awareness of Russian culture. She does it at a dance studio just outside their home, with a group called the Russian Children’s’ Dance Ensemble, or Matreshka. Five of the children she teaches were actually adopted from Russia and now live with American families.

ZHANNA COOPER: Its very emotional for me sometimes, how American parents find it very important to keep the Russian heritage for their children. They really encourage them to speak Russian, dance and listen to Russian music.

In the studio students take partners, face each other and turn. The dances change from time to time with kids spinning, or dancing in a circle like a carousel with their hands touching in the center of the circle. For teachers like the Coopers and Oksana Gomas, their efforts to pass on the culture come from a desire to see that art flourish in the face of what can gently be called American assimilation. And, as David Cooper points out, for any art form to have a viable future, it must start with children.

DAVID COOPER: The only way to have something of a professional or semi-professional level, we have to start with the children. That’s absolutely the best time for them to be learning any kind of a cultural art form, music, dance or language of course. If we start early and do it, twenty years from now we’ll see what became of it. If we don’t start it now, then twenty years from now there will be nothing.

© Copyright 2005, WABE