A Bridge to a New World

There’s no simple one-size-fits-all key to understanding Spokane’s Russian-speaking community. “All people are different,” said Tatyana Bistrevsky, leery of stereotypes. But then the one-woman cultural bridge thought of something: “Be aware that Russian people do not smile a lot.”

There are exceptions, of course. And one way to see members of this immigrant community prove it is to watch what happens when Bistrevsky walks into the room.

Chances are, you’ve never heard of her. But in segments of the Russian-speaking population, the black-haired problem solver is a star.

“She’s the best thing that ever happened to the Russian community,” said Barbara Bennett, executive director of the Valley Food Bank.

“I would say that she is pivotal,” said Alicia M. Thompson of the Spokane Regional Health District. “She is the champion for her community. She can work miracles.”

Not bad for someone whose job title is “program assistant.”

Bistrevsky, 40, wears several hats for Washington State University’s Spokane County Extension office. She leads classes on safe food preparation and nutrition. She talks to small groups about public health issues. She translates for other speakers. She produces an eclectic monthly newsletter, printed in Russian. And she organizes family-focused gatherings and outings as well as overseeing a Slavic youth group.

Her dayplanner has very little white space.

When the host of a weekly Russian radio show has to be away, she turns to Bistrevsky to fill in.

When an epidemiologist wants help with a survey of Slavic Spokane, she phones Bistrevsky.

Suicidal immigrants, depressed by the difficulty of transition to life here, call her.

In Spokane, she has become a go-to Russian.

“Right now, our extension office is like 911 for the Russian community,” she said.

There’s a simple reason for that.

“They trust her,” said Sharon Grant, service coordinator at a large Browne’s Addition apartment complex where more than half the residents speak Russian.

In part, that’s because the immigrants know Bistrevsky understands many of their struggles.

She is the daughter of a strong woman whose near-death conversion to Christianity eventually branded her small-town family as subversives. Bistrevsky’s earliest childhood memories include grinding poverty and Soviet officials harassing her parents for their beliefs. Her older siblings were taken away and placed in a state orphanage.

Life was better by the time she was a young mother living in Ukraine. Her husband, Vadim, had a good job as an electrician. They owned a car.

Still, it wasn’t easy to be an out-of-the-closet Christian.

Then Bistrevsky’s late mother spoke to her in her sleep, saying it was God’s will that she move her family to the United States.

Talk about your American dream.

When they came here in 1989, the Bistrevskys could not speak English. There was much frustration, many tears. “We cried together,” she said.

Originally sponsored by a Presbyterian church in Tacoma, the family moved from there to Spokane in 1994. She had come here to visit relatives (also immigrants) and had a good feeling about this city.

The rough times didn’t end right away, though.

Since coming here, she has experienced being so broke that she had to use a credit card to buy a loaf of bread and accept a few bucks from a co-worker so she could put gas in her car.

She has endured her kids being underestimated and picked on in school. She has heard her own name pronounced as if the speakers were spitting out rocks. “It’s supposed to be Tat-yana, soft and smooth,” she said.

But Bistrevsky says she never lost faith in her decision to move to the U.S.

Today her husband has a job, her children have piled up academic honors and she has people asking if she’s ever thought of running for an elected office.

“This is God’s blessing,” she said, each syllable soaked in her Red Square accent.

A little more than three years ago, there was a school teacher who knew the WSU Spokane County Extension office was looking for a liaison to the Russian-speaking community. He had a chance encounter with Bistrevsky, who was working for Spokane Public Schools at the time. And he was impressed.

“I could see right away that she had very good people skills,” said Dick Streeter, who works at Grant Elementary. “There’s something magnetic about her.”

He told her about the WSU job. She went after it and got it.

But she hasn’t been satisfied to just climb in her Ford Taurus each weekday and go talk about the proper way to cook chicken or discuss the warning signs of diabetes.

Bistrevsky, a networking dynamo, connects people who need assistance with individuals and social service agencies that can help. “I am building relationships,” she said.

Sometimes she helps simply by listening. Sometimes the key is knowing who to call.

“She’s committed to making things work for people from her home country,” said Nancy Sanders, interim director of the County Extension office. “She’s passionate about that.”

It’s classic immigrant philosophy – help smooth the way for the ones who come after you. But few are as effective as Tatyana Bistrevsky.

Informed estimates suggest there might be approximately 20,000 people living in the Spokane area whose families came from the former Soviet Union.

Now Bistrevsky is hardly the only person in Spokane with insights about the clash of cultures. But she definitely straddles two worlds. And instead of being thrown off balance, she’s energized by the challenge.

Even the seemingly crazy stuff doesn’t get her down.

A leader at a local Slavic church recently complained to Bistrevsky about her WSU-sponsored newsletter’s apparent endorsement of homosexuality. So she had to explain to him the actual nature and intent of the nondiscrimination boilerplate one finds on countless government publications.

Still, she’d rather talk about taking a group of senior citizens originally from rural parts of Russia – “elderlies” she calls them – to the Spokane Interstate fair. Bistrevsky knew she had done a good thing when she saw some of them overcome with delight upon getting to spend a few moments with farm animals for the first time since coming to America.

“She’s a very nice person,” said Mariya Tsaruk, who came here from Ukraine and has attended Bistrevsky’s cooking classes.

She has a good sense of humor, said Anita Raddatz, one of her supervisors. (Bistrevsky’s laugh can be a disarmingly girlish giggle.)

But, Raddatz added, she doesn’t care for off-color jokes and has zero tolerance for intentionally hurting someone’s feelings.

As if she isn’t busy enough, Bistrevsky is taking night classes toward a bachelor’s degree in the humanities at Whitworth College.

A little sign in her cubicle at work reads “Of course I can do it. I’m a woman.”

All five of her children – ages 21 to 14 – live with Bistrevsky and her husband in Spokane Valley. In private, they shift back and forth between languages with head-spinning fluidity. All are U.S citizens.

She has a ready answer when asked if she misses the flavors of Russian life. “My culture is where I am, right?”

Bistrevsky has been back to the old country a couple of times for visits. She was glad to see some new churches but missed her cell phone.

Both times, near the end of her stay, she was quite ready to come back to Washington.

She loves her adopted home, she said.

That affection is not always reciprocated.

Last December, Bistrevsky got snared in a minor hassle with a grumpy sales clerk at a local mall. And as she waited for the receipt she had requested, an impatient line started to form behind her.

Someone grumbled something that included the words “Go back to Russia.”

“I was stunned,” Bistrevsky recalled.

It dented her feelings. But as suggestions go, she recognized that it really didn’t make much sense.

Russia is her past. And she’s all about the future.

“This is my country,” she said.