Arm slung on the back of her chair, she likes to sit by customers and chat endlessly. Troosh serves a variety of zakuski, or “little bites” like beet vinaigrette salad and eggplant spreads, and classics like beef stroganoff and cream-filled blinchiki (crepes). For the past 23 years, she has been running Katia’s Tea Room. Her family left Shanghai in 1949 and eventually arrived in San Francisco by way of Bangkok. Her maternal grandfather settled in China in 1899, and she was born there. And then, a third wave: Just as the baby boomers were exiting San Francisco in the late 1970s as part of the larger American urban flight, refugees from the Soviet Union - many of whom were Jews - began settling in the Richmond, having been attracted to the bakeries, social groups and other infrastructure catering to Russian speakers. After World War II, another wave followed when the sizable Russian émigré community in Shanghai and Harbin fled China when the déjà vu threat of a communist takeover loomed. Aristocrats, intellectuals and officers of the Imperial Russian Army fleeing the Bolsheviks arrived in droves, sometimes by way of Asia. Though Russian-speaking fur traders and other settlers were already living in northern California in the 18th century, the first significant wave of Russian immigration to San Francisco took place after the Russian Civil War ended with the Bolsheviks’ victory in 1921. By some estimates, the city’s Russophone population is 30,000, with half living in the Richmond alongside the neighborhood’s prominent Chinese and Irish communities. At 2.1 square miles that stretch nearly 50 blocks, the Richmond is among the city’s larger districts, though most Russian businesses cluster around Geary Street. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the Bay Area’s economic booms have led to several waves of Russian immigration to this bustling enclave within San Francisco. When you overhear Russian on the sidewalks of the Richmond, it’s not an oddity but a sign of a dynamic community.
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