History of Russians in Baltimore

The Russian community is a growing population and constitutes a major source of new immigrants to the city.

[1] In 1920, 4,632 foreign-born White people in Baltimore were reported as speaking the Russian language as their mother tongue, though the figure probably erroneously included a significant number of Jews whose mother tongue was not Russian.

Russian was the second most widely spoken Slavic or Baltic mother tongue of immigrants in the city, after the Polish language.

[2] In the 1930 United States Census, Russian-Americans were the largest foreign-born group in Baltimore.

The Russian-American Communist Alex Bail was concerned by the religiosity of Baltimore's Russian Christian Communists, but his concerns were somewhat abated due to the portrait of Vladimir Lenin hanging inside the Russian Orthodox church.

[16] In the 1960 United States Census, Russian Jews comprised 18.2% of Baltimore's population.

To facilitate the integration of Russian immigrants into American society, the Baltimore branch of the HIAS established a bilingual Russian-English newspaper titled The News Exchange in May, 1978.

It is a restaurant which offers Russian cuisine, as well as other Slavic and Eastern European fare.

[22] In 1995 a biweekly Russian language newspaper titled Kaskad (Cascade) was founded by a Russian-speaking Jewish immigrant from Belarus.

Lemko House has opened its doors to low-income residents of any ethnicity, but is still home to many Slavic and Eastern European immigrants, including Russians.