ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Greater Los Angeles’s (GLA) Russian language landscape, the impact of several “waves” of Russian-speaking emigrants, and these speakers’ attitudes toward the maintenance and transmission of the Russian language and cultural heritage. It includes numerous works on Russian emigration, heritage communities, and the inter-generational transmission of Russian. By the end of the Soviet period Russian had become the primary language for many Soviet citizens, including people of non-Russian ethnicity. The city of West Hollywood has the highest concentration of Russian speakers in GLA, with 3,463, or 9.9% of the total population of 34,868 that speaks Russian at home. The linguistic landscape of Russian-speaking GLA reflects both the size of the Russian-speaking population and the length of its presence in the area. Local and international Russian Olympiada competitions are another aspect of schooling that validate students’ speaking and reading abilities in Russian.
