As the elevated train rumbles south through
the tar-plastered rooftops of lower Brooklyn and passengers file out at King
's Highway or Sheepshead Bay, there is a distinct increase in the number of
fur coats per capita.

On the cornflower-blue, hard-plastic benches, fur hats peeking over
sprawling copies of Komsomolskaya Pravda supplant stocking caps thumbing
through The Daily News.

At the right time of day, there is an audible crescendo from whispers
at Atlantic Avenue to a full-throated Russophone revival by the time the
doors open at the end of the line of a Brighton-bound 'B' train.

But walking down Brighton Beach Avenue, "The Ave" to locals, with its
thundering train tracks and bilingual shop windows, one would never imagine
stepping off the train into Moscow or St. Petersburg. The brownstone
architecture and main-street Starbucks aside, the Russianness of this
Russian enclave in one of the most cosmopolitan and forward-looking cities
in the world is decidedly not-so-cosmopolitan and, immigrant Russians say,
somewhat backward-looking.

"Look around you on the streets here," said Sonya Vakhrushevka, a
60-year-old immigrant who works in a laundry in Brooklyn. "Where are all the
young people? For us, this is a place to keep the life we remember."

And it's true. At the corner of "The Ave" and 5th, a 72-year-old
Ukrainian immigrant pokes through a tray of pirozhki. In a dress shop right
off the stairs to the subway platform, two women aged 63 and 72 chat about
the presidential election in Russia as they wait for customers. A steady
stream of older immigrants pull handcarts and tote plaid cargo bags down the
main street.

A world away, in the breezeway leading to Moscow's Okhotny Rad
shopping center, a pack of Russian boys circle around an open guitar case,
singing to themselves and swilling from brown bottles. There are girls in
knee-high boots and billowing fur collars trotting from one European
boutique to the next. Not here in Brighton Beach.

Two avenues back from the main street, five older Russian men huddle
around an upturned milk crate covered with a sheet of cardboard. They have
been there since morning, nursing Budweisers and playing card games. Two of
them live upstairs on makeshift cots. They draw electricity for space
heaters through an orange extension cord strung from the second-floor
windows of the house next door. The rest sleep in other abandoned houses.

Yevgeny, a 53-year-old Russian who arrived eight years ago from Penza,
a city south of Moscow, said he had worked for a few years in construction.
When he lost his job, he received food stamps and an unemployment check and
he hasn't tried to look for a job since.

"This is our life," he said. "It's not exactly like it was, but, of
course, it's easier to live here than there in the city (Manhattan). We stay
here with our own people, our own language, our own card games."

Oleg, another card player in the chilly first floor of the abandoned
house, came to the United States on a refugee visa as a Russian Jew in 1978,
although as he said, technically speaking his father was Jewish and from
Ukraine, so he didn't qualify at the time. He is now 65 and a retired
delivery driver. He draws a small check from Social Security that barely
covers the cost of food.

Brighton Beach hasn't changed much in the last 10 years, he added,
chuckling while noting that Moscow is the most expensive city in the world
with luxury cars and luxury hotels. "I don't think those Muscovites would
like our Little Odessa on the beach," he said. "Not stylish, not new enough
for them."

Like waves on the beach

For more than 40 years, Brighton Beach has been the most prominent
depository for Russian-speaking refugees landing on the East Coast. They are
divided roughly into waves of immigration based on changes in Soviet and
American immigration policy and the availability of routes to the West
through "midwife states" such as Italy or Israel. Until 1991, the vast
majority of these refugees were Russian-speaking Jews from Soviet republics
like Ukraine or Belarus.

In an in-depth study of Russophone Jews living in Brighton Beach,
Stanford University's David Laitin notes that the Jewish community
emphasized religion and ethnicity instead of a common language with other
Russian-speaking emigres. These Russian Jews of the first three waves to
populate Brighton Beach were, more often than not, members of the
intelligentsia and financially well-off.

"To have influence in American and/or New York politics, a Russian
identity is of little value," Laitin writes. "However, conjoined with other
American Jews, Russian-speaking Jews can capture part of a powerful minority
voice in both arenas."

They exercised that political influence from the shores of Brighton
Beach, where they formed a closed community based on a common religion and
ethnicity, a somewhat surprising bond considering the secular dogma of the
Soviet republics from which they came.

But the cohesiveness of that specific community has been fighting a
two-front war since the collapse of the Soviet Union. One front is the
acclamation and aspirations of second-and third-generation Russian Jewish
immigrants.

"The Russian-speaking diaspora in New York is more like any immigrant
group in advanced industrial societies," Laitin said in an e-mail. "They
will be totally assimilated in two-and-a-half generations."

The other front of the war to maintain Brighton Beach's
distinctiveness is a schism between those early immigrants of the first
three waves and those who flowed in later. The members of the fourth wave of
immigrants - those who came after the collapse of the Soviet Union - upset
the balance. They were mostly ethnic Russians, poorer than their
predecessors and largely spilling out of the collapsing empire in search of
economic salvation.

This group sought refuge in Brighton Beach because they had more
trouble assimilating into American culture, Laitin argues in his study. But
they were not completely welcome.

One woman he interviewed said she did not blame the fourth wave of
immigrants for their failure to connect with the established immigrant
community, but that she found little in common with them.

A race against age

These waves of history and schisms in the community form the tableau
for the greater problem with the Russian immigrant community in Brooklyn, a
race against time, a race against age. Of those who did settle comfortably
in the community, their children and grandchildren are now choosing to move
away from the pounding of the trains and the produce-lined boulevard.

The desire to move away from an area where Russianness is partly
defined by an arguably kitschy culture that smacks of a bygone era. It also
stigmatizes the area for some young Russians freshly arrived from Moscow and
St. Petersburg who see Brighton Beach as a nice place to visit, but not
somewhere to live.

"In Brighton Beach, the second generation, while many speak Russian,
have much less of an interest, and are much less able to capture the
subtleties of Russian art," Laitin said.

Pat Singer, head of the Brighton Beach Neighborhood Association, said
the neighborhood was definitely retaining its unique flavor, one of its
strengths. The gentrification that has changed the ethnic face of other
Brooklyn neighborhoods has not breached the Brighton sea wall, save for a
few luxury apartment complexes and big development plans for nearby Coney
Island-"just talk," Singer said.

But the neighborhood is getting older and the next wave to hit the
beach has not rolled in, she said.

"It's happened before, but it's getting old again," she said. "The
younger ones, they don't want to live in the ghetto."

A new generation and a new brand of immigrant

Of those who got their start in Brighton Beach, Laitin said they are
increasingly moving out to Long Island or suburbs up the coast as they gain
more upward mobility. The second generation is losing the nuance of
Russianness that defined their parents in Brighton Beach.

They speak in a hybrid Russian-English conflagration, feel more at
home with their American-born schoolmates and resist attempts by their
parents to retain their home language.

Julia Terasenko, a student who moved to New York City from St.
Petersburg in December, said she had considered moving to Brighton Beach,
but decided against it. Instead, she found an apartment in Williamsburg,
further north in Brooklyn.

She is one of many educated and well-to-do Russians who are coming
under the latest manifestation of U.S. immigration law. They come to study
and work in the schools and offices of Manhattan and they have little
interest in the "old world" represented by Brighton Beach.

"I thought about it, yeah," Terasenko said. "But when it came down to
it, Brighton Beach is good for the caviar, the pelmeni, the bread. But I'm
in America, I'd rather act like

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