When Eddie Petrovsky, a Russian immigrant, opened his restaurant Cosmos in the traditionally Italian area of Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, the locals all assumed he was a gangster. ‘They think any Russian who drives a Lexus has to be mafia. The whole gangster thing was way back, in the 1990s, but they can’t believe Russian immigrants could make it by just working hard.’ Eddie, it has to be said, looks like a friendlier version of Tony Soprano – but his main source of income is a valet parking business serving Hasidic weddings. He arrived in the US from Siberia in 1990, a 22-year-old straight out of university, part of the post-Soviet influx. He spoke fast, driving through Brooklyn with a phone in each hand and answering them on loudspeaker as he talked to me. ‘Americans have lost their way,’ he said. ‘They don’t have the challenges any more and they don’t appreciate what they’ve got. Russians arrive here with nothing but a little suitcase, look round at America and think: Wow! I can have all that?’

LRB 13 September 2012 | PDF Download