What We Came For

“I come from a country that doesn’t exist anymore,” Mark Stipakov notes. Sitting in his office near Highway 169 in Plymouth, Stipakov recalls coming to Minnesota from Leningrad at the age of 26 in 1979, a time when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, under international pressure, allowed its Jewish citizens to emigrate. (That window would be shut after the Moscow Olympics in 1980.) While many opted for Israel, Stipakov decided the USA was more his style.

So how did he end up in Minnesota? Stipakov smiles: “That’s still a mystery to me.” Back in Russia, he’d seen pictures of Seattle, and dreamed of living there. But the nonprofit that was helping him move sent him to St. Paul instead. “I was from a northern city, and maybe they thought that, climate-wise, it would be appropriate for me.”

In any case, Stipakov has made himself at home in Minnesota. He arrived here with a business degree, but little English and no family connections. Yet within a few weeks, he’d found a job at Kramarczuk’s, the legendary Ukrainian delicatessen in Northeast Minneapolis. A friend later helped him get a job as a technician at Control Data, where he eventually became a programmer. In 1984, he earned a realtor’s license, worked for Century 21 and Counselor Realty for six years, then opened his own brokerage, Jem Properties. Starting as a residential broker—his clients were primarily immigrants, and not solely from the USSR—Stipakov branched out into commercial properties as well. His Ukraine-born wife, Bella, works in the office as a mortgage agent.

"If you want to build something on your own, this is the best place to be."

Besides doing real estate brokerage work, Jem Properties owns and manages the Willow Grove Shopping Center, a 30,000-square-foot retail strip occupied by small retailers and restaurants with a notably multi-ethnic flavor: a Russian art gallery, a Chinese restaurant, Vietnamese and Indian grocery stores. “It’s like a small United Nations here,” Stipakov says.

In a sense, Stipakov’s hometown no longer exists either, since Leningrad has reverted to its original name, St. Petersburg. Indeed, large parts of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics have new identities as independent nations, which contributes to the difficulty of determining how many Soviet- or Russian-born people reside in Minnesota. It’s probably simpler to think in terms of Russian-speaking immigrants.

Whatever the description, the community is smaller than that of Hispanics, Southeast Asians, and various African groups in Minnesota, groups whose presence, particularly in the Twin Cities area, is more visible and familiar. Russian-speaking immigrants have been able to blend in with Minnesotans of European descent.

Like other immigrant groups, they’ve shown themselves to be highly entrepreneurial. Their motivations, however, are the products of a distinct culture and era. Starting a business isn’t the only reason that Soviet and Russian émigrés have come to Minnesota, but it does reflect the mentality of nearly all of these newcomers—the desire to make their own lives, liberated from ideology and the rigid whims of bureaucrats.