Town Once Was Home to 400 Russian Refugees : Numbers Dwindle at Immigrant Colony

RICHMOND, Me. —  Richmond yields no clue to the Old World secret it has harbored for decades.

Its Main Street is much like many rural Maine towns. A hardware, drugstore, newsstand and gas station stand beside empty storefronts. Along the Kennebec River, one of the few remaining Italianate homes of years ago stands abandoned and for sale.

In the heart of town sits a simple church, a cross affixed to its cupola. It is a Russian Orthodox church, where the feeble heartbeat of a once-thriving colony of immigrants still beats. At its peak 25 years ago, the colony, located 15 miles south of Augusta, Maine’s capital, had upward of 400 refugees who had fled the Russian Revolution and World War II. Now there are less than 100.

“We are only a few,” said Galina Panko, a Richmond selectwoman who came with her husband in 1970. “It’s the time that kills us. We can’t stop the run of time.”

By the 1960s, the colony’s influence had permeated Richmond. There were three Russian Orthodox churches and a headquarters for the White Russian Corps Combatants in America.

On Main Street, one could buy Russian caviar or a pair of handmade Russian boots. There was a Russian bakery and restaurant.

The Russian colony was established by Baron Vladimir Kuhn von Poushental in the early 1950s as a retirement settlement. Poushental found a once-thriving river port turned ghost town by the Depression and a fire that had swept the valley.

With the dream of establishing a community for his compatriots, Poushental bought up land and homes and advertised in a New York-based Russian newspaper.

For the older Russian immigrants from cities in New York and New Jersey who responded, Richmond offered an opportunity to return to a rural way of life they had known in their homeland.

“It was a big colony when we moved here,” said Alexandra Sherbakoff, who moved to Richmond with her husband in 1957.

The Russians found a common bond among themselves and the natives. Both shared a fierce independence, respect and knowledge of the land and the fortitude to endure hardships that included fierce northern winters.

At its height, the colony was teeming with the “old generation” of refugees--aristocrats and intellectuals clinging fiercely to the traditional Russia under the czar they knew before leaving in the 1920s and 1930s.

Later came a “new generation” of immigrants fleeing the pillage of World War II and communism.

“They’re from different walks of life--military people, an actress, singer, engineers, farmers,” said Zinaida Wlodkowski, a professor of languages and literature at the University of Maine in Augusta. “In their attitude you can see a strong Russian determination of steel, a lot of dignity.”

“You also have to realize that they have lost so much,” Wlodkowski said. “They were thrown from one country to the other, they were caught in war, lost their families and now want to belong.”