2.95 million Americans are claiming Russian ancestry

According to the 1990 US. Census, 2.95 million Americans are claiming Russian ancestry, but a more realistic view suggests that there are only 750,000 Americans of ethnic Russian descent, which means that they were either born in Russia or have at least one parent or grandparent of ethnic Russian heritage.

* 44 percent of this number reside in the Northeast, (40-50,000 Russians in Boston area)
* 16 percent in the Midwest
* 18 percent in the South
* 22 percent in the West Areas

Interesting fact: Only 242,000 people have command of Russian.

This indicates the degree to which assimilation has progressed, which usually takes its toll in the third generation Russian immigrant communities in the USA are generally clustered around major Eastern Orthodox or Russian churches, like in Alaska, or in and around major US cities like New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Detroit, and Boston where newly arrived immigrants have a better chance of getting a job.