The bulk of the Russian-speaking emigrants in America were concentrated on the East Coast in New York, Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia. A smaller group settled on the West Coast of the country. But the most important thing is that most of the emigrants who moved to the West Coast were not from the cultural centers of the Soviet Union, such as Moscow and Leningrad, but mainly from the provinces. The overwhelming majority of emigrants from Moscow and Leningrad settled on the East Coast of the country, where they formed cultural, Russian-speaking centers.
Joseph Brodsky began working at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, then moved to New York. In total, he worked at various American universities for 24 years. Sergei Davlatov became widely known after he established his author's program Writer at the Microphone on Radio Liberty in New York. But the West Coast did not have all this intellectual wealth, although a fairly large Russian diaspora lived in Los Angeles.
The Society of Russian Literature in California opened its doors on September 25, 2009, on Ivanhoe Avenue in San Diego, California. It was almost an exact replica of the Moscow Literary and Art salon on Chekhov Street, where lovers of the arts, literature, painting, and poetry had met for 15 years. As in Moscow, poetry evenings were regularly held. In addition, exhibitions of paintings by Russian artists who lived and worked in San Diego were organized. Subsequently, the Board of Trustees of the Society of Russian Literature in California decided to hold annual meetings of the club on Natasha’s birthday, September 25. The society's motto was taken from the lines of Natasha's poem, written by her at the age of 17:
В этой жизни мутной провода-ужи
До чего же жутко в переплётах лжи.
The founding charter of the community included the following simple guidelines:
The club's meetings were held for many years and were always intimate, but they were fun and poetic with music, poetry, songs and, of course, they were held in the Russian language. A few years later, Natasha presented her first collection of poems to the club. This book, titled From the Bottom of the Soul, contained about 150 poems collected from unpublished material brought from the Soviet Union. Subsequently, Natasha adopted this book title for all her ensuing books, which were otherwise distinguished solely by volume number. The first collection of poems took a long time to finalize since the drafts of poems written in Leningrad and Moscow were in very poor shape and condition. After restoration and editing, these poems found a new life. The printing house agreed to print the book with hard leather binding, and after Natasha approved the designer’s work, the first book was sent to be printed. After the release of the first volume of poetry, the Board of Trustees of the Society decided to publish selected poems on the website societyofrussionliterature.org
In today's world, as news of violence and illness is taking over our lives, kindness is like the medicine that everyone needs. Each of us has the ability to contribute to the common good by showing kindness to others. Just as in Moscow and Leningrad, all of Natasha’s work in America was permeated with kindness, based on love for man, nature, and God. The desire to do good, without expecting external or internal reward, is possible only in a loving person because the true moral meaning of life lies only in love. In Natasha’s poems, love is the spiritual unifier that runs like a connecting thread through all her creativity. Like a thin stream, it began in Leningrad and Moscow and turned into a wide, deep river in the United States. In 2011, the Board of Trustees of the Society of Russian Literature in California nominated Natasha to the position of the President of the Society, and her candidacy was unanimously approved by everyone.
As of 2024, Natasha had written ten volumes, of which seven volumes of poems and short story collections have been published. Natasha continues to create, and in each short story, she preaches kindness as the main human virtue. Goodness in its absolute sense is an ethical concept that unites people and has a positive moral influence on them. Goodness occupies a central position in the traditional ideology of the Russian-speaking view of the world. Goodness unites the ideas of the spiritual and material world into one whole. Since, in Russian culture, the Christian idea of goodness is associated with God, goodness does not die. This ideology was brought to Europe by emigrants of the first wave, in the early twentieth century, and this same ideology arrived in the New World with the emigration of the fourth wave, in the twenty-first century, which included Natasha and her creativity.