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The Russian network of modern New York is as thick and branchy as a Siberian fir-tree. It incorporates more than fifty newspapers in American-accented Russian (for those who haven't quite learnt English yet) and one in Russian-accented English (for those who have all but forgotten their Russian). It has countless Russian restaurants where - in full accordance with Soviet culinary traditions - one can get borscht, caviar, vodka and, occasionally, food poisoning; Russian book-shops, bath-houses, surgeries and funeral homes. People concluding business deals, arguing or swearing into their mobile phones in a curious mixture of Russian and English have become common sight in the streets of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, to which the Russians jokingly refer as Bronsk.

Brighton Beach - the area in southeast Brooklyn bordering Coney Island - is also known as "Little Odessa". 150,000 Soviet emigrants, mostly former inhabitants of Odessa, settled there in the last 25 years, having radically altered the face of that "old world" New York neighbourhood, once nicknamed "a retired poor man's Miami Beach".

Not worth a visit in the 1930s, when, according to the 1939 WPA Guide to New York, Brighton Beach was but "a densely populated year-round residential area, with closely packed apartment houses", or even in the early 1970s, when it was a rapidly declining and crime-ridden ghost town, it is now one of the most idiosyncratic places in New York, if not in the whole of the USA. Going there is not just stepping 20-30 years back in time. It is a unique opportunity to visit the country that doesn't exist any more - the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Spiritually, linguistically and psychologically, Brighton Beach is not part of the USA. "We don't go to America. We have nothing to do there," its residents like to say. An American, arriving there by accident, stands out and gets stared at - like an Eskimo in the streets of Abu Dhabi.

On a wet winter morning, when Manhattan resembled a post-modernist version of Venice and the shoe-cleaners near the Grand Central Station were earning more in one hour then during the whole of July, I left the United States and boarded a B-line Subway train to Brighton Beach.

My wobbly and unkempt carriage resembled an Aeroflot plane of the 1980s. Having crawled through China Town, covered with spider-like hieroglyphic graffiti, the train rattled across Manhattan Bridge and entered Brooklyn, whose ugly littered streets and battered red-brick houses were full of unspeakable Soviet-style despair. Having heard a lot about the dangerous types, riding the Subway during the day, I looked around nervously and kept my hands in my pockets (which were empty anyway).

Soon, I concluded that I was the most dangerous type on the train, simply because for most of the trip I was alone in my carriage: no one in his right mind - not even beggars or muggers - would think of going to the Soviet Union by New York Subway in the middle of a working day.

Nearly two hours later, I got off the train in Coney Island Avenue - Brighton Beach's own "Broadway". It was raining, and the strong wind from the ocean immediately grabbed my umbrella, like a street bully, trying to break it in two. Nestling in the shadow of the Elevated, the whole neighbourhood looked like the interior of a huge neglected house with leaking roof.

Suddenly I was surrounded by semi-forgotten and painfully familiar smells and sounds. The air reeked of borsht and fried "pirozhki" (meat-pies). In front of me, a fat angry-faced lady, was telling off a young woman with a pram: "Button up your baby, mother, or you will freeze it to death!"

Almost all signs were in Russian: "Michael Kozhin - American Dentist", "Footwear from Italy", "Best Goods" (it was a one-dollar shop selling hats, toys, suit-cases and tacky post-cards), "Cheap Goods from Russia" (this shop was Chinese-owned), "We Accept Foodstamps" and "Bella Works Here".

Having resisted the temptation to see the mysterious (and obviously famous) Bella at work, I wandered off to the nearest Gastronom (food shop). Inside, there was a queue for cut-price concentrated orange juice. Just like in the Soviet Union, one had to queue at the cash desk first, and then - to the counter, behind which a busty peroxide blonde in a grubby apron was unhurriedly handing over the coveted cartons of juice to the customers. "Are you buying it or not, woman?" she shouted at a little old lady, whose decrepit shopping trolley squeaked like a Moscow tram turning the corner. The queue was regularly jumped by rough-looking men buying packets of Marlboro - without a whisper of protest from the queue.

The whole scene struck me as utterly un-American, for in the USA, according to "The Americans. A Study in National Character" by Geoffrey Gorer, even "the smallest purchase should be accompanied by a smile, and the implied assurance that the vendor is delighted and privileged to serve you…" The people did not smile in the Gastronom, where the facial expressions fluctuated between the uncomplaining indifference of the customers and "the implied assurance" of the vendor that she had a personal vendetta against everyone in the queue ...

I couldn't tear my gaze from the display of "vatrushki" cheese pies - like the ones I used to have for my school lunches; from fat-oozing "salo" - a pure pork lard that can be sliced and eaten with bread, with each slice containing more kilojoules that all the dishes from Delia Smith's "Complete Cookery Course" put together; from dusty bottles of "Troika" kvas" - a mildly alcoholic drink, made of yeast and rye bread, and from other culinary delights of my previous Soviet life.

"Can I have a cabbage pie, please?" I asked the salesgirl politely, when my turn came.
"Are you flirting with me, or what?" she snarled back. She must not have heard the word "please" since childhood.

There were no self-service food stores in Brighton Beach, where, despite the over-abundance of food, shopping for it remained a masochistic Soviet experience, featuring totally superfluous cash-desks, rude salesgirls and queues to be jumped.

Not so in numerous music stores, where I was allowed to browse on my own, having deposited my shoulder-bag with a blue-faced attendant in exchange for a "nomerok" - a soiled piece of cardboard with a number. For some reason, the biggest sections in many of these stores were reserved for "Blatnaya Muzika", or "Thieves' Cant". "We've got plenty of Russian criminal folklore," an attendant told me proudly inviting me to look at the stand with hundreds of tapes and CDs. "Do I look like an underworld type?" I was wondering.

I ventured into "Parikmakherskaya", a barber's shop run by Syoma, an old Jew from Minsk and a former "Soviet activist" (in his own words). Cutting my hair and squinting to ensure he didn't chop off my ears, he complained of his life in Brighton Beach: "We are besieged by home-grown gangsters here. The other day they killed a jeweller round the corner. Burst into his shop and shot him in broad daylight. And took the jewellery. Shame our Jews…"

"The Mafia? Which Mafia?" Liova, a leading Brighton Beach businessman raised his bushy eye-brows in response to my question. "All this Russian Mafia bull was invented by New York City fathers, who hate us for being so entrepreneurial and successful…"

He proceeded to tell me how they were slowly but surely pushing out Africans and Puerto Ricans from the area, and I suddenly realised why music of the underworld was in such great demand in Brighton Beach. The people who for generations had to cheat the Soviet system to survive, were finding it hard, if not impossible, to change their way of thinking in the West. Some of the scams, originating from Brighton Beach, like the one which involved selling water-dissolved petrol to hundreds of gas stations across America, stunned the whole country by their crafty simplicity. Talking of the so-called Russian Mafia, a NYPD spokesman once noted: "It is much easier to deal with a criminal who breaks the law than with a person who doesn't know that the law exists."

By mid-afternoon, the rain stopped, and couples of elderly immigrants, carrying the indelible "I-am-waiting-to-be-hurt" expression on their faces, could be seen strolling along the wet wood-paved boardwalk. From time to time, they would stop and stare at the ocean, as if trying to discern the outlines of their native Odessa on the horizon.

Some of them would later flock to "Odessa" Restaurant, where local bard Willie Tokarev performs his poignant nostalgic songs. In one, he calls Brighton Beach "a gypsy encampment". True, its residents were as rootless and as homeless as gypsies, only, unlike gypsies, they have stopped wandering.

It was with relief that I boarded the train back to America. Half a day in a country, which no longer existed, was more than enough for me.

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