An Appreciation of Valery Wajnberg

Reading over all I have written about the Brook-Krasny-Kagan contest for the heart and soul of the Russian-speaking community over the past six months, I should acknowledge here that due in part to my lifelong instinctive sympathy for the ‘little guy’ and the underdog—in this case for the elderly, poor and lower middle class voters who so ardently backed Kagan—I tended to overlook and not to give enough space in my coverage to the hard work and determination the so-called ‘Russian establishment’ put into getting one of their own into the State Assembly. To some extent I have participated in a sometimes unfair demonization of the Russian establishment, which, as it happens, includes some first-rate people, a number of whom have treated me more indulgently than I probably deserved.

Take Valery Wajnberg, editor-in-chief of Novoye Russkoye Slovo. I have known Valery and his charming wife Lilly (director of the UJA-Federation Russian Division) for years, and both have always treated me with great kindness, even when I have written things that may have caused them pain. Valery, who worked his way up from literally pushing a broom at the newspaper after his arrival in New York from Lvov and Poland as a just off the boat greenhorn back in the early 1960’s; took over the paper over after the death of former editor Andrey Sedich; making it much more Jewish-friendly and deepened its coverage in other respects. Despite what I and other skeptics wrote a couple of years ago, Wajnberg managed to maintain editorial control of the paper even after selling it to Kiev-based oligarch Vadim Rabinovich.

Wajnberg has always had time to give me insightful, often humorous, quotations for my scribblings here, in the Jewish Week and the Daily News. In other words, he seems to me a mensch; someone whose politics are distant from my own (of course, that is true of just about most people in the Russian community), but who is civilized and open-minded.

In past years, Wajnberg has often offered ironic and sometimes cynical comments on the long, bitter and frustrating efforts to elect a Russian candidate, arguing on occasions in years past that it didn’t matter much if an assemblyman or city council member was a Russian-speaker or not as long as he or she provided quality services to the Russian-speaking community. But this year, Wajnberg got strongly behind Brook-Krasny (some would argue that his closeness to the candidate prevented fair news coverage in the paper of the B-K-Kagan race), and when I interviewed him at the B-K victory the other night, I could feel his sense of excitement, achievement and pride, as he exulted in what he called “a historic achievement” for the Russian community. Wajnberg believes there is a possibility to elect “several more Russians” in coming years to both City Council and State Assembly seats in south Brooklyn, and held forth an olive branch to Ari Kagan, saying Brook-Krasny’s bitter rival “can certainly play a role in all of this, as he proved he is a capable politician/ What he has to do now is learn how to play on the team.”

Anticipating possible future battles in the future between Russian-speaking candidates with some of the incumbent politicians who represent large Russian constituencies who chose to back B-K this time—people like Michael Nelson and Steve Cymbrowitz, Wajnberg predicted, “The American political establishment will try to split the community,” but argued Russian candidates can win if the community stays united. Wajnberg pointed out that he himself is a Republican with political connection within the GOP hierarchy as high as the White House, but supported Democrat Brook-Krasny and will support other quality Russian candidates, regardless of party affiliation.

But what about the perception of some in the Kagan camp, especially poor and elderly Russian speakers, that Wajnberg and other prominent and wealthy B-K supporters have not done enough to address social problems in the community—lack of affordable housing, crime, immigration problems and paltry social service benefits, and are mainly out for themselves? Wajnberg responded, “We can better address those problems if we have someone speaking on behalf of the community in the chambers of power. Now we have elected such a person, and that is a great victory for all members of our community. The election of Alec Brook-Krasny is only the beginning. We have built a solid power base and need now to use it to serve the community. I am going to be there to help in that effort.”