This summer, as the United States marked 250 years of independence, a student of the Russian Orthodox Parochial School at Holy Transfiguration Church in Los Angeles became part of a national effort to remember how Russian-American lives have shaped the country.
Andzhelina Polyakova received a Certificate of Participation from the Congress of Russian Americans (CRA), issued in cooperation with the newspaper Russian Life and the Russophone Los Angeles Research Collective. The certificate, dated July 4, 2026, recognizes her “active and invaluable participation” in the project 250 Years of America and Its Russian-American History, created to honor the Semiquincentennial of the United States.
The project asked people of every age to make a small handmade book — eight pages of original writing and drawings — about a person, place, or event that connects Russian heritage to American history. There were no prizes and no rankings. The point was participation: to gather many voices into one collection. Nearly seventy mini-books arrived from California, Florida, Michigan, Washington, and other states. The youngest author was eleven; the oldest was eighty-eight.
Participants wrote about athletes and inventors, about Fort Ross and Alaska, about Orthodoxy on American soil, about the Russian-language press, and about people whose work entered American science, music, literature, and public life. The finished books were gathered by the Congress of Russian Americans and presented as a commemorative gift to the President of the United States, to governors of states with large Russian-American communities, and to Fort Ross.
For a parish school whose purpose has always been language, faith, and memory, Andzhelina’s certificate is more than a personal honor. It shows that the work done on Saturday mornings — reading, writing, history, and the slow building of a Russian voice in an American city — can reach a national archive of heritage. The Congress of Russian Americans, founded in 1973 and based in San Francisco, has long worked to preserve Russian culture in the United States and to make the contributions of Russian Americans visible. Natalie G. Sabelnik, President of the CRA, and Ivan Y. Podvalov, signing on behalf of the CRA and Russophone Los Angeles, stand on the certificate as witnesses to that continuity.
Andzhelina’s achievement is also a picture of the school itself. The Russian Orthodox School of Los Angeles teaches children to read and write in Russian, to know their literature and history, and to carry that knowledge into civic life. When a student from this classroom is named among the authors of a collection meant for the country’s 250th anniversary, the school’s mission is not abstract. It is a young person holding a document that says her work belongs to the story of America.
The school congratulates Andzhelina Polyakova and thanks the Congress of Russian Americans, Russian Life, and the Russophone Los Angeles Research Collective for inviting students into this commemorative project. May her example encourage other pupils to write, draw, and tell the stories that connect their families to this country.
God bless America — and God bless the children who keep its memory alive in two languages.