COVER STORY : FROM UZBEKISTAN : For the future of their children, an immigrant family leaves their friends and relatives, homes and jobs to start a new life.

Picture a Russian Jewish immigrant in New York City at the turn of the century, wrapped in a black shawl, living in a six-story walk-up redolent of steamed cabbage and boiled beef, stringing clothes out the window, looking down on side walks teeming with rag peddlers, fishmongers and the daily chaos of the street.

Now imagine a Soviet Jewish immigrant living in Encino in 1992, wearing pink lipstick and a blue and white lace-trimmed blouse, in a two-story Spanish-style apartment complex with a central courtyard and swimming pool.

“Everything is so beautiful in America,” says Stella Grichanik, 26, sitting at the kitchen table in her two-bedroom apartment on a recent warm afternoon, offering a visitor fruit, tea and pastry while her 5-year-old son sits on the carpet playing Nintendo on the color TV.

What’s beautiful?

“The houses, the streets, the ocean, Universal Studios.”

What did you like about Universal Studios?

“I liked everything.”

King Kong?

“I said to my son, ‘Don’t be afraid,’ ” she laughs. “But I was afraid.”

Grichanik has clear white skin, pink cheeks, a touching naivete about most things American and a grave persona that can suddenly turn delightfully girlish when something amuses her. Having only been here since November, she is still uncritically enamored with everything L. A.--the view of the city from the hills at night, the swimming pool at her apartment complex and the cartoons her son watches Saturday morning on TV (“We had not such beautiful cartoons in Uzbekistan,” she says in her endearingly fractured but forceful English).

Eager to try everything American, Stella recently tasted asparagus (she pronounces it as-per-AH-gus), which she liked, and avocado, which she did not. She even speaks affectionately of the 20-year-old Peugeot that her husband, Alex, bought for $30 and spends all his spare time working on.

Most of all, she likes the friendly attitude of Americans. When she walked her son the five blocks to kindergarten at Nestle Avenue School in Tarzana, she discovered total strangers would smile and say hello. “Why are they doing that?” her son would ask. “What did they say?”

It is very different from Uzbekistan, chimes in Stella’s 54-year-old mother-in-law, Rita Grichanik, who lives nearby with her husband, Isaac: “The people in the Soviet Union don’t smile. They have a lot of problems.”

And, if the truth be told, so do the Grichaniks.

Coming to the United States in 1992 doesn’t have any of the grueling hardship or mythic resonance of three weeks in steerage on a rusted steamer--the Grichaniks flew to New York on Delta Airlines from Frankfurt, Germany. But the emotional pain of leaving behind other family members, as well as one’s home and profession, to start at the bottom in a strange country is wrenching nevertheless.

“I cried a lot for my parents,” says Stella Grichanik, who, as soon as she arrived, sent the necessary affidavit to the Immigration and Naturalization Service to begin the two-year process of qualifying her parents, Vera and Gary Aleksandrovich, and younger brother, Anatoly, to immigrate as well.

You miss your parents?

“Of course,” Stella says. “My parents are very nervous. I can’t sleep at night worrying about them.”

An estimated 45,000 Jews from the former Soviet Union are expected to arrive in the United States this year, up from 28,000 in 1991, says Ellen Glettner, refugee resettlement grant administrator for the Jewish Federation Council of Los Angeles. Most stay on the East Coast, especially New York, but of about 2,500 immigrating Jews who came to Los Angeles in 1991, about three-quarters settled in the area around West Hollywood’s Plummer Park, while 600 or so, including Stella, her son, her husband, and her mother- and father-in-law, made it over the Hollywood Hills to live in the San Fernando Valley.

“I like Encino,” she says. “It is more beautiful than West Hollywood.” Another reason: the sponsors of the Grichanik family, her brother- and sister-in-law, Alex and Mila Shainksy and their sons Pavel and Jan, immigrated to Encino from Uzbekistan two years ago.

Unlike immigrants from some other parts of the former Soviet Union, the Grichaniks didn’t come here to escape resurgent anti-Semitism or economic hardship. On the contrary, Stella Grichanik says, she enjoyed life in Uzbekistan, an ancient Islamic country located 1,800 miles from Moscow, east of the Caspian Sea and near Afghanistan.

In contrast to the bare shelves of Moscow and St. Petersburg, the bustling open-air black markets of the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, were (at least until recently) bursting with melons, cucumbers, apples, pears, oranges, meat, sour cream, cottage cheese and honey. It was more costly than the rationed state stores. On the other hand, “you didn’t have to stand in line,” Stella says.

Considering that Uzbekistan had been part of the Soviet Union, it was a good life. Alex Grichanik worked as a mechanical engineer in a machine tool factory, while Stella taught piano in a music conservatory for children ages 5 to 15. They had a four-door Lada 2107 sedan, a gleaming upright piano and a big new Panasonic TV that received six channels.

“We were happy,” Stella says. “We had friends. We had families. We had a condominium. We had a good job.”

What they didn’t have was a future.

With the breakup of the Soviet Union came a sudden rise in Islamic fundamentalism and, with it, a growing consensus that it was time to send the Russians (who made up only 11% of the population) back to their own country and save Uzbekistan for the Uzbeks. “We were afraid for our children,” Stella says. “We don’t know what life will be like for our children.”

Altogether, it took the Grichaniks two years to get permission to leave Uzbekistan. Then when they left, they could only bring $350 with them. To help them through the difficult early months, family service and vocational counseling organizations under the umbrella of the Jewish Federation Council helped them with such problems as getting housing, obtaining health care, finding donated dishes and furniture, translating diplomas and documents, preparing resumes and otherwise coping with the unexpected stress of too many choices.

“Freedom is very scary,” Glettner says. “In the Soviet Union, they were told, ‘This is your school. This is the job. And this is your doctor.’ To be given choices without enough background information to make the choices is hard. It can be immobilizing sometimes.”

Because the Grichaniks don’t want to appear in any way ungrateful for the chance to live in the United States, they are hesitant to voice any criticisms. Asked to say what, if anything, she dislikes about America, Rita simply says: “We like it here very much.” The worst Stella will say is that “tomatoes seem not red when they harvest them.”

After a little further urging, Rita ventures her surprise that American bread is so soft. “In Uzbekistan,” she says, “we had very good bread.”

Coming from an area with a strong authoritarian government such as that of Uzbekistan, Stella and Alex were stunned at the sight of people burning their own city down during the L. A. riots.

“I don’t understand how they could do it,” Stella says. “Such a beautiful city. We watched it at home. My son thought it was a war.”

Alex Grichanik, a dark, gentle man who smiles often, couldn’t pull himself away from the family TV. “It’s terrible! It’s terrible!” he told Stella. “Look! Look! What are they doing?”

Stella and Alex had never seen anything like this--not even in Uzbekistan. “The army wouldn’t allow it. We were surprised. What were the police waiting for?”

In the middle of the riots, Stella got a surprise call from her brother in Uzbekistan. As soon as she heard his voice, she began to shout: “What’s happened? What happened? Why do you call?”

Don’t worry, don’t worry, their father and mother were fine, Anatoly said. But they had seen the riots on Uzbekistan television. “What about you?”

Stella glossed it over, telling them that the riots were at the other end of the city. “I couldn’t say the truth,” she says with a shrug. “They worry about me enough--where I live, what I eat, where I sleep.”

The riots may have surprised the Grichaniks, but they didn’t make them regret their decision to immigrate to Los Angeles. “We are glad we came,” Stella says.

The main problems faced by most immigrants to Los Angeles are learning English and finding jobs. Most enroll in night classes or public schools or take classes at local synagogues. Stella’s mother- and father-in-law are doing both, while Alex--called Sasha in the family--studies English five hours a day at the Ort Technical Institute on Sepulveda and Ventura boulevards. He got a grant to pay for the classes.

“It takes them six to eight months to be on a level where they are ready to interview for a job,” Glettner says, then three to six more months to find one.

And that’s when jobs are plentiful. “There are so many unemployed Americans,” Gaynor says. “The competition is very stiff.” To keep them afloat till they find work, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society provides each family with $300 per person per month for four months. After that, they go on welfare and food stamps until they find jobs.

Many older people never will. Stella’s father-in-law, Isaac Grichanik, who was in plastics technology in the Soviet Union, and her mother-in-law, who was a teacher, both want to work. But it is hard for people in their 50s to become fluent enough in English to find work. Often, Glettner says, the grandparents end up baby-sitting the grandchildren. The grandchildren, on the other hand, because they pick up English so quickly in school, end up acting as translators for their grandparents.

After two years in Encino, Stella’s 13-year-old twin nephews, Pavel and Jan, speak fluent English. Stella’s son, Mark, is embarrassed in kindergarten because he can’t yet speak the language. Having studied English in Uzbekistan, Stella speaks it well, if a bit haltingly. Alex, on the other hand, is still a bit out of his depth. He cheerfully shows a visitor the collection of neatly boxed toy Soviet cars and trucks he shipped from Uzbekistan.

You collected these as a child?

“And for a while after we were married too,” Stella says.

Does he ever get depressed?

“I’m an optimist,” Alex says.

He needs to be. The job problem isn’t merely a lack of facility in English. Because people were often assigned to their jobs in the Soviet Union, according to resettlement director Gaynor, many immigrants have no notion how to market themselves. They have to be taught what a resume is and how to present themselves in a favorable light.

They also have to learn the capitalist system. Immigrants are reluctant to take an entry-level position because they think that they are still going to be there 10 years down the line, says Glettner. “In the Soviet Union, they were given a job and that was their job for 30 years. We have to explain to them that it is OK to take an entry-level position because in six months or a year you move up.”

For Stella Grichanik, the problem isn’t the humiliation of having to accept an entry-level job--it’s finding any job at all. “I have been looking for a job from the first day in America,” she says. “I am not sure I will be able to find a job in my occupation. I took the Yellow Pages and I called many music schools. I send the resume. And only last Thursday one man called me: When did I work as a piano teacher? Where was my last position? What conservatory did I finish? He asked me to send him my credentials.”

Meanwhile, Stella practices her English by watching TV: “Action News,” “CBS News” and, she says a bit sheepishly, “Wheel of Fortune.” Because the $900 a month that the Grichaniks received from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society ran out after four months, in April they started on welfare ($670 in cash for a family of three plus $200 in food stamps). The money barely covers their $600-a-month rent. “We don’t buy anything else,” Stella says.

“We can’t be on welfare for a long time,” Stella says, but until they have jobs, there are many worries. Her husband, who didn’t like his mechanical engineering work in the Uzbekistan machine tool factory, is now looking for work as a photo lab technician. He has gone to a few photo shops and laboratories, but they all say the same thing: “We will call you.”

When he’s not in English classes, Alex works on his Peugeot. “I fix it every week,” he says cheerfully. “The engine, the transmission, the tires. On Saturday, I go to the junkyard. On Sunday I fix.”

Their son, Mark, has found kindergarten quite easy. “He gets good marks,” Stella says. The only problem is language. “I got the first report last week. Math is good. Color and glue and cut-out is very good. But he had a lot of ‘Satisfactories.’ I went and I asked about it.” The teacher said, “You understand it is boring for him and, when he is bored, he begins to touch other students.”

In an effort to find part-time work, three months ago Stella had a flyer printed and posted it in local supermarkets, advertising her services as a music teacher for children. But not one person called.

“We have a big problem to find a job,” she says, a grave look in her wide, innocent eyes. “It is hard to begin a new life.”