"New World": Little Russia (Malaja Rus'), Texas

A "prequel" to _City of Dreams_ (well, the Prologue as of now) I'm
working on concomitantly is an alternative history of North America --
especially Texas.

In "real life" central Texas was settled by Germans and Czechs, among
other Central European immigrants.  In my fictional world preceding the
Second Depression and World War III (when the Commonwealth arose from
the remnants of the United States), I imagine what might've been if,
say, Greeks or Russians or Persians might've been like if they formed
colonies in the Lone Star State.

But the most important ethnicity in my "alternative history" (that is,
the early part of this new century) are the Texas Russians, who settled
the area around San Antonio (where there really is a "Little Russia"
community!) in the Hill Country (a.k.a. God's country ;] ).  These
settlers were led on what is called the "Trek", through Siberia and
Alaska and into the continent, and were welcomed by the Mexican
government with open arms.

The inhabitants of Little Russia are mostly East Slavs, with a German
minority (not the same Germans who inhabited places like New Braunfels,
Boerne, Schertz etc.).  Their language is basically an East Slavonic
language, but there is a great deal of German influence as well as
Latin.  The Cyrillic script used is not much different from the
pre-Soviet alphabet (it still has the letters i, jat, izhitsa and
fita), except umlauted a, o and u are also used, along with an sz
ligature: ß(which is rarely used actually since Cyrillic has letters
for /s/, /z/ and /ts/ already).

These rugged migrants came to America for the same reasons the Jews,
Irish, Italians, Poles, Greeks, Latin-Americans, Asians, East Indians
and Middle Easterners did: religious and economic freedom.  Though the
Russian Orthodox faith is indeed present, the bulk of the Little
Russians is Protestant (mostly Lutheran and Baptist), Catholic and
Jewish.

My focus on this conculture (I probably should've posted this on
conculture) is because of the protagonist of "City": Alex Prokofiev, an
officer in the Texas Rangers in the late 21st century...

DubYa.

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