To me a much simpler explanation is that people in Russia are incredibly sad and life there is very sad and hard. However almost no one there realizes it until they get out for a prolonged period of time.
Me and my wife were born and spent most of our life in Russia, we were pretty well of and yet since moving to US we realized how sad it actually was.
The collective consciousness of Russia is still heavily polluted with pain, fear, uncertainty and mistrust of everyone because of the terrible events that unfolded throughout it's history, but mostly in 20th century. Millions were murdered and executed during and after the revolution, more were executed before 2nd world war, 10s of millions died in the 2nd world war.
Repressions, starvation, constant economic struggles nullifying people's saving and results of life's work and at the end of work life, a sight of a miserly pension that unifies everyone, regardless of previous status in life, in poverty. Most old people who live on a pension look like homeless people in US.
Russian families mostly are highly codependent and dysfunctional, a lot of men drink and women resort to constant unhappy nagging and displeased demeanor. A lot of spouse relationships play out the role child/parent, where the wife is being a parent and husband is being unruly child, avoiding the responsibilities and hiding from the consequences. Public displays of affection are almost non-existant, very hard to find genuinely happy couples, especially those who've been married for a while.
The country itself has terrible ecology, most cities struggle with crazy levels of pollution because of the car traffic and factories built within city limits. A lot of cars are from soviet times so they produce a lot of smoke, sometimes after a bus passes you by you can't see anything because of the clouds of black smoke.
The cities are covered in soot and the roads are covered in dirt, sand and road salt. That dirt is everywhere, covering the trees, cars, houses. It's unthinkable to live in Russia and don't clean you shoes every couple of days, because they get very dirty. After every rain the dirt is everywhere. All of this combined makes cities look grey, especially during the spring, winter and fall, excluding the short summer period that lasts usually around 3 months where green of the trees and grass dilutes all of this a bit.
Don't take my word for it, here's the real Russian news site of the city Krasnoyarsk, population 1 mil. It shows center of the city:
http://prima-tv.ru/news/incidents/43896-sosulka_ubila_muzhch...
To me all of that explains really well why there's not much to smile about. If you're smiling without a reason people see you as someone who have things going well and feel jealousy and want to bring you down in their own heads to justify their own misery.
A lot of people in Russia leave in the denial of the true causes of their suffering and unhappiness and I'm sure they'll downvote this.