Why Russians Are Not Smiling (2011)

Seems like we misunderstand their lack of smiling as much as they misunderstand our smiling.

welcome to Estonia

I served a Mormon mission in eastern Ukraine (not Russia, but very Soviet), which meant I went from one day being surrounded by Americans to walking around the streets of eastern Ukraine trying to talk with everyone I met on the street (a decidedly non-Ukrainian thing to do).

One day while we were walking the sun came out for just a minute - a fairly rare occurrence during a Ukrainian winter, and I walked around the streets beaming. When I started talking to a man, he stopped mid-sentence and said, "Are you high?"

I figured what he was saying was in regard to our talking about the Bible (he certainly wouldn't have been the first to ask that question with regard to religious belief), but he legitimately thought I was high. He went on to say (I paraphrase), "You're just walking around the streets talking with people, seemingly fascinated by anything I talk about, and with a big grin (усмешка) on your face. That's not normal."

And, to be fair, it was pretty rare that I was in such a mood.

If you think about it, the smile that Americans force a lot of the time is very fake. Think about families smiling in their pictures - they look vaguely happy, but there's a noticeable difference between that and when you can see a genuine smile. If you're a Russian, why pretend? And while I still smile in pictures, I can see their point.

When I got back to the US after having been in eastern Ukraine for two years, I got the opposite reaction. "Are you depressed?" or "Are you doing OK?" While living in Ukraine had been a culture shock and forced me to see the world quite differently than growing up in small-town Utah suburbia, I was by no means depressed. I just held myself in a different way. I also spoke more with exaggerated hand motions, had different intonation, and was shocked at how I could give a $100 bill to a cashier at the grocery store without getting in trouble.

You do realize that most of Western Europe is socialist? That some of the countries that enjoy the highest quality of life and happiness are socialist?

How do you square that with what you've written?

> I genuinely wonder if the climate has something to do with this. Extreme cold and very dark days tend to bring people together, and tends to make people more genuine and humble, in my experience.

I don't think it's the climate, at least it's not the sole reason. After all, Russia is a huge country and Russians live all over it - from Siberia to the Russian Black Sea coast with its subtropical climate.

I suspect it has to do with the average hardship of life and, at least with Russia, major social and economic upheavals that happen often enough for every generation of Russians to be affected.

> Extreme cold and very dark days tend to bring people together

Also, this is probably the last thing that comes to mind about Russians in general. For the most part, they are notoriously individualistic.