Why Russians Are Not Smiling (2011)

Navajos, who don't make eye contact or smile either also take some getting used to now.

It's cultural, but Russia is a harsh place, so it goes deeper.

The part about people in the street not being helpful to each other is also true.

Just watch those dash cam videos where people witness a horrible crash, drive around and keep moving. You can die in the street and nobody might care. It's cultural and it's not a good thing.

The mob mentality is also a lot stronger. Westerners are a lot more tolerant to people being different or choosing their own way. It is in fact encouraged to be different and individual. Russians on the other hand, have whole layers of culture dedicated to making sure everybody is not sticking out of the crowd and not being an individual.

I remember reading that if you smile at strange kids (or dogs), don't show your teeth, they'll get scared or agitated. Similarly, if you are e.g. greeting a small child, squat so that you are eye level with them - kids (and dogs) hate when somebody huge is hanging over them.

The crucial notion is that it is not a place created by some goods to punish beings, but a condition, superimposed on the inhabitants by themselves according to the law of karma. Hell, therefore, is not created, it is emerged (as the whole reality).

In last 30 years or so Russia had undergo a radical transformation from almost naive and ignorant communist country with uneducated working class population into the most corrupted, degraded country in the world, leaving some African extremes aside.

In Soviet times, for example, criminals were untouchable marginals, a society inside a society, while nowadays, due to lack of any real economy and equality before law, there is no more such distinction. Being successful cheater or looter, uncaught thief is considered a virtue, and cheating and looting is the only way to become a success in consumerist life.

Imagine millions of angry, puffy, sick drunk, pot-bellied Ostap Benders, hating everyone and hated by everyone, trying to find any naive victim in a society consisted of nothing but their own type.)

It could be easily seen abroad. When Russians meet on the street they avert their gazes and put on that very characteristic face expression of a mix of contempt, disgust and boredom. Each one of them cannot relax in a presence of strangers, and without their usual dose of alcohol. That is why they are going into extremes in drunken parties, especially in other countries.

These notions, of course, are stereotypes, but they caught correctly some aspects of reality. Of course, there are younger generations, generation anime, who aren't like that, but there are several lost generations in a row, all these children of 90-th who now became to realize that life was spoiled and that the world changing in a way in which they have no place to go.

It is difficult to smile with such mentality.)

This reminds me of stories I've heard of Japanese office workers bowing while talking over the phone to their boss. It's said that your boss will be able to tell if you aren't bowing, and you will come across as insincere.