Relevant: The grumpy Russian traveler http://imgur.com/a/4ix4I
He isn't grumpy, I assure you.
Why Russians Are Not Smiling (2011)
221–230 of 235 posts
Re: Why Russians Are Not Smiling (2011)
#222Now try to compare the number of genuine smiles with whole face (including facial muscles near eyes) between russian and american people, i think that it wont differ much.
Re: Why Russians Are Not Smiling (2011)
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
Russians are racist? Care to explain further. That's like saying Italians are racist. What caused you to reach that conclusion?
> What caused you to reach that conclusion? Perhaps he experienced the world with the eyes, and/or followed the news, and thus made a comparative judgement between different countries. Which, could include stuff like: "The director of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, Alexander Brod, stated that surveys show xenophobia and other racist expressions are prevalent in 50 percent of Russians." And: "In 2006, Amnesty Int…
85,000 neo-nazis out of 145.5 million Russians are just 0.05% of the Russian Population.
Speeking of Xenophobia, So wanting to keep their country to themselves (like every nation and color of people try to) is racist? Would you say the same about the Japanese, Israelis, Kenyans, or Koreans? I ask this because I've noticed Europeans today are being held to extremely high standards while other races and nationalities are not. It's like there's a racist witch trial and whites are under the microscope while everyone else dances around to the same exact tune and escapes criticism.
Re: Why Russians Are Not Smiling (2011)
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many unrelated people were executed or imprisoned during and right after 1917 and 1905? How many of the revolutionaries were 'removed' by their own for sticking out? During the civil war and afterwards, how much the fate and life of common people depended on the whim and 'perception of loyalty to X' ? In order to prosper (or even survive) your allegiance would have to be flexible enough to adapt quickly, or you'd…
Probably no unrelated people at all were executed or imprisoned in 1917 or 1905. Even for the most frantic career revolutionaries it wasn't uncommon to flee from the deportation and live illegally in Russia or to emigrate. I don't think what you are describing is in any way specific to Russian Revolution and Civil War. If reasoning like that is justified, you can 'prove' the same thing about any society that lived th…
"Probably no unrelated people at all were executed or imprisoned in 1917 or 1905" -- are you serious? Really?
There were bloody purges after 1905 enforcing 'summary punishment' against, say, everyone living in a specific village, in order to make a warning for others. My local area lists 500 official executions of revolutionaries, but 2000+ 'collateral deaths' happened in the process.
1917 was followed by (1) a civil war, (2) class warfare - reprisals against millions of people where the fact if you were killed or deported was determined in part by wealth, but in part by your connections and local denouncements. (3) internal conflicts such as Tambov rebellion which also meant that you can easily lose everything for something your neighbor did.
Most societies that lived through a social calamity did not endure long periods of internal treachery affecting not a small prosecuted minority but huge parts of population - well, Pol Pot and China Cultural Revolution did, but I'd argue that they had similar effects on their societies.
Re: Why Russians Are Not Smiling (2011)
#225As a Russian-American this comes off as complete BS. I've seen this written before and it's always in the form of "It's not us that smile too little, it's you Americans that are fake and smile too much!". For one, Americans don't just smile to be polite. For the most part it's genuinely conveying positive emotions. Now I know this is going to be unpopular, but I think the real reason Russians don't smile is cultural.…
As someone with only naive, cosmetic knowledge in this area, humor me.. but could a lot of it be down to inherited attitudes? Somehow I made it through Anne Applebaum's 28 hour audiobook of Gulag and something that struck me was how the Russian population became trained to keep their heads down and not stand out for fear of being incriminated by others or randomly selected to be thrown into a gulag. And if you learn…
You have to dig deeper. In general, impact of soviet period is way overstated by foreigners (I'm Russian myself). The trend you're describing might be true, but some researchers draw its origins as far as Mongolian reign over Russia (roughly XIII-XV century).
If anything, Russian population always shows preference for a strong leadership (which is often appropriate to rephrase as "borderline or outright dictatorship"). Ivan the Terrible was saved from a coup by public support, several times. There's a much joked-about statement "Сталина на вас нет!" ("Shame there's no Stalin to set you straight!"), attributed to crazy old people.
In general, every time there was a violently harsh leader, some people will remember him (or her, in two cases) as incredibly effective. This goes at least a thousand years back, and probably as far as Rurik (legendary Scandinavian ruler INVITED by Russians of the time because "our land is big and rich, but there's no order in it").
We're also always scoring sky-high on "Uncertainty Avoidance" in Hofstede's cultural scale (google it, it's cool), and believe me, it shows in countless ways in day-to-day lives. So, to summarize: yes, you might very well be right, but you have to shoot MUCH farther then Gulags and Soviets.
Re: Why Russians Are Not Smiling (2011)
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Do you think that the life, as envisioned by children, who want to eat only ice cream when they grow up, includes scurvy, diabetes and other effects of such a diet? Do you think that people are automata, and any attempt to build a system with X attributes necesarrily also has Y attributes, in the automatic way that eating only sugar leads to diabetes? Just because there was an attempt to build X (socialism for exam…
Yes they will. The premise is flawed. Socialism (US term) or social-democracy (Euro term) can work in a democratic society but communism is flawed from the start. Putting everything in one communal basket and expecting people to behave is a recipe for disaster. Don't make a system which works only when people do not make mistakes or are only driven by their purest feelings.
>Yes they will. The premise is flawed.
[Citation needed]
Re: Why Russians Are Not Smiling (2011)
#227As a Russian-American this comes off as complete BS. I've seen this written before and it's always in the form of "It's not us that smile too little, it's you Americans that are fake and smile too much!". For one, Americans don't just smile to be polite. For the most part it's genuinely conveying positive emotions. Now I know this is going to be unpopular, but I think the real reason Russians don't smile is cultural.…
For the last three years I've been living in a very pretty seaside resort town in Vietnam called Nha Trang. In just the last year it's seen a massive influx of Russian tourists and it's completely changed the vibe of the place. They're everywhere now, usually with a scowl on their face and usually dealing with people in a manner that would be considered very brusque and impolite anywhere in the West. Nobody seems to…
Yeah, we hate them too (and I'm Russian). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
When we go on vacation, we try to choose a hotel with less Russians (fluent English helps, since not a lot of my countrymen are comfortable with it yet). Still, somehow EVERY time there's this irritating-lady-with-unbelievably-loud-whiny-child or that always-drunk-and-very-loud-about-it
middle-aged man, they always turn out to be our countrymen. That's not EVERY Russian tourist, mind you, not even a majority of us, but the reverse is, sadly, true - most of those unbearable people are Russian.
Those tourists are kind of like piracy (naval piracy, not digital): due to a very particular mix of historical coincidences, a group of incredibly pronounced jerks have gained considerable power and now they're everywhere. Thing is - those tourists you see everywhere are people of VERY PARTICULAR social and financial standing. In short - they are most likely new to that kind of money (vast majority of Russians don't have enough to go on vacation abroad), they are VERY insecure about it (as in - need to prove, mostly to themselves, that it's not temporary), they're under a lot of pressure (because they're not actually sure why it's THEM getting decent money and not everyone around and because there's a lot of competitors) and they don't know how to handle themselves (once again - they're pretty new to this).
Let's just hope that, like pirates, they will soon become extinct. And for now, on behalf of Russian people at large - we're sorry.
Re: Why Russians Are Not Smiling (2011)
#228I worked with some Russians a few years ago. Great guys. One wasn't very well adapted to American culture. He came to my cube one day. He's like "Let's go get a smoke", but his face and tone was flat, so it came across as "You've pissed me off in some way and I'm probably going to kick your ass now". I demurred. A couple more offers over the next few days and I finally relented (I don't smoke, but went to hang out).…
I'm not Russian, but when somebody's smile is too artificial/fake - I call it American smile. I think it is quite a common term [in Europe] ;)
Hmm, I think you mixed it up a bit. "American smile" is just a smile done primarily with lip muscles that shows teeth prominently.
Re: Why Russians Are Not Smiling (2011)
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes they will. The premise is flawed. Socialism (US term) or social-democracy (Euro term) can work in a democratic society but communism is flawed from the start. Putting everything in one communal basket and expecting people to behave is a recipe for disaster. Don't make a system which works only when people do not make mistakes or are only driven by their purest feelings.
> Yes they will. The premise is flawed. [Citation needed]
Re: Why Russians Are Not Smiling (2011)
#230It's very interesting how throughout the discussion the opposite behavior (smiling as neutral line) is becoming localized to US/UK. Plus, Dale Carnegie seems to have left a cultural mark on Americans comparable to that Confucius left on Chinese ))
The funny thing - it's in the same way English (and by extension American) people got rid of 2nd person singular pronoun ("thou"), and I find some of underlying debate pretty much the same. "It's more convenient and you run no risk of alienating someone with only the polite form left" on one side and "yes, but with potentially impolite form gone you have no means to actually express politeness" on the other.
The question is - does universality of polite behavior (smiling, using plural) actually devalue it over time?
The answer, at least for me, is something similar to dieting + cheat day dynamic - feel free to form a habit out of the healthier thing (method act yourself by smiling) but maintain your baseline by exploring the opposite (admit you're feeling bad today, look miserable when you feel miserable), if it's around 10-to-1 healthy-to-opposite ratio.
American way gets the first part down, and directionally I think we Russians should learn from that (in other words, we sure should smile for no reason MORE), but the other extreme has its dangers as well. Stoic philosophy of life, anyone?