Stereotypes (part 1)

Stereotypes of Russia and its inhabitants

As often point out, what I’m writing is no generality – It’s only linked to my life experiences here and abroad, my remarks, my vision of things, my analysis and maybe a bit of my imagination, due to my memory and my interpretation of things, that you cannot make abstraction of when you are part of the Humankind.

How foreigners see Russia and the Russians

When you think about Russia – what comes usually to mind ?

1. Cold climate, cold people?

Russia is the largest country in the world (17,075,400 km2 = 1/8th of the Earth's inhabited territory); it has got geographical frontiers with 16 other countries and is one of the 10 most populated nations (143 million people (2012) = only 2.4 times more than France!) [Thank you Wikipedia!]. The climate is continental, with a various flora and fauna (nevertheless, I never got face to face with a bear yet; and everybody told me: “you don’t want this experience.”)

With 9 time zones, the seasons differ from a region to another. I won’t give you a geographical class about what is a continental climate, but yes it is cold in Russia in winter, and a winter can be very snowy, long (6-8 months), without much sun. But it doesn’t mean that you are sitting at home freezing, forgetting about the outside world. On the contrary, it is a wonderful time to put nice clothes on, go fishing on a lake, walk in a forest and make there kebabs with friends, hike in the mountains, ice skate, ski (alpine or cross-country), go sledding and snowboarding, ride a snowmobile, and go to the Russian sauna – Banya.

As the climate is changing all over the world for some time already, I didn’t have such a hard winter in Ural. The coldest I had (-42°C) was only for a couple days and -30°C/-35°C for a couple weeks. Hopefully you won’t be afraid of these numbers: a dry weather makes the difference between -20°C and -35°C very small.

The most difficult physical adaptation in Russia can be related to the district heating, current in buildings; so except if you live in a house or if you make works, you cannot vary the temperature at home. And maybe because of the outside temperature, Russians compensate it by living in very warm homes 25°C! The same thing is visible in public transportation and shops. Therefore, you can imagine how these huge temperature swings are stressful on the body.

Of course, with such a climate and not much sun, people are not very open or emotional as in the South of the country, for example. They are more calm (sometimes too slow!), not smiley and even tend to suffer from depression during the darkest months and at the end of winter because of vitamin deficiencies.

Apart from the climate, people might be apparently cold because of their history.

For me, Russia is very close to Germany as far as the People are concerned, and I guess it is partly linked to their common communistic backgrounds. I won’t go deep into history - as I consider it’s only an interpretation and a subjective view of facts by authors, but this fear of “people you don’t know” (even neighbors) is still much anchored into the Russians’ mentality. The fact that Russians are “cold” (ignorance, impoliteness, and so on) can be sometimes considered as arrogance or a superiority complex, while it is in reality a mean of self-protection. This behavior is common and transmitted to the next generations, except for the people who travel or are in contact with foreigners, who show them other lifestyle.

I can remember my first shock in Perm. I took the bus alone for the first time and I saw a business transaction between 2 humans without a word! In Russia, a conductor comes to passengers to sell them a ticket. And in this deal, nobody talks! No - “good morning”, “a ticket, please”, “how much is it?”, “thank you.”

In shops – same thing: people rarely welcome you, saying “Good afternoon, Miss/Mrs/Mr”. They even often don’t answer you when you get this initiative.

Coming from a country where we say these words too often, you can imagine how shocked I was.

Maybe because of the climate, but I guess mostly because of their education (we’ll come to this matter later in the book), people are less talkative; they go directly to the point, and don’t use useless gesture or words. It is obvious on the phone: very short and clear answers with no wish to go further in the conversation as you have the feeling of “bothering” the person you call. Besides, the Russians always call back when they missed a call, even unknown numbers. In France, people are usually so attached to money that they write SMS, don’t call back, and don’t answer to unknown numbers, afraid of who that could be...