As 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. It's because they are genuinely more cynical miserable people. This is completely a generalization and there are tons of exceptions on an individual level, but on average life (especially in the cities) is more cut throat, it's cold, the authorities are corrupt, people are asshole to each other in public, and if anything goes wrong you can be darn well be sure that no one will help you[1]. There is no sense of community, or impulse for people to help each other out and being nice to strangers. So naturally you're worried you'll get robbed or whatever - so you keep to yourself, don't make eye-contact, and don't smile.
If you go to the country side, people are a lot more likely to smile at you.
A bit of an aside - I've found it's also a very Slavic thing. Prague had very similar miserable faces, which Budapest was full of smiles (though economically the countries were very similar)
[1] I remember a story my friend told me of how he was on the subway and a bunch of skinheads beat up an African college student. After they left, no one did anything to help the kid, and everyone just pretended like nothing happened. A good ol' "it's non of my business" attitude.
As an American who married a Russian and lived in Russia for a while, I find this article to be quite accurate.
When visiting for the first time, I asked my (then-acquaintance) why women never smile at me. She said "if they smile at you, that means they are easy." Basically, they are saying they like me and I should introduce myself. Or, like the article mentioned, maybe I look funny.
You are right in that it is cultural, but the reasons you state aren't the only ones. They are in general pretty unhappy people, as the saying goes "God suffered, so should I." However, the younger generation is stepping beyond the suffering attitude, and yet they still don't smile, so that isn't the only reason.
Your example of the skinheads is just another example of the bystander effect -- definitely not unique to Russia. Also, Russians are pretty crazily racist, so that causes the story to be moot as well.
Right. A Romanian friend of mine told me that when he moved to the US, he thought that the women would be easy and sleep with him because they were smiling so much.
He was a bit disappointed at the lack of follow-through.
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 International reported that racism in Russia was “out of control” and estimated the number of Russian neo-Nazis at around 85,000 in 2008."
Of course a lot of those statements could be the usual NGO BS, that they output because they have to output (keeps the funds coming in, etc), or because they act as agents of foreign interests trying to paint a bad picture etc. This happens more often than not.
But in general, it IS possible to say that a nation is more or less racist than another -- it's not an inherently moot proposition like some people here imply.
There IS after all something like an external reality. I'd, for example, would call a country with 100 racist attacks for every 1000 citizens more racist than one with 30 racist attacks for every 1000 citizens...
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.
I agree and I had my remark down voted, you know it by the number of suicides.
We pay a price for living with terrible weather, with no sun light half of the year, where you can't get out of buildings because it is so freezing cold.
I would say what you see in places like Costa Rica(pura vida!!) is genuine happiness because people need much more the Sun and friendships for being happy than a Ferrari or whatever we could buy.
I think there genuinely are different norms for human interaction in different cultures. Why should people in "The South" be so much more famous for being insincerely pleasant than, say, people in Arizona or southern California? The climate in the deep south is absolutely miserable a large portion of the year, with oppressive head and humidity, yet they are infamous for being pleasant on the surface.
Looking at the map on this page, I see no casual correlation between how artificially pleasant a states population stereotypically is, and their suicide rate: http://www.afsp.org/understanding-suicide/facts-and-figures Notice New Jersey and New York beating out any Southern state.
Hey now, that's cherry picking data if I've ever seen it. Of course Nevada has a high suicide rate. Try comparing Alaska to sunny states where people don't throw their life savings away.
You are misunderstanding me, I am asserting that the data doesn't match the "smiling people live in nice places" theory. Alaskans smile, despite having a high suicide rate and living in a miserable climate. Nevadans aren't know for being particularly pleasant or cold (there isn't a stereotype about the attitudes of Nevadans one way or the other, as far as I can tell) live in a sunny climate and have a huge suicide rate. Coloradans live in an absolutely beautiful state, that doesn't have Alaska's brutally dark winters to boot, their suicide rate is relatively high, but they are neither known for being overly pleasant or particularly cold. Washington has "the Seattle freeze", but has a lower suicide rate than Oregon.
"Climate"<->"is superficially pleasant" is all over the board. Some examples seem to support the theory (allegedly Russia), but plenty of others seem to directly contradict it (Alaska, with a miserable climate, high suicide rate, and very outwardly pleasant people). The South has a miserable climate, have plenty to be miserable about (poverty, literacy, lingering racism, etc) yet are very 'warm' people, New York has a worse climate, yet a lower suicide rate, but yet again rather cold or distant people.
This "Russians don't smile because they are miserable. Americans smile because they are happy" stuff is just pop-psych nonsense. The real world is not that simple.
Why is it difficult to accept that different groups of people, with different heritages, cultures and traditions, might have ever so slightly different ways of presenting themselves to society and interacting with each other? It seems very implausible to me that this might not be the case.
Consider other sort of differences, besides just "smiles or doesn't". For example, consider that cultural differences with hugging, cheek kissing, hand holding, etc are all pretty non-controversial. Nobody is trying to explain that platonic friends in California don't hold hands because Californians don't make close friends like Saudi Arabians do. Anyone trying to say that would be laughed at.
>Alaska, with a miserable climate, high suicide rate, and very outwardly pleasant people
Were did you get the last one from?
>Nobody is trying to explain that platonic friends in California don't hold hands because Californians don't make close friends like Saudi Arabians do. Anyone trying to say that would be laughed at.
That's because holding hands, is not a core human facial expression, unlike smiling.
Touching others is a core human expression, and has to be suppressed in kids ("boys don't do that, it's gay"). Some cultures do that, others doesn't. No difference between that and smiling to me. - both cultural stuff.
Touching others (in whatever form) is different than "holding hands" in the way some cultures do. The difference is that there are hundrends of ways to touch someone, and thousand of circumstances where you do so. So any particular form is just one of many.
On the other hand, you carry your face and its' facial expression constantly, and your expression is the most basic form of interaction you have with another person socially, with talking as distant second. Furthermore, there are few expressions, are (almost?) all are universal, like smiling and crying.
Heck, you could live in the same room with a person for a month, with all kinds of normal interaction (eating, talking, etc) and never one touch him/her, and much less in any socially meaningful way (like holding hands or hugging). Not at all like avoiding having your face seen.
I honestly don't understand why so many people disagree with you. While this article is not complete BS, many of the examples are just wrong.
>> Russians don't smile in business meetings.
What? Russians do smile in business meetings. In fact, it is considered rude to NOT look in the eye during conversation/handshake and not smile. In general, lots of deals are done by drinking together. And trust me, if you are drinking with me and you are not smiling, then there is something wrong and that deal will not go through.
I feel like the person who wrote this article has been watching too many gangster movies showing criminal Russia of the 90's.
Another reason why many Russians of the new generation don't smile is because of their crooked teeth. But this is changing since braces and other dental work are becoming an accepted practice.
It is true that many people don't smile in public places (airports, metro, etc.) in Moscow but that's Moscow. There are just too many factors for this unique place, which might as well be considered a separate country due its mores.
Try going to different places in Russia and you will see a more welcoming atmosphere with tons of smiles.
> 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!"
Which is pretty much what the article quotes Russians as saying. Without agreeing with them, of course.
>I think the real reason Russians don't smile is cultural.
Again, you're agreeing with the article - and contradicting your subsequent explanation, which is mainly economic and judicial.
>It's because [Russians] are genuinely more cynical miserable people.
How is this is any better than some Russians' generalization that smiling Westerners are duplicitous?
No, the article is claiming that to Westerners a smile is neutral and that to a Russian no smile is neutral. The article is making the implication that a smiling Westerner and a non-smiling Russian are expressing the same emotion, it's just that the Westerner is faking something.
The poster to whom you're responding is actually saying that the no smile in Russia is because of an actual underlying difference in the emotions being felt.
>the article is claiming that to Westerners a smile is neutral [...] The article is making the implication that a smiling Westerner [...] is faking something.
I don't see where you got the second sentence as the article's implication. Especially since it's rather contradictory with the first sentence.
I'm trying to see how you find those statements to be contradictory.
Maybe you think that the same concept is being discussed in the two sentences? Really there are multiple concepts at play so calling one of them neutral relative to one another and the other one "fake" isn't a contradiction at all. They're different things.
Just because the emotion being expressed is supposed to be neutral doesn't mean that the facial expression can't be implying something more. The article author's contention is that the facial expression is fake and expressing more of an emotion than is present, given that the "real" underlying emotion is one of neutrality in the smile and no-smile cases.
Because they are separate sides to the same thing. Westerners smile as a "neutral" stance, but to a Russian it feels disingenuous because smiling isn't "neutral" but is suppose to convey something.
I mostly agree. Cannot vouch for other Slavic people, but in Russia "чо лыбишься" (wtf are you smiling at) almost always greets me, and greeted while I was living there. One of the most fundamental reasons for me to move away to the US was this fundamental difference in the psychological makeup, which is expressed in the Russian proverb, "смех без причины признак дурачины": a smile without a reason means the person is without reason. No it does not.
this thread couldn't come sooner. I'm in Minsk, Belarus (very similar to Russia) from SV for the next month to finish our mobile app. One thing I've noticed is how fucking gloomy everyone looks. If you smile the men look intimidating and want to cut your head off and the women roll their eyes...It's as if everyone is a KGB agent and they are constantly suspecting you.
You don't sound like a Russian. You don't think like a Russian. You don't know like a Russian.
Russians don't smile because any person who smiles to a stranger either wants to sell something or is insane. Smiles are for friends, real friends - whopping 2 or 3 of them.
"And if anything goes wrong you can be... No sense of community..."
This part betrayed you. You don't know anything about Russia or Russians. If an African college student attacked a bunch of skinheads, entire subway station would rush to rescue the skinheads.
Your example with african college and skinheads do not show a sense of community, it just shows widespread racism among russians. Because if a group skinheads attacked black or gay the whole subway would still help skinheads to beat that single person, or at best not interfere.
I'll tell you this - back in Soviet times there were little to no racism towards black people. In part due to Soviet Union helping to "liberate" a good chunk of African countries back in 60s (and through people viewing them as our friends) and in part due to black people simply being an oddity. Also the past slavery and segregation matters in the US, the enemy no. 1, helped them winning some inherent sympathy.
But then Perestroyka came and African exchange students somehow managed to become a reliable source of hard drugs. At least in Moscow. And gradually the attitude changed.
That said no one would help a skinhead beaten up in a subway. Whatever the GP is smoking, it's potent.
What does it mean to be a Russian-American? He left the country when he was 5? He was born in US to Russian parents? His comment is pretty ignorant. The article is fairly accurate.
I am talking about people who immigrated as adults. The way he talks about his experience in Russia cues that he belongs to that group. His post may be too harsh, but it is certainly not in the same league with truly ignorant knee-jerk comments about gulag.
> but I think the real reason Russians don't smile is cultural. It's because they are genuinely more cynical miserable people
I'm not Russian and I don't know any Russian persons directly, I'm from just a little bit to the West, Romania, and wanted to say that we're like the people described in the article, too, i.e. we're only smiling if we really, really mean it.
I think it's a cultural thing, even though I'd have to agree we people in Eastern Europe tend to be more cynical compared to others (we have our good reasons, though). Whenever I go to my grand-parents' village close to the Carpathian Mountains I do have to say "good day" to each and every person I might meet in the street, even though I might not know them directly (I'm a city boy, after all). But were I to smile at the passers-by I'm pretty sure they'd get back to my grand-mother and inform her that the "city grandson" has a strange way of behaving. It's just how things are.
As an American that lived in Russia most of my life. It's not total BS but some of the points you mentioned contribute.
1. No one will help you - true. My group of friends would alway be targeted by skinheads and when we had to fight no one would ever help us. Not even the police.
2. People make eye contact a lot, it's a respect and dominance thing. Walking down the streets of Moscow with your head down is a good way to end up dead (seriously, be aware. My sister was picked up physically once and shoved into the trunk of a car - fast action saved her life).
3. Not all Russians are miserable but I agree on the cynical part. They don't trust anyone. (would you if you were lied too for that long.)
4."people are asshole to each other in public" its not so much about being assholes - people just have shit to do. I can't count how many times i was pushed by a sweet old babushka in the metro. They just assume you have no respect but they also realize you get nowhere by being passive.
Anyway, Russia is a very amazing place and it can be scary. Moscow is very racist and the youth is a big problem (violence).
Would I live there again? In a heartbeat. Never felt more alive.
Can't agree more. People are broken here, I've heard so many times from my mother "don't attract attention, be as everyone". Life was tough, truth could harm. Lying brainwashing system, under control of fools it's better to hide emotions under brick-face. Parts of that system is still around - school, university, city services, army. They are awful.
People are pour, angry, have no sense of life, my friends advice "don't sing and dance outside, it's dangerous". I don't know why they live.
I'm from Prague and I was always baffled by this. How does the smiling thing work? In what situations do you smile? For example, if you're walking on street, do you eye-contact people going in the opposite direction and smile at them?
You don't make eye contact with everyone you walk by, no. But if you do happen to make eye contact, you typically smile - and it would be a little awkward if you didn't.
I think there's a difference between a polite smile of acknowledgement and a smile give to someone that you already know well, however.
I'm in Vienna, Austria (not far from Prague, but generally considered to be part of western Europe) and if a stranger smiled at me for no apparent reason I'd think that she/he is into me, high on drugs or trying to sell me something.
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 like the Russian tourists, including the Vietnamese, but they bring a lot of money into the local economy so they get the red carpet treatment all the same. But Western tourists are becoming increasingly scarce as word gets out that Nha Trang is not the easygoing friendly place it used to be.
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.
All the Viet business people I've talked to said that when they present these tourists with a menu or a shelf full of goods all they want to do is identify the most expensive option so they can choose it to show off their money. So they fit your description pretty well.
You should not judge about all Russians by those tourists.
Unfortunately, during last 20 years in Russia, being such scoundrel and scumbag, you have pretty high chance to earn good money. Even in Russia nobody likes these (very small number of) people and wants to travel to the resort where there are no "damned Russian tourists". :-)
You might have your opinion, but this article is a re-iteration of something that has been pretty much established by people who study verbal and non-verbal communication (professionally). You might say this has cultural origins in 'Russian misery', but the article outlines present day meanings of smiling and not smiling in Russia and in USA.
how/where would someone be able to study that? sounds like an interesting subject. right now i'm studying for public health related field, and something like that could come very handy.
I don't think it is BS; the article has a very true observation
"Quite often, Russians smile not “at”, but "about" something."
I guess in Russia one must always be aware of hierarchy; one is supposed to be subordinate to the current hierarchy; Smiling is often interpreted as mocking by the higher ups, and as a sign of condescension by peers.
Also Moscow is quite a stressful place; Men have a high chance of dying in their fifties due to heart problems, much higher chance than in other countries.
Not buying the Prague vs Budapest thing -- if anything, Hungary was long notorious for having the highest suicide rate in Europe. (Since eclipsed by Lithuania and Slovenia, it seems.) The Czechs are at #30, only a few notches ahead of the US at 33.
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 that demeanor, your kids will too, right? And so on and so forth, down the generations.
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.
So somehow before 1930s people trusted one another better? I believe it seriously lacks evidence. What about people in Western Europe who don't smile all that much really?
Is this some knee-jerk reaction or something? Russia-gulag and all? For a foreigner it is permissible, not so much for a Russian. I think we need to overgrow this if nice things are to be had.
What changed in the 1930s? In Russia if you wanted to keep your head, you kept your head down in 1917, you kept your head down in 1905, and you kept your head down in 1800's and earlier - deportation to Siberia for being unpleasant to ruling class was a thing for centuries before Russia became Soviet.
That's so very simplistic though. You by no means kept your head low in 1905, and 1917 since those were years of revolutions, the later two pretty successful, which brought freedoms unmatched in that time. In what other army was an order compared to Order #1 of 1917 in act? What other nation decriminalized homosexuality in 1917? There were select few to allow women to vote as early as 1917 and none at all to admit women to general workforce as equals. In what other nation had organs directly elected by workers and soldiers (eg peasants) ruled the country at least for one day? Of course it was all very short-lived (not without involvement of armies of certain 'freedom loving' nations), but this one event so utterly debunks this theory of 'keeping your head low'. And even then, 'in 1800's and earlier' were very different times, when people 'kept their head low' pretty much anywhere in the world.
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 get eliminated. As the saying goes, 'the tall poppies get cut first' - no matter if you were for or against the revolution.
1917 was a result of picking a fight with authority, but the aftermath of 1917 was to eliminate anyone else who'd pick a fight with authority - both outside and within the revolution.
This is what I mean by 'keep your head down'. There's a curse "may you live in interesting times". Living in such times teaches you and the whole society to be mindful about what you say, careful if your beliefs are perceived as proper, and not to pick a fight with authority.
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 through a social calamity.
"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.
Man, please don't reason in terms "better" or "worse", this is way to nowhere.
I've faced so many cases of mutual aid or lack of it where very different nations was involved, that i generally can't consider this as competition.
Yip, we have a lot of cynics and history moments like "government fired your asses again, hehe", we have advanced prison culture and argo as fell as French do. But if there will be case that i stay without supplies in the middle of apocalypse, Russians isn't the worst choice ))
> As 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!".
I agree and it always appalls me how these sweeping-generalizations make it to the front page of HN.
>I agree and it always appalls me how these sweeping-generalizations make it to the front page of HN.
Agree because it's somehow wrong? Just 2-3 comments below yours:
"I'm from Prague and I was always baffled by this. How does the smiling thing work? In what situations do you smile? For example, if you're walking on street, do you eye-contact people going in the opposite direction and smile at them?"
I've read articles about Russian sense of community, no behavioral protocols, politeness or rules, but a simple yet strong habit of sharing both bad and good times.
Socialism makes every other person a potential enemy and a potential victim. Resources are scarce. People come to hate one another.
Capitalism makes every other person at worst a neutral non-threat and at best a potential trading partner. Resources are plentiful. People feel benevolent towards one another.
This is not an apology for America; America is only semi-capitalist. You can see Americans getting meaner over time as the country shifts more in the socialist direction. There is less everday that makes America distinct from Europe.
> Socialism makes every other person a potential enemy and a potential victim. Resources are scarce. People come to hate one another.
You're taking a look at countries that have implemented 'socialism' and ended up with what amounts to dictatorships. Do you really think that Communism as envisioned by Karl Marx included someone like Stalin, or the corrupt officials that inhabited governments in the Eastern Bloc?
For all of the rhetoric that the far-right sling around in the US about the evils of Socialism, even they have Socialist policies. The government regulates, picks winners, keeps companies afloat that are 'too big to fail,' Social Security and other welfare programs, etc.
Don't confuse situations where neighbors reports other neighbors who then 'disappear' as having anything to do with Communism or Socialism (or than that they have historically resided together).
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 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 example), under specific circumstances (e.g less technologically and politically advanced countries such as Russia, Eastern Europe and Asia), under specific forces (20th century colonialism, WWII, cold war etc), and with specific people at the helm influencing things all around (Stalin and Mao basically), doesn't mean any attempt to build X in different circumstance will end up the same.
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.
So your response is to ban ice-cream forever and eat nothing but salads instead?
Because, you know, that's the analogous response to banning all socialism and social-democracy forever just because the Soviet Union didn't turn out well.
My point is that if you try to create a socialist country, but end up with a dictatorship, then you have a dictatorship, not a socialist government. Let's call things by their real names instead of trying to associate secret police and paranoia with the terms "Socialism" and "Communism."
Dictatorship is a form of government[1]. Socialism is an economic system[2]. One does not exclude another. The history shows, though, they come together alarmingly often.
Karl Marx should have envisioned that someone like Stalin might exist in the future and will take over the power, otherwise his perfect Communism system is only applicable to perfect people.
Communism is bad in practice, but it's also bad in theory. It's not like if people were more moral, or more rational, or if we had the government run by a smart computer, communism would be possible. Setting that aside, there's also no reason to prefer communism over a free market, or pretty much anything.
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?
On a tangential note, it's not quite right to call the European system socialist. "Social democracy" might be more correct, otherwise people confuse it with communist socialism which is an entirely different regime with much more negative connotations. There are very few things in common between the systems in, say, Sweden and Soviet Russia.
As a European I find it interesting how Americans have started to completely misusing the term 'socialism' especially over the last couple of years. Even those who don't fit the die-hard right-wing profile seem to have started calling any kind of social welfare 'socialsm' without realising what actual socialism looks like.
To me, what's surprising is the contrary: that people call communism "socialism". While here in France, our Socialist Party (in power right now) has always been far from communism.
It feels strange to me to call social welfare anything other than socialism. Maybe it's just a case of French socialisme and English socialism being false friends.
It's because most communist parties in the Eastern Block were initially (or even always) called socialist parties. And many Eastern Block countries were named "socialist republics".
True, and so were all the socialist regimes I mentioned. But after tens of years of propaganda by the communists, the name tends to stick. After the fall of communism, it sticks in a bad way: socialism = communism.
I think that the best people to ask are those that lived under "socialist" regimes (I'm one of them). If I ask almost anybody I know that lived under a socialist regime, they'll probably say the same.
Maybe theoretically socialism is a different thing, but practically it really isn't for a lot of people.
That's a good point and there seem to exist different understandings of the term in different countries. I do wonder where this comes from. In Germany Sozialismus is always understood in the marxist sense and it is furthermore inseperable from the political system of the German Democratic Republic. I am not privy to the finer points of the French Socialist's political agenda, but from my understanding they roughly resemble our Social Democrats.
> You do realize that most of Western Europe is socialist?
Yep. I would even include America in that, just to a slightly lesser extent.
> That some of the countries that enjoy the highest quality of life and happiness are socialist?
Well, who are you comparing to? There aren't really any or many relatively free countries (and there never have been more than 1 or 2 at a time in all of history).
It's not true if you compare it to 19th century America in terms of happiness, nor modern-day Singapore in terms of quality of life.
(In fact, a pet has a better quality of life than a typical American, since they have better access to healthcare.)
> How do you square that with what you've written?
I 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). Pretty soon he was smiling and cracking jokes. A few months later he asked me, "Why do Americans always have to act happy? It's so fake."
>Why do Americans always have to act happy? It's so fake.
we'd like to believe it is fake. Otherwise what conclusion it would lead us to, incl. about ourselves? After more than decade here i started to come to that conclusion and sometimes i think i should have chosen the blue pill :)
> "Why do Americans always have to act happy? It's so fake."
I always tell my Russian colleagues that it's the natural outcome of not having a 3,000 year history of being pillaged by Cossacks and Mongols, and that they should try it some time.
Something that always shocked me in my travels to USA is how much people smile at you. The most weird thing is that it doesn't seem that fake, it seems complete strangers are just not afraid of you and happy to see you. Contrast it with Brazil, unlike USA people don't smile at you in the streets there, but if they know you they can't stop laughing. Brazilians parties are non-stop full-volume laughing. It's maddening!
It's not just the russians who would notice that. Americans are friendly and smiling, and that's great, but smiles are not always true, and a lot of it is culturally mandated. It's a great thing though , i 'd rather have a fake smile than frigid grumpiness.
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 mean people in America don't feel this way about street preachers? Even the kind that walks around with a sign and shouts REPENT! and all?
> I could give a $100 bill to a cashier at the grocery store without getting in trouble.
You mean you literally handed her a 100 dollar bill? That's not her fault, you should exchange your money. Imagine someone trying to pay with hrivnas in 7-11.
The conclusion about different culture code and semantic is right.
But there is more some interesting things. Russians have really poor toothcare, and this is joined with non-smiling bidirectionally. There is nothing abnormal for Russian to have couple of missing teeth. I've seen a really rich people (for example owner of Rolls Royce fleet) with just a couple of yellow teeth left... man, you should never smile with this.
Also there is a lot of mimic signals except mouth area muscles tension, especially orbicularis oculi tension, that subconsciously telling that we are smiling. I've noticed that this secondary features is also less often for Russians relative to west and east Europeans. This is also true for voice tone and other subconscious traces of smile. So the low-level mental trigger for smile not firing at all.
So i can assert that this is not about smiling, its about more deep communicational norms like, literally, answering "sorely" on "how are u?", that means "i'm complaining so i'm sincere to you and trusting you", the essence of social stroking is different. Yip, assumptions that the Russians is same in everything but the culture codes is wrong, we are pretty depressed nation.
Anyway, i see that norm is changing nowadays along with life quality increasing, European culture codes expansion, and toothcare, heh.
Hi, I'm from Lithuania, where people are smiling (or not smiling) in the exact same way as described in the article. I can assure you that teeth has absolutely nothing to do with this. Same goes for your missing muscle theory, absolute nonsense. It seems like you think people are way more conscious about smiling than they really are. I could not care less about my tooth when "deciding" whether to smile or not. It's not very conscious decision after all.
I just mention tooth like interesting side factor. Surely it's not the main reason, but may be a consequence supporting the reason. And surely there is no nations that, holding their smiles just because of their tooth not glowing in the dark.
Maybe you confused with the mentioning teeth by itself, but its normal for cultural anthropology to try taking physiology, language, healthcare e.t.c as a whole if it giving any clues.
Talking about conscious we should consider that it is one of the reflexes "tamed" by human. Reflexes have its own specific muscle tension/relaxing patterns. You can see reflexes in clean form when looking on babies. Than human learning some communication norms and codes just imitating what it see around. Than he can use trained gestures, sounds e.t.c unconsciously, just little cortex fire and we performing it. We can train to suppress reflexes this way.
Imagine, we have salute gesture like scratching a nose. The muscle tension and motional pattern will be a little different from the case we really have an itchy nose.
Or you have a cough or just imitating cough sound. It's easy to separate. But if you spent time training imitate cough naturally it will look and sound naturally.
So we can differ several cases:
Human smiling but suppressing it.
Human smiling or well trained or self-trained to smile "sincerely".
Human imitating smile of request.
And i behold that Russians:
imitate smile on request very rough and this mean deficient practice of imitation.
have suppressed smile relatively as often as other ones.
smile noticeable rarely.
So we really have rare-firing reflex. What the reason? This is separate and interesting question.
What do you mean "on request"? Because if someone asked me to fake a smile I would not even try to look sincere either. Deficient practice in imitation can be considered when a person actually wants to look like he's smiling sincerely, but for us it is the opposite. And we don't "suppress" smile - we do not feel any need to smile for random strangers. Unless you want to look offensive. Especially fake smile. Fake smile is mostly used by people who want something from you and are willing to be very annoying about it - usually want something bad to sell or somehow screw you over. I have no idea why are you coming up with those ridiculous theories about reflexes when there are very good reasons not to smile and not to fake smile to random people, and to smile to friends.
That's pretty interesting and bears some ramifications. Like the fact that Americans might have been not a smiling bunch before dentistry became widely accessible (this might have happened not too long ago). Or that before advent of cariogenic foodstuffs (eg in Middle Ages and antiquity) people tended to smile more. I wonder if it is any true.
> This is also true for voice tone and other subconscious traces of smile.
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.
I've lived my whole life here in America and when people ask me how I am sometimes I'll say "average", meaning not good or bad. People then assume I'm depressed or sad when I'm neither.
Have you written more about this and other culture comparisons (i.e. blog, article, etc)? If not, do you recommend any sites for cultural comparisons by other sociologists?
Sorry no, i leave sociology long ago and making software as most of HN visitors.
Very few of humanitarian science publications is translating from Russian, on the other hand things that opinion journalism is revealing often weird and politicized.
If you want some kind of overview of Russian specific, writers done this work better than scientists through generalized characters and situations. Reading cultural researches you'll be surprised by amount of fictional references.
I can recommend few for a not-dry reading.
N.Leskov "The Tale of Cross-eyed Lefty from Tula and the Steel Flea"
http://www.auburn.edu/~mitrege/russian-culture/lefty.doc
This is short, partially based on actual events story about XIX century engineer. Its perfect crystal describes difference between russian and western mentality and engineering.
I think its touching the russia-west problems not yielding C. P. Snow lectures about western intellectual life )
I.Ilf, I.Petrov "Twelve chairs"
http://lib.ru/ILFPETROV/ilf_petrov_12_chairs_engl.txt
about "entrepreneur" life in early XX.
It's full of killing precise WTF persons and situations, that still filling everyday life.
I can somewhat agree as an Eastern-European. When I started to work for US/UK companies, I had to learn a lot about adaptation and interpreting the different signal set.
The funny thing is that many (big) companies say that they're pro-diversity, they like and must have people from different cultures while in reality it's 99% about other cultures adapting to them. For somebody from Europe that's not that hard, but people from Asia usually find it much more difficult. And they're sometimes perceived as not smart/ignorant while they're just used to different kind of communication. We (technology workers from in Hungary or EEU) are usually perceived (in the eyes of US/UK citizens) as direct, honest, straightforward but sometimes very unpolite persons, while in reality we are just used to different gestures.
Living in far Northern Canada I can relate to this.
Up here, if someone wants to smile and say "Have a nice day", they will do so while making eye contact and you can tell they genuinely mean it. They are usually prompting you for further friendly chit-chat and happiness. Even when there are other customers waiting in line - those customers will be made to wait while two people have a friendly chat.
When they don't want to say "Have a nice day", they won't. Likely they won't say anything at all or kind of grunt/mumble and just move along (even in retail) - but at least you know they're being genuine either way.
Last time I went back to "the real world" I was shocked time and time again when someone would say "Have a nice day" - I'd start to return the sentiment and be utterly disgusted the person wasn't even looking at me, and wasn't even paying attention to me. It all felt so fake, and I was quickly tired of it.
Lots of business up here have a little sign in their shop "Yukon hospitality - it grows on you".
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 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.
> Also, this is probably the last thing that comes to mind about Russians in general. For the most part, they are notoriously individualistic.
You understand "individualistic" in some specific (probably american) way. Russians may look individualistic if you don't know them well, but actually in Russia close friends and family means much more then in US.
> You understand "individualistic" in some specific (probably american) way.
No, I meant individualistic in a "mostly devoid of the sense of social responsibility" way. In fact, it's a common meme in Russia to lament the lack of a sense of unity pervasive in the culture (the closeness of family/friends notwithstanding) .
In this definition yes, modern Russian people are individualists. But in sense
> Extreme cold and very dark days tend to bring people together
That is in the sense of small close group they are more collectivists than many of western countries.
If this difference is in fact real and actually represents a difference in emotion or happiness, then I don't think climate has much to do with it. Alaskans have always struck me as overly cheerful people and they get similar cold and darkness.
> Alaskans have always struck me as overly cheerful people
Exactly. They're genuine and real, as are Yukoners.
It always strikes us how similar Yukoners and Alaskans are, to the point people from both places always agree we should break off and form our own country.
There's really no need to be stingy with your smile.
If you smile more often at work, even if there's nothing specific to be happy about, it really does lighten up the mood and make people cheerier. People will want to work with you more.
Also, I hope I don't sound like a sociopath here, but smiles are a form of brain hacking. If they are genuine, or at least seem genuine, they disarm people and make them more receptive to you. Also, I've heard that it's a way of hacking your own brain, to make yourself happier than you would otherwise be, just by smiling.
One of the easiest things you can do to give better presentations is to learn to genuinely smile while giving them. Not all the time, but a smile peppered here or there. This works wonders on investors.
To be perfectly honest, and I'm not trying to be personally aggressive here, that kind of behavior makes me want to punch people in the face.
A smile is an involuntary response. Unless you are a really, really good actor with full control over ever muscle in your body, people will spot a fake smile ("if there's nothing specific to be happy about") from a mile away. It's not even a conscious thing, human body language is a way more complex symphony than just curling your lips a bit.
And in cultures in which artificial smiling is not a common thing that is seen as patronizing at best, and insulting at worst.
So unless you are in a country like the US, where people are used to such behavior, I would go easy on the "brain hacking".
I'm with you. I'm not a proponent of fake smiling.
Another way to think about it: try and be more like the Dalai Lama. Notice how he's often smiling? Notice how when he greets strangers, he takes a genuine interest in their well being?
You may want to punch Tony Robbins in the face, but I doubt you want to punch the Dalai Lama in the face.
That's the goal I think. Not to brain hack by fake smiling, but to brain hack by practicing real empathy and finding inner happiness.
So make it a genuine smile, by working something into the conversation/pitch/whatever that is authentic and amusing to you.
Not to mention, I'm guessing you're in the huge minority here. Like people who boycott products with annoying ads. Annoying ads which are proven to work.
It is not at all a proven fact that smiles have purely a cultural/nurture effect. We can entertain the idea that smiling affects humans regardless of culture, and that it would be objectively better for human happiness to consciously create smiles.
It's interesting how an article like this provokes multiple reactions that come down to "the American way is the right way".
Also, unlike the article suggests, I think Russians are closer to (fellow!) Europeans than Americans in this respect. The way the Russians described in this article perceive Americans is not that different from the way most Europeans do.
I'm not really picking that up from the comments. Most of the discussion I see is debating the root causes and/or the validity of sweeping generalizations of different societies.
I read several comments in support of smiling as a universal form of politeness, which in itself is a sweeping generalisation that doesn't acknowledge cultural differences.
BTW, I'm not pissing on Americans, in my experience Americans are generally considerably more polite, friendly and open than most other Westerners. But the way that is expressed is not a universal language, which tends to lead to misunderstandings.
That has a simple explanation, people naturally try to maintain positive self-image about them (ie upvote comments that make them feel about themselves). And most hn visitors are american (who are also above-average patriotic).
A Russian friend of mine explained that it's sort of inappropriate to go around smiling, esp for males. There's also kind of a cultural thing going on where Russians perceive themselves as being able to screw up almost any situation. It seems there's a lot of black/gallows humor oriented around this bleak outlook.
> A Russian friend of mine explained that it's sort of inappropriate to go around smiling, esp for males.
This is very true. If a male is smiling, it means he is showing his submission and in turn is subconsciously treated by other males as a lower level male. The exact system of hierarchy signs exists in chimps. For me it seems like russians together with some other cultures managed to save this body language component as meaningful way of interaction, in contrast with western way of smiling meaning level zero relationship. Because if you truly can not tell fake smile from real one, the meaning of a smile is lost. That's why I also am not going to ever accept "always smiling" thing, even if I would go to live in western country. A smile should be a sign of affection, not a sign of neutral stance. We have neutral face impression for that. And if you interpret neutral face impression as "something wrong", what are you using "worried" face impression? It just seems wrong to always smile, even considering "brain hacking" thing.
Why are you assuming that we can not tell the difference between smiles? There's a huge gradation of social behavior w.r.t smiles and other social cues that we use in the west. For us, raised in the culture, it is trivially easy to tell the difference between, say, the smile of a shopkeeper in greeting, the smile of an enemy, the smile of a shopkeeper after asking after your parent (they slightly know you), the smile of the mail man you speak with once a week or so, the smile of the semi-acquaintance that lives one flight up, the smile of a friend you see each day, and the smile of a best friend when reuniting after a long absence. so on. They are all different, and constitute a "meaningful way of interaction". It's just different than your way.
My parents, who live in Trinidad, have this problem every time they visit me in America. After a couple of days of everyone fake-smiling at them the whole time they get pissed off. To them, everyone's smiles come off as insincere and even slightly condescending. (They hate it even more when people tell them to "have a nice day".)
That it's a cultural phenomenon in the US and not in [other place x] does not make it immediately fake, and that some people may be faking it (I'll assume this is the case for argument) does not mean the phenomenon itself is fake.
I'm an American that smiles and greets strangers regularly. It's not fake when I do it, and I know it's not fake when many of my acquaintances do it.
I do know that this is not a natural/universal thing (though it took a trip to Japan for me to materially understand that). But just because it's not universal doesn't mean that, where it happens, it's backed by some kind of underhanded, guarded cynicism.
Of course. Many Finnish people are like that too. If I can't think of a single reason myself why that unknown person might be smiling at me then I must conclude s/he's just pretending to be friendly and probably trying something, too. Thus, smiling must have a context: friends smile to each other and that's all right because they're already friends, and friends like each other.
I'm Finnish too and feel the same way. If someone smiles and acts too friendly when I don't know them well, I feel like they may be trying to manipulate me in some way. After living abroad for a while I am starting to see that it's just the default way to act, but being unsure when someone is genuinely enjoying my company vs. just trying to act polite still makes me feel uneasy.
When I lived in Canada (in Québec - I'm from France) it mightily pissed me off when the cashier at the bank always asked me "hi! how are you?" with a large fake smile everytime I came to deposit a cheque or something.
I understand it's just the way store keepers, cashiers, waiters and other customer-facing staff have to behave in North America, but, well, it's difficult not to see it as insincere or hypocritical when you're not used to it.
Russians do like to laugh, though. We don't have as much stand-up comedians as Americans do (and skits by the one we do have are very low-brow), but a related genre of satire is quite popular among performers and listeners alike. Not sure if Jvanetsky's performances are available in English, but for those studying Russian I'd highly recommend listening to those.
http://lenta.ru/articles/2013/02/28/grumpy/ interview with the guy, if you can read Russian (he's from Belarus, by the way). Doesn't seem there is any real back story to it actually.
We (Latvians) are actually really similar to Russians in this matter. We generally don't smile and if there's someone walking down the street with a big smile on his face - the first thing that comes to mind is: "He must be a tourist."
Labdien. You are not kidding. I lived in Riga for two years and can attest to this. Latvians had a funny sense of humor though. I once heard a joke about teaching an Estonian the proper way to address a woman in Latvian, something like "Skaistas kājas"? Sorry if I got that wrong, it's been awhile.
Nah. I think it is because New York is our biggest city with 8 million people. There are just too many people to sort through so nobody talks. You can't make a generalization about the entire east coast based on NYC. In smaller places if you are walking down the street and you pass a stranger most of the time you smile at them and say hello.
This could also partially explain Russian unwillingness to smile. Most of Russians were born and raised in relatively big cities, not in suburbia where "friendliness to neighbor" cultural protocol makes sense. There are just too many neighbors to be friendly with in Russia.
I would say it is the terrible weather, too cold in winter, too hot in summer. It probably means something like "serious people are the rulers, because if you do stupid crazy things you are dead" over thousands of years that forge a culture.
Russia is so big, and yet so ugly. I took the transsiberian train and it was so boring. In 40kms of Chile you see more than in 3000 of transsiberian. In Winter there is no light, and no color(snow everywhere).
When you travel to places where the sun shines all year long you find that everybody smiles so much. You go to Bali, Brazil, Cuba, Costa Rica, kenia, Nigeria, all people smile all the time.
Boston, New York,Seattle, Germany, they are in the middle-upper scale of seriousness. Miami, California, less serious.
The article talks about the fact, I create an hypothesis about the reason.
When you travel the world you see there is a correspondence between seriousness and weather. You go to Brasil and the South is way more serious than the North. In Europe-North America it is the opposite, as they are in a different hemisphere.
When you see people smiling at you in the USA or Germany, it doesn't mean anything other than an overall neutral attitude toward you. A smile is a “level zero” in communication
I don't know about Germany, but in the US if someone is smiling at you, their overall attitude is friendly, not neutral. And yes, that includes store keepers and waiters of which there are plenty that keep a neutral expression just like much of Europe.
There are certainly people in the US who fake smiles. They are not nearly as common as you might think. Heck, research over the last 40 years has shown that faking smiles can genuinely cause happiness.
Having spent 15 years in the US (I am Russian), now I am somewhat shocked when I don't get a smile from a cashier in a store in, say, Billings, MT.
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.
As a Russian-American, I completely agree. Smiling has different semantics in West and in Russia. On the other hand, I don't mind the 'fake' customer service. I don't want people to be sincerely unhappy to do something for me. I appreciate the effort of a waiter putting on a smile at the end of an 8 hour shift, 10 minute before the restaurant closes.
Russians do not teach their children to smile at people to be polite or for any other reason, so smile only comes as a genuine emotion. But Americans do, and not just smile, but also show teeth. I'm not sure why though, probably has something to do with dental advertisements.
Which is unnatural when you think about it, showing teeth is interpreted by most animals as a sign of aggression.
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.
Oh my no, people on the east coast put far to much effort into smalltalk and smiling. The South is infamously bad in that regard, more than any other group of people that I know of, but nearly anywhere on the east coast puts too much value in small talk or smiling for the sake of smiling for my tastes. Even NYC.
The east coast is where I grew up, and where I got sick of people always pretending to be happy and interested in other people. I prefer to keep it sincere.
This is one thing I feel that black people struggle to adjust to in the American workplace. Smiling to be neutral isn't nearly as common in Black Culture in America. Along the lines of this article, it can actually make people think you're kind of weird if you're in a typically black setting to just smile for no reason.
So you can either be yourself and risk coworkers avoiding you because they think you're "angry" (especially if you're more quiet than other people) or wear a smile that feels forced all the time to make your coworkers feel comfortable, because they won't take the time to assess their own biases and cut you the appropriate slack.
Pretty accurate article. The main point is that smile is a base in USA, and neutral is base here in Russia. But personal conversations (especially with people you know) are full of smiling. And I don't think that's such a big deal, actually.
P.S.
I regularly see two people constantly smiling in the crowd. One is slightly crazy and another one has mimic muscles trauma.
I have seen someone get fired at a restaurant I worked at because they were always too overwhelmed to smile consistently. Perhaps Americans are forced to smile at times but why would someone foreign take offense to that?
By the way he got directly fired because he wasnt smiling when he was walking around. Dont you just love being employed in a Work at Will state.
I was fired from a restaurant job (many years ago, in Alaska) becuase I "did not smile enough". At the time, it seemed ironic because I was actually quite efficient and smiling had not seemed to be a requirement for actually getting things done.
I can relate to the behaviour described in the article.
A smile is a signal, as is a frown. If you center your origin in the middle of the scale, you can use a smile to signal positive things and a frown to signal negative things. If you smile a lot you will move the origin: you're "always" smiling so what do you do when you're really happy? Or if you're always frowning what do you do when you're pissed off for real?
If the default signal is neutral, it's easy to give a little smile or a little frown and have that convey a lot of meaning, conscious or subconscious. And you still have reserves for the truly earth-shattering moments.
I'm not very qualified to comment on Americans but they do talk a lot. For what I've observed they seem to smile and then express with words such things that maybe someone from another culture could express with a slight change in his facial expression.
Russians also don't have a Halloween. On the question "Why don't you have such a holiday?" we (Russian/Ukrainian/Other-Similar-Folks) answer - we don't celebrate a walking dead holiday, because we make sure our dead are really dead and stay dead insert a smile here if we met before
I see a lot of comments about Russians being inherently miserable creatures, the climate not being conducive to smiling and even bad dental work as reasons. Let me give an example from another culture where smiling is risky: India. When I first moved there, I quickly realized that people smile only at those they know. Strange women don't smile at you for fear of inviting harassment. Soon as a guy, you don't smile at anyone so as to not invade their space.
When I first came to America, I realized that a lot of Americans had this unique and amazing ability to blast you with a radiant smile and cheerily ask after you. It is a meaningless social convention that can get annoying at times. It is always intriguing to me when I travel abroad, how my cheery attitude slowly dissipates and then how the readjustment happens when I come back to America.
you could write the same article for french people , it wouldnt make a difference, We french wont fake smile like americans do,even in shops or cafés , where waiters dont expect you to tip them anyway. It's just the french way, and customers are used to it , as long as you are not "too" rude...
I've been to France dozens of time and once lived there for a year. I find the French easy to engage with and generally courteous and friendly, unlike the usual stereotype.
Reminds me of the wikitravel article on Azerbaijan:
Don't smile at an Azerbaijani in the street, because if you do they most likely will not respond in kind and they will regard you as odd. Smiling in Azerbaijan in public is not done and will be considered inappropriate. Smiling is traditionally reserved for family and friends; smiling at a stranger without addressing them, will be considered offensive, as they will either think that you are making fun of them and there is something wrong with their clothes or hair. Furthermore, an automatic "Western smile" (ie grinning) is widely regarded as insincere, as in "You don't really mean it". [1]
This is easy question. According to Tibetan tradition the hell (in general, not these particular torturing hells) is a cold, dark place inhabited by selfish, aggressive, angry, greedy beings.)
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.
I don't think it's significantly related with modern Russia/Soviets or any recent events. You can found description of same behaviour made by Turgenev (here for example, in russian, http://european-book-review.blogspot.com/2006/04/blog-post_1...) in XIX century.
Actually, Russians smile quite a lot.
They are not smiling to strangers - the article explains why. But this does not mean they are not smiling at all. Once you become acquainted to the person, the smile becoming the natural part of communication.
When I first moved to eastern Europe I couldn't make friends at all. After a few months I started to get really discouraged and somewhat depressed and stopped trying to engage people. As soon as that happened, my social life did a 180.
Smiling there is more personal... and smiles are more valuable. And just like with anything valuable or good if there's too much of it it looses its value (a bit like money and inflation or recent startup valuations :-))
It'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?
I found it funny that a German, often associated in the U.S. as a serious humorless country, was curious about why Russians never smile.
I can attest though, having spent a little bit of time in the Russian interior as a student that, at least to this American, Russians in public come across as rude, cold distant and all that, but once a Russian gets to know you (usually over some vodka and pickles) are almost unfailingly warm, kind and generous people who have ready smiles in the intimacy of close friends.
Russians also like to dress in black or grey. I once was looking at a picture of a group of Russian mountaineers on the summit of a Mexican volcano and realized, that there was not a single red or yellow article of clothing, all black. I don't have any non-black puffy jackets either and I am a... Russian :)
I live in Romania and it's pretty much the same, however I don't agree with the author. I noticed that many people abroad are genuinely more happy, and speak with excitement about their day. The original explanation provides some mental comfort, but I just don't buy it.
I wonder if anyone has used slavic populations to try to reproduce Paul Ekman's research, where Ekman tried to establish the universality of the use of smiles worldwide.
My only take away is that a German asked a Russian about joy and that sounds like the start to a great joke. I mean they are the most stereotypically serious countries in Europe.
I have been in Russia when the Kursk submarine sank. This event was on the news for days and whenever an official spoke about it on TV I had the impression that they were admitting guilt. This was not the case I've been told.
The difference in body language is considerable.
Being a Russian and having lived in a Western country long enough I started noticing that I use this fake smile all the time when I bump by someone. Not sure whether that's a good or a bad thing, but at least it is a code of conduct here.
Now 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.
Loving the passive aggressive half-arsed argumentative tone of this discussion. I can't see many people here smiling at strangers. Or friends... Or anyone.
Your German friend wants to see some miserable Russians? - go to the most expensive places in Western Europe - and those are the rich Russians. The others are just miserable by habit and because being non-miserable was bad style during the Soviet years. And yes, that probably applies to most of the Slavic nations (boo, generalisation, boo)...
I like when immigrants or wannabes shit all over theirs own people saying that, "it's not culture, it's just everyone is miserable and suffering, because of Stalin, Putin and gulag". I can tell you, fellow foreigners, this behavior is also part of culture for centuries already too.
For some people who have not left their home country, other cultures might seem weird like that. They may themselves seem to be from some alien race as well, from someone others' viewpoint.
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. It's because they are genuinely more cynical miserable people. This is completely a generalization and there are tons of exceptions on an individual level, but on average life (especially in the cities) is more cut throat, it's cold, the authorities are corrupt, people are asshole to each other in public, and if anything goes wrong you can be darn well be sure that no one will help you[1]. There is no sense of community, or impulse for people to help each other out and being nice to strangers. So naturally you're worried you'll get robbed or whatever - so you keep to yourself, don't make eye-contact, and don't smile.
If you go to the country side, people are a lot more likely to smile at you.
A bit of an aside - I've found it's also a very Slavic thing. Prague had very similar miserable faces, which Budapest was full of smiles (though economically the countries were very similar)
[1] I remember a story my friend told me of how he was on the subway and a bunch of skinheads beat up an African college student. After they left, no one did anything to help the kid, and everyone just pretended like nothing happened. A good ol' "it's non of my business" attitude.