Introducing Russia: People & Mentality

Russia is interesting country that pulls off the truly impressive feat of being an essential and fascinating tourist destination, the flipside of modern Europe and still unknown place to most travelers.

A mysterious country that repeatedly shocked and surprised whole world with its rich culture, dark, brutal history, extravagant behavior of some of its political leaders and general spirit of everlasting paradox in every twist of social life.

In fact, contradictory concepts seem perfectly coexisting in Russian society: slavery and freedom, compassion and cruelty, self-sacrifice and banal envy, easy going people and tediously bureaucratic approach to life, Slavic simple soul and Byzantine slyness, and finally deeply retarded villages and ultra modern megalopolises. Modern attributes of "capitalist" world and old relics of communist times, hip crowds of young people and old babushkas (old women) wearing big fur hats and coats in the snowy winters.

To me if I were asked to find a single word, reflecting Russia, it would say ‘’paradox’’. We manage to marry up the polar ideas in our minds without obvious damaging our inner identity.

We also are people of great excesses. Speaking in the art’s terms, our cultural and mental landscape is always edgy: we can’t help but try to define our sympathies and antipathies utterly clearly: if we love – we love unconditionally and forgive such things that person of any other nationality would often consider as incompatible with even normal living under the same roof.

If we hate, we hardly can even approach this person. Basically, we think in black and white scale. We never opt for grey. That’s why we often seem aggressive or stubborn to people around…while secretly being very vulnerable and proud. To us, they in their turn often seem pretty hypocritical with their looking for everlasting win-win or compromising their integrity.

Honesty doesn’t it need a little white lie, - our motto in relationship.

And want another paradoxical twist of personality? Under some circumstances we can easily transit from personal vendetta to mutual favor. How do we do it? To be honest, I don’t know; it just works naturally! There is even such popular Russian saying: there is just one step between love and hatred.

I personally think it happens because Russian person traditionally used to be kind of a patient rebel (again paradox!). Thru whole our history we proved capable for tremendous amount of patience but as long as it is worn out, we tend to become cruel and intractable. This rule applies both to whole nation and average Ivan and Tatiana you can meet on the street everyday.

And in this regard, Russians can be impossible, unpredictable but never boring.

Russian couple in traditional Russian national costume