One Russian's View of American Customs

Nikolai Zlobin
(photo: RIA Novosty)

Americans have been accused, sometimes fairly, of a lack of curiosity regarding other nations. We don't tend to speak foreign languages, we're indifferent to history (even our own), we're baffled by any economic system disconnected from free enterprise. The resultant unawareness leads to some cultural clashes in even relatively neutral settings, such as airports.

Nikolai Zlobin, a Russian political analyst who has lived in three different areas of the United States, recently wrote a book on amerikanski behaviors, thoughts, and habits. The analyst's work, according to a well-written New York Times article, is a hit in the land of Putin. Zlobin explores what, for a Russian, are some of America's wild, crazy, and incomprehensible behaviors. The anecdotes the Times reporter cites are delicious in their humor and irony. The role of Russian grandparents in child care and their horror at the thought of a teenaged babysitter caring for their kids is just one case in point.

I can vouch for these cultural gaps from personal experience. For years, I taught Russian immigrants and refugees who came to the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave for a better life. Well, sometimes, you could take the Russian out of Russia, but you couldn't take Mother Russia out of the Russian. I experienced first hand some of the cultural swings and misses characteristic of Russo-American interchange. By the end, I gained some insight, a deeper sense of humor, and an appreciation of Russian tenacity and endurance.

What's significant in both my teaching activities and Zlobin's argument is the identification of what Americans simply take for granted in their everyday lives. In that way, our experiences seem congruent with the observation of 20th century British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, who maintained that a society's most deeply held beliefs are unstated and simply assumed.