Russian Culture
Lesson 3: Modern Russian Culture
Big Beautiful Russia
“Russia is a country about 1.8 times the size of the US occupying the vast area between Europe and the North Pacific Ocean. It has an area of 10, 672,000 sq. miles (17,075,200 sq.km) and a population of almost 150 million people.
Occupying a large territory in Europe and Asia Russia is spread over all climatic zones except tropical. It takes over 8 hours by plane to reach from Moscow to Vladivostok on the Pacific coast. West of the Ural mountains from the Black Sea in the South to the Arctic Ocean lies a broad plain with low hills where the historical core of the Russian nation is located. East of the Urals from the border with Kazakhstan, China and Mongolia to the Arctic coast lies Siberia - a scarcely populated area covered by coniferous forest, swamps and tundra in the north and mountainous terrain in the south. The country possesses a wide array of natural resources including major deposits of oil, coal, natural gas, many strategic minerals, diamonds and timber.
Russia has the world's fifth largest population (148.8 million people) after China, India, the United States and Indonesia. It is populated by approximately 130 nations and ethnic groups, including some 130 million Russians, over 5 million Tartars, nearly 4 million Ukrainians, 1.7 million Chuvashs, 1.7 million Jews, approximately 1.3 million Bashkirs, over 1 million Belorussians and more than 1 million Mordovians.
All in all, 73 per cent of Russian citizens live in urban areas... The Russian Federation has 1,067 major cities, with 13 of them inhabited by one million and more people each.” (Embassy of the Russian Federation http://www.russianembassy.org/ , geography page)
Russia is big. But it does not have nearly the population it should for being the largest country. In between Russia’s 1,067 large cities, there is nothing. You know when you are definitely out the city, because there is nothing but steppe or forest and an occasional sign for another city (which is usually located so far away that you couldn’t conceive how Russians could hide an entire city just beyond the horizon). Here I am not even talking about Siberia, Siberia is another story altogether. There are people and cities in Siberia. Most of Russia’s natural resources are in Siberia and so there are some very rich cities out in the forests and tundra, which were only founded around resources like oil or timber. In Siberia, if you are lucky another city could be a day or two away. Western Russia is those lands between the Ural and the Caucas Mountians, the lands between the Arctic Circle and the Black and Caspian Seas. My husband is from one of the narrower regions of Russia, in between the Caspian Sea and the Black sea, and the nearest city from his hometown is still five hours away.
Moscow and St. Petersburg are different as well. They are the largest cities in Russia, the most expensive, and the most toured. St. Petersburg is on the Gulf of Finland. Moscow is further inland and slightly more southern. Both are very page and very old cities, in 2003 St. Petersburg celebrated her 300th year birthday. These two cities were the homes to the Russian Tzars, the Soviet Government, and the modern Republic. They are opulent, they are old, and they are also modern. Russia does not believe in contradiction, Russia lives it. In Russia there is no contradiction, there are merely opposing facts. So, yes, a city can be old and modern at the same time.
This section is meant to show you the diversity and size of Russia. This information and sense of the country should be kept in mind when listening to the news which like to show surveys and statistics from Russia. The national surveys include all the large cities scattered about Russia, and they also include the tiny villages, which dot the countryside. Village life is completely different than city life. The standards of living are also completely different. There may not be running water in a village, maybe one telephone, maybe constant electricity. Not all people chose to live in villages because of poverty either. Some villages are richer than others depending on the farming and animal husbandry business in that area. Some people chose to live the quiet life. But not many villages have fully equipped hospitals or schools. Russian national surveys also include Siberia, which is sparsely populated, yet has a lot of weight for the Russian economy (because all of her natural resources are located there). So, what you are hearing in these surveys and statistics, unless they were conducted only in cities, is a cross between city standards of life and rural standards of life. When our media tells that the Russian healthcare system is bad, they are using statistics from all over Russia. City hospitals are fine, I never had a problem with the healthcare I received in a city hospital. The equipment was a little old, but the same tests we would run were done, and the same diagnosis came. It is the same for the alcohol statistics we have been hearing. Let me tell you, there is not much more to do, than drink, in a village; unless you’re a farmer that is. Statistics are always to be taken with a grain of salt, unless you know exactly who was giving their vote or opinion.
To learn more about Moscow and St. Petersburg here are links to some good city guides.
Voditchka
Russians drink vodka, lots of vodka. Vodka drinking is a social institution. The rules are:
* One never should drink alone: In Russia, this means making friends with the guy on the next bar stool.
* To ask someone to share a bottle with you is to ask them to become better acquianted with you and perhaps to have a sharing of souls: You can ask this of a person simply by tapping under you chin with you fingers, in a quick flicking gesture (make an OK hand sign, put it up to you neck and lightly tap your neck with your forefinger). This rule is one of the main reasons why drinking in Russia has become a social and lengthily custom. The more you drink, the closer you feel to someone.
* It is better to have a reason to drink: Russia still celebrates Soviet holidays and some other more folky holidays, just so that there are more reasons to drink. There are special holidays for just about every profession and military branch. There is also a holiday called a name day (name day: a type of birthday celebration. When you were given the name of a Russian saint, you get to have a party on the Saint’s holy day because you share his or her name.) Of course, any day can be a holiday.
* Every shot must be toasted: Russian toasts are notoriously long and sentimental. The first toast is usually in honor of the holiday (birthday person, holiday, friendship is always a big one). The second toast is usually for the host. The third toast is for a woman’s love, but more generally, and more modern, just for love. After the third toast, anything goes. By that time everyone is usually loose enough and feeling in a better mood, so tradition takes a back seat to the spirit of the party. Plus these traditions vary from region to region, but what I have listed are the most common toasts. At birthday and wedding dinners, everyone must take their turn to toast the birthday person. So, the more guests you have, the more vodka you must drink! I married my husband in Russia, and we had a traditional Russian wedding. At our reception it took almost an hour to get around the whole table for everyone to pronounce their toasts. So, that was like thirty toasts and shots in an hour. The party lasted roughly eight hours and we drank the entire time.
All spoken toasts, and, at least, the first three are basically obligatory. It is possible to refuse a later toast, but it is common courtesy to tell your hosts at the beginning of the party that you do not intend to drink. It takes a strong will to refuse a Russian toast, but it is possible to do it politely by invoking health conditions or religion. Your host may not completely understand, but he or she will respect your choice.
* For every shot, you eat one snack: On occasion one might drink to be drunk in Russia, but the custom is that one does not just drink, one feasts as well. Every two weeks or so, my husband and I and all of our friends would go the market together buy lots and lots of food and couple bottles of something intoxicating and feast together.
* Once a bottle is opened it must be finished. You cannot save alcohol, unless you may need some for recovering in the morning.
* Never leave an empty bottle on the table: it’s bad luck.
* Once you pick up you glass, you cannot put it down until you finish your shot: a neat way to rest you hand if the toast ends up being long is to slip your pinky finger under the bottom of the glass and let your pinky finger rest on the table.
* You must drink the shot to the bottom: you can always ask for a small shot, but what ever you get you must finish. Ladies have different rules though. A lady doesn’t have to finish her shot, if she is drinking shots at all. Many times ladies will have wine while the men drink vodka or some kind of hard liquor.
* Whom ever opens the bottle pours the first shots and then, whom ever is toasting pours the next shot. If there is no real toast, but a consensus that the next toast is due, usually the host or a close friend will pour the shots. If a woman wants to toast, she can pour if she likes, but more usually her male friends or relatives will pour for her. If there is no host, then the shot will be poured by the person who is proposing to drink.
* The morning after a hard and long drinking party, one should alleviate any hangover by consuming more alcohol. If you do not intend to drink the rest of the day, then beer or champaigne will do nicely. But if you plan on having a two day party then, another bottle of vodka is opened.
* Lastly, this is not a rule exactly, but it is common: there is always some kind of chaser. Now many young men feel vodka without a beer chaser is wasted money, but more commonly seltzer water, juice, or soda is used as the chaser.
Alcohol is much cheaper in Russia than it is in the States. You can get a decent bottle of vodka for three or four bucks. A bottle of beer is about thirty cents. You can have beer while walking down the street, but not vodka. But you can drink vodka in public, but should make a little picnic out of it. Russian shot glasses are larger than ours, so one shot in Russia is like a shot and half for Americans. I was on an archaeology expedition in Russia for a two summers. At camp, we would always drink out of large metal mugs. Because we were out in the country, our Russian friends provided us with real village moonshine. Moonshine is made everywhere in Russia. Sometimes clever bootleggers will use old bottles from vodka and put the moonshine in it and sell the moonshine as real vodka. The only way to be sure of the quality of the alcohol your buying is to check the tax stamp on the bottle. There is a bug problem, though, with bad moonshine. Usually, Russians think it’s risky to buy moonshine, unless they know the person who made it and they know that person knows how to do it right. If one is desperate for alcohol, then you could always to the local pharmacy and buy some little bottles of pure alcohol antiseptic (we don’t sell that specific chemical formula here in the States, and I would not recommend using rubbing alcohol.). I’ve even heard stories of desperate soliders distilling and refining their shoe polish to use the alcohol contained in the polish. Again I don’t recommend doing this. But my favorite stories are those of the village people, who would grow watermelons. They would leave the melon in the field, but scoop out the inside and put water inside of the melon. They would leave the melon out in the field under the sun so that the melon juices would ferment. Another interesting form of alcohol is that of kvass. Kvass is a slightly alcoholic drink made from a heavy rye or pumpernickle bread. I haven’t gotten the recipe correct yet, but if I do, I’ll pass it on.
There have been a few attempts to dry out Russia from Vodka. But none of these attempts lasted very long. I think it is mostly due to the economic and blackmarket factors of alcohol production. Alcohol is a good business in Russia. Now, alcohol sales are closely related to Mafia. Most shopkeepers have to pay protection fees to the Mafia and/or the cops. The Mafia, sometimes control what shops can sell what brands or types of alcohol, in other words, they control distribution. The cops get paid to overlook code violations or “misplaced” licenses or other documents. Usually if the shop is the local mall area, then you can have a respectable business. But if the shop is a street kiosk or a private vendor or store, then they are paying someone for something. Again, most Russians see this form of bribery as the cost of doing business. They may not like it, but for Russians somehow it’s easier not to rock the boat.
Alcoholism is perceived differently in Russia and it is perceived differently between Russian men and Russian women. Russian men define an alcoholic as someone who has the shakes and is obsessed with drinking. Russian women feel that alcoholism is not as extreme and will likely call her husband an alcoholic if he comes home a couple nights a week drunk. But, neither men nor women feel that getting drunk a couple nights a week is a big deal. As long as one can retain one’s dignity while drinking, one is not thought of as a drunk. The minute one loses their grip (physically or emotionally) one loses their respect. Going to treatment centers for alcoholism is only done in extreme cases and for health reasons (physical or emotional). There are treatment centers, like we have in America. Alcoholism is a different animal altogether in Russia. Americans have a belief that having a couple drinks on the weekends is a little wild. But that having a glass of wine with dinner is sensible. These sensible notions just do not exist for Russian men. Russian women strive to be cultured and refined, but Russian men innately seem to push their boundaries with alcohol. But Russians feel, so long as you remain in control of yourself, and as long as you can function reasonably, what does it hurt? Russian mothers will scold their children well into adulthood about drinking, but they won’t plan interventions or send them to treatment centers. Drugs on the other hand, have no place in Russian families. Drugs can be easily gotten, but are not tolerated by the police or by the Russian family.
Print this page
Latest Articles