The difference between Russians and Brits.

“What would you say are the main differences between Russians and Brits?” I was asked recently by one of the good people who hosted me. I had about two minutes to give a considered answer before dashing to catch my train, and I’m afraid that my answer was unsatisfactory. I babbled something about Russians being more sociable and fled. But there is so much more to it than that.

Russians are more sociable, a good deal less private, and far less likely to mind their own business. If you’re travelling, people will get talking to you almost instantaneously, will help you with your luggage, will share their food and life stories. They will also ask questions and offer advice that most Brits will feel is of a personal nature. Brits are far more reserved and the concept of private space is very important; the idea of living in a communal apartment (two families sharing and you not even being able to pick your neighbours) would fill a Brit with horror. Mind you, I don’t think Russians are too keen on it either; they just don’t have a choice if they can’t afford anything better. The Americans I ran into spoke of most Russians they met going out of their way to be helpful – explaining things, helping to buy tickets, or just practising their English. Dervla Murphy wrote of the incredible hospitality she recived in Siberia, where even non-English speakers took her under their wing, put her up, and made her feel extremely welcome. Do Brits go out of their way to be kind to strangers, especially foreigners? Maybe in small remote villages somewhere, but elsewhere – forget it. My own friends grumble about the summer influx of foreign students who crowd the city centre and cycle, three abreast, blocking the street. Yet what would Cambridge be without its cosmopolitan character?

An American I met in Peru, who’d taught English in a Russian school, told me that her experience in Russia fluctuated between truly wonderful (being invited to her students’ homes and feeling extremely welcome) and truly terrible (being accused of being a Chechen rebel due to her appearance by complete strangers and held incommunicado by the FSB before having to flee the country), and I’d say that’s accurate. The Russians you meet tend to be either really warm and kind, or exceptionally unhelpful and unpleasant. You can even tell which kind they’ll turn out to be by someone’s face; laughter lines and openness indicate the former, and a hard, set face with a mean expression – the latter. There are fewer in-betweens, whereas Brits tend to wear more neutral expressions, though they can be extremely warm once you get to know them.

Russians can be surprisingly blasé about other people’s problems. When I mentioned seeing a crippled man with no legs, begging at a Moscow metro station to a Russian friend, she said: “He’s no worse off than the rest of us.” I disagreed; having no legs is surely a tremendous disadvantage, but maybe what she meant was that living in Russia, full stop, is a struggle, a dead end of sorts.

Amongst Russians there seems to be a resignation to the current state of the country. People complain about the lack of work, the corruption of the political system, the uncertainty of the future, and everyone has theories about what will make things better – a tsar, a strong leader – though I’m yet to hear about how they, personally, will take charge and change the system for the better. The line from L’Internationale (below) does not apply anymore:

Никто не даст нам избавления, ни царь, ни бог и ни герой. Добьёмся мы освобождения своею собственой рукой…

No one will give us freedom, neither ruler, nor god, nor a hero. Let us win our freedom by our own hand… 

Been there, tried that.

People adapt the best they can, or go work abroad if they can, but the prevailing feeling is that nothing can be done about the people currently in power and that the country is going to the dogs. Mind you, lots of Brits also complain about the state of the country and don’t do what they actually can – go to the MP who represents their area and put their grievances forward in a meaningful way. But in the UK, there is less unemployment and more in the way of opportunity.

Russians seem to be more aware of, and take a greater interest in what’s happening in the world than your average Brit. When riding the train and talking to average working class people, I was surprised by how much they knew, and even if their political opinions were skewed, they at least had some, whereas there are Brits who can’t even name their own Prime Minister, never mind take an interest in another country’s foreign policy or economic state. Brits are publicly more PC than Russians, though I can’t vouch for what they feel in private.

Russians make Brits who binge-drink on a Friday night look like complete amateurs. Why only drink at night when beer makes a refreshing beverage at any time of day, say at 7am on a Sunday morning and carry on until the following weekend? It was a great victory for British drinkers when pubs won the right to be open around the clock if they so desired, but it’s got nothing on the 24-hour liquor store phenomenon.

As for Russian food, it may have a reputation for blandness (as does British food) but it’s actually surprisingly varied, even if much of it involves dill: you may encounter an array of pickles – all kinds of vegetables and mushrooms, an incredible range of smoked and salted fish, imaginative meat and fish dishes, really great fruit, cheap and tasty ice cream everywhere and awesome travel food: pelmeni (boiled dumplings) and deep-fried pies with all kinds of fillings. Plus, Russians have embraced Georgian, Armenian and Central Asian cuisines, as well as Japanese. I’d say that ordinary British food is less imaginative, though of course in Britain you have access to superb Indian and Chinese food, among others.

Many Russians are jacks-of-all-trades by necessity, with many people able to fix a car, decorate their home and grow their own food because back in the day, there was no one do to do that for them. By contrast, that label applies to relatively few Brits, and while some people do grow things on allotments, it’s far less common than in Russia to grow at least some of your own food. Russians are survivors. Brits, by and large, are softer.

Speaking of surviving, every sizeable Russian city has at least one major WWII memorial, an eternal flame, and a museum, with exhibits dedicated to their area’s input into the war, and I’m not sure that true in Britain; it certainly not done on that grand a scale. Maybe the war is more present in Russian consciousness because the country was so affected by it all – the incredible losses, the famine – whereas Britain’s losses were comparatively smaller. Visiting the museums made me realise just how unusual it was that in my family, all four grandparents survived the war, when in many cities, half the men did not return from the front.

While Russia has become rapidly Westernised in some ways, the concept of efficient public service hasn’t quite materialised in the public sector. In post offices, I’m baffled by the numerous forms that people have to fill in, and by the fact that one person might be serving an enormous queue while three others sits and do their nails; each is responsible for a particular service, whereas in British post offices, people multi-task, there are orderly queues and things are pretty efficient. While Brits have a reputation for being patient, public employees sitting around doing nothing while people are waiting simply would simply not fly; Russians queueing may have less to do with patience and more with being used to the status quo and simply not knowing that things could be more efficient. British bureaucracy is pretty straightforward and set rules apply. In Russia, convoluted bureaucracy is still king, and rules are applied selectively. When my sister went to apply for her Russian passport, she was told that she’d first have to conduct an inquiry into whether or not she’s a Russian citizen, even though the same consulate employee assured me the week before that she wouldn’t have to (since I’d already had mine done and my sister’s situation was the same as mine). After she’d had a conversation with the consul himself, he summoned that employee and it was finally decided that my sister could indeed apply for the passport without a preliminary inquiry. In spite of that, she was absolutely furious: “Either they apply the rules to everyone, or they shouldn’t have them at all!”

Russians seem to be more matter-of-fact about rules that don’t apply to all, or about all the hoops you have to jump through to get anything done, or about having to know people in appropriate places if you want to get a certain job or have your child accepted by a specific university. A certain amount of that exists in Britain as well – a boy from my school got into Oxford in spite of not having the grades because his father knew somebody, but he flunked out because he understandably couldn’t cope with the workload.

Brits, by and large, are law-abiding, and vaguely socialist, hence the NHS (National Health Service) funded by a proportion of everyone’s taxes, and government programs to help the homeless. Russia’s gone from the most extreme interpretation of socialism – the forced redistribution of wealth, free healthcare and education, generous pensions – to a capitalist system where people dodge taxes because they either cannot survive without the extra income or they (rightly) don’t trust the government likely to misappropriate the funds, a proportion of which would disappear into the unscrupulous government officials’ pockets, and where the feeling of community seems to have broken down. Having said that, the concept of family is still very strong – obligation towards elders and close-knit extended families are far more common in Russia than in Britain. As for breaking the law, it’s perhaps more understandable in a country where the law is applied selectively, and where officials who are supposed to uphold the law charge motorists with fictional crimes in order to supplement their small income with ‘fines’.

 It’s particularly difficult to compare the Russian and the British sense of humour, since I’m more British than Russian these days, and a lot of Russian wit goes over my head. I can only say that neither crosses over too well in translation.

The above comparisons may well hack off both Brits and Russians alike. All I can say in my defence that those are just the impressions of someone who sits on a fence, who speaks both languages with an accent and who is, by turns, baffled, aggravated and moved by the state of her former home.