Culture Shock: Unique Russia Meets the West

One of the most nagging questions foreigners face about Russia is: By what standards should the Russian people be held accountable?I have written several times on this subject, but it continues to be an issue as the country labors to westernize itself. It is behind the endless, rather unattractive griping binges foreigners have been known to undertake. More significantly, it is behind the breakup of countless joint ventures and undermines our understanding of Russia.So an answer, I believe, is worth seeking.It is easy to make the mistake of thinking of Russians as just an unfortunate brand of Europeans who have simply been held back in their development by 250 years of Mongol domination and 70 years of Communist social experimentation.This is not to be drawn into the timeless -- and pointless -- Asian-versus-European argument. It is sufficient to say that what history, both ancient and recent, has engendered in Russia is quite different and even unique. For foreigners, its collision with Western culture can be shocking.I have a pair of Russian friends who emigrated recently to the United States; one legally, one illegally. Together they earn about $5,000 a month in a scam that would land them in prison if they ever got caught. Let's just say it involves "expediting" New York State drivers' licenses.When one of my friends described his new "job" I was horrified -- as much by his lack of remorse (which sounded a lot like pride) as by the fact that he chose to avail himself of the opportunities presented by the United States by breaking the law.In Russia, my friend was a real hustler, a guy who got things done and did anything for a friend. Yet when I beheld these same traits in America I found them downright ugly. I told him so, and in so doing felt like I had just struck a puppy with a rolled up newspaper.Recently, I was in St. Petersburg with a couple friends who had just spent a day with a nice, soft-spoken Russian couple who had two doll-faced children.Making good on their promise to show my friends Pavlovsky Park, this nice, soft-spoken couple with the two doll-faced children spent 20 minutes sneaking through the parks' surrounding woods in order to find a hole in the fence.When my friends, uncomfortable with the idea of avoiding admission fees in this way, offered to pay they were told that it was not a question of money, it was "the principle."Principle? Only in Russia could "principle" elevate cheating the state into a national pastime, right up there with baseball and avoiding income taxes in the United States.But then only in Russia do the rules for operating an elevator run more than 1,000 words. I recently read these directions and discovered that I routinely break four of them including taking my baby into the lift, while still in her stroller, behavior which is "categorically forbidden." In St. Petersburg when the nice young couple discovered that their secret hole had been welded shut, they took my foreign friends to the main gate, but only after dressing them in Russian jackets so as to avoid the inevitable "foreigner surcharge."And so those two doll-faced children watched as their parents stuffed Russian cigarettes into my friends' pockets, and the unloved state was cheated out of a few hundred rubles.