I see we’ve been watching the same Youtube videos. I think it’s more that dashcams have been more prevalent there for a time, and we’re only just catching up. That said, Russians be cray!
That said, I’ve been to Moscow three times, and I have a complicated relationship with Russia. I do with the US, as well, but Moscow is just an odd place, to put it diplomatically. I like a lot of Russians, and most of my experience with Russians is with expats/immigrants, whom I have found to be, as a whole, a wonderful group of people. But, of course, you’re going to get a self-selecting group of people this way.
Yes bribery was/is a way of life there. It was in Poland when I visited there as a kid in the 80s. It was in Hungary, even when I lived there in the late 90s/early 00s. That’s just the way things were done. Hell, growing up in Chicago it’s in living memory for many ordinary citizens and still goes on with business deals. I really can’t fault them for thinking that’s the way things are everywhere in the world. That’s the way things are in much of the world, like it or not.
So it’s difficult for me to fault the common Russian – I’m trying to imagine myself growing up in that type of worldview and maintaining the independence of thought the West has (or at least likes to think it has – I do think it has, if not completely so). And I don’t know if I would be able to escape it myself. I think I would, but I couldn’t say from without whether I could. I grew up believing a lot of so-called “truths” hook, line, and sinker as an American, which I later found to be more complicated, at the very least, if not outright falsehoods. That makes it difficult for me to “hate” Russians, especially given how much culture and science they have given the world. At best, it makes me very conflicted.
I’m not quite the ignorant bigot my title makes me out to be, and I don’t want to waste anyone’s time here discussing the nuances and distinctions that should be made between a sweeping general dismissal of an entire culture and certain (millions?) inhabitants of that culture who are virtuous and thoughtful people like you and me.
Of course, no one needs to “hate” Russians–BUT there is a certain animosity I’m trying to deal with here that won’t simply disappear if I tell myself that animosity is unworthy of me. I feel it, sometimes (like when I listen to their current propaganda) feel it intensely, and it ain’t going away.
The single most egregious plagiarism case I ever saw was a Russian student (copying a final exam essay, word for word, from a friend: this was especially bad because even though I knew the friend was innocent, she still had to be reported and put through the wringer, because the only evidence I had was two identical essays. I did give background in my report, so I hope her experience wasn’t too bad).
I’ve had the occasional American student who refuses to crack, and I have had plenty of students from China deny really obvious plagiarism—word-for-word copying from a published but uncited source. Students from Saudi Arabia have also been quite bad. And I need to stress that it’s not students of those ethnicities, but students who did their education through high school in those three countries (and a minority of those).
So, yeah, I think there’s a cultural predisposition to gaming the system vs ethical behavior. To my mind, though, that comes under my purview as an educator: I need to make sure that behavior does not pass in any sense of the word, and communicate the values of the system I’m in. But I also think that people learn the culture where they grew up, and don’t often have the reflexivity to challenge it when still in their late teens / early 20s.
Culture, science, education, arts, exploration…yes. In WWII they needed to join with the Allies for their own survival, no one else’s. And as soon as it was over Stalin became the biggest threat to the world. Their governments now and in the past, along with most of their history, has been shameful. It baffles me that this culture somehow produced so many great scientific and artistic minds in that environment.
Full disclosure, two of my grandparents were born in Ukraine, a part of the Russian Empire. My last name is that of a small city in Ukraine. Neither of them considered themselves Ukrainian, they were Russian just like it said on their birth certificates and they didn’t want to be there.
100% in agreement with this and with your entire post. Still doesn’t change my observation that if I had 20 Russian emigres per term (as I sometimes did in the 1990s) I would have at least a dozen hardcore plagiarism cases that term. I could spend days at the beginning of the term warning them that I am hell on plagiarism, and have the penalties bolding throughout my syllabi, and it didn’t make a dent. Chinese students were also terrible plagiarists, particularly when taking my courses online from China, but I had far fewer of them, of Saudis, of other students from Communist countries. I could try to understand them, and their acculturalization and adjustments all I wanted to, but at the end of the day, I had to treat all plagiarists as equal and penalize them as close to identically as I could.
I don’t hate Russians, on the whole, although I still hate the USSR (which of course I understand was not the same thing) for all the terrible things it did before and during the Cold War (a fraction of which, to be sure, was done by the US and its allies too).
I do hate Putin, his Kremlin toadies and the plutocrats who are propping him up. I hated them even before the invasion of Ukraine, for their suppression of internal dissent, poisoning opposition politicians, having journalists bullied and killed, espionage/cyberwar against the US, interference in our elections, invasion and annexation of Crimea, etc. etc. etc.
What most of us dislike about Russians is basically what other countries dislike about Americans–brash, boastful, uncultured, can’t be arsed to learn the local language, transactional to a fault, corrupt with a casual attitude toward ethics and generally kind of hatefully intolerant. I base this on having lived in Japan and being told why Japanese people think Americans kinda suck, and also on having married into a Ukrainian family.
Part of what comes into play with both Americans and Russians is that we’re essentially practical people with very little interest in anything that isn’t directly to our benefit, stemming from some hard scrabble struggles to get to the point of being civilized. People living for subsistence tend not to care about the “finer things” in life because they’re too busy existing. Add in that both Americans and Russians have a big wide streak of disdain for education, arts and culture and some fairly massive inferiority complexes over it and here we are.
This is a large part of my animosity. It seems very rudimentary psychology to say “Someone who spends that much effort asserting his superiority to me must be suffering from a lot of inferiority anxieties.” The Russian mentality (and the US one, to a lesser degree) is so fixated on telling the world how terrific Russia is that I take as assurance that they have some self-esteem issues to work on, which should make me empathetic but they’re just so smug in assuring me that they’re right and I’m wrong that I lose all empathy.
I find Americans, obnoxious as we are in the same way, are much more capable of fessing up to our shortcomings, and admitting, “Well, maybe you’re right–let’s just agree to disagree.” I don’t even know if that last phrase makes any sense in Russian.
Nice folks. Language issues aside, we get along well. For years we have been trading baked goods and fruit from our trees. When our AC went out one night, the main guy came over (he has an AC business) and got it running right away. Would not accept any payment. “That’s what neighbors do!”
Russia’s bad reputation goes at least as far back as this:
Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid.
As a nation, we begin by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’
We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except negroes.’
When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.’
When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy."
– Abraham Lincoln, August 24, 1855
And in The Return of Tarzan first serialized in 1913, the chief villains are two Russians.
I am wondering whether with part of the issues that the OP has with Russian students is that he is judging based on a self selected group. Russian students who see an education in an American university as a stepping stone to future income, and have the resources to make it happen, may not be representative of Russians as a whole.
The (also non-representative) group of Russian nationals I have known personally, in graduate school and at my job as a researcher, have almost all been very positive. The sole exception being a Russian grad student who was personally very nice and apparently brilliant mathematician, but also a dedicated alcoholic who would show up blind drunk to the classes he was supposed to be teaching.
Culturally I have to say that I much prefer Russian composers to anything that France, Italy, or Germany (except maybe Beethoven) put out.
No, of course not. This small (under 200, probably) group of students in one university, in one decade, was far from homogenous, and far from universally duplicitous. But they were as a group the most concentrated, dedicated bunch of plagiarists and liars I ever encountered. I tried telling myself not to prejudge someone because he or she was Russian, and I often concluded that I should have scrutinzed them more harshly much sooner.
I have a favorable view of Russians, because I have worked with many of them over the years. I live in the Seattle area and there are a lot of Russians here, just because of the fact that we are geographically not that far from Russia. At my work (I work for state government) we frequently have customer service that are bilingual to help with customers who speak poor or no English, and they support (in this order) Spanish, Russian, and Chinese.
So I have a lot of experience with Russian people. Most of the people I’ve known have had great senses of humor, are really cool and friendly. That is the impression that I’ve always got. And I think their accents sound awesome.
BUT…
These are Russians who left to come to America. They left Russia because there was something there they didn’t like. The people I spoke to who told me stories about why they left talked about being tired of corruption, being oppressed, or just not liking things about the culture. So they probably aren’t a good representation of the people who are still in Russia. (Sure, many people in Russia also have issues with those things but not enough to leave.)
Everyone’s against me. Everyone’s trying to cheat me out of what I deserve. Deceiving them is what I need to do to survive. I have a right to survive. All talk of morality, cooperation, honesty is just part of the design to oppress me. The rules don’t matter. Everybody lies, all the time–my goal is to lie more skillfully than others. Everyone’s a hypocrite. Hypocrisy is normal. Look out for number one at all times. Never admit that you’re wrong. Always act like you’re completely in the right. If someone doesn’t believe, act indignant. If you get most of what you want in a negotiation, still act as if you’ve been taken advantage of, as a basis for the next negotiation. Whatever grade you get, protest that you deserve a higher grade…
I think everyone’s got a little bit of that in them, especially as teenagers… But raised in Maine in the middle class, I grew out of it. Now it seems so alien. The way the world is going, I am wondering how I can help others the most. I think a lot of people are, and that’s great, but maybe too late. (Well Someone Had to Do SOMETHING! - This American Life) A little uplifting. More so than recent shows!
The thing is, the mechanism behind all this behavior is really simple–scarcity and hardship force people to make hard choices, and the more times you make those choices the easier the math gets for you. Russia is, historically, a land of monumentally oppressed people living in constant scarcity and constantly aware that any scrap of comfort they possess can and probably will be snatched away without notice. It’s made them tough as nails, remarkably adaptable and often mean as hell. America is a young country with some brutally difficult beginnings and struggles, but at least we’ve almost always had food and the climate isn’t nearly as extreme as Russia’s so we’re more likely to be chill and expansive so long as things are going well. I mean, the current economic climate and the social stressors of the pandemic are wreaking havoc with our national zeitgeist and we’re getting mean AF–it’s not too much of a stretch to figure that a bunch of hard scrabble escaped peasants might demonstrate less than stellar social skills and be resistant to cultural assimilation.
I have this half-at-best-baked theory that this is due in part to the way Russia was viewed by the more “established” nations when it emerged (for want of a better word) under Peter the Great. They didn’t use the same alphabet, they didn’t use the same calendar, they didn’t even celebrate Christmas(!) on the same day — they’re really hicks from the sticks! And they still practiced feudal serfdom, not that peasants elsewhere necessarily had it much better.
All of which is worth exactly what you paid for it (less if you’re a subscriber).
demanding to be treated by the rest of the world with special deference for their greatness and superiority.
OK, you got some pretty severe problems, economically and otherwise, given that you’ve never fully emerged from being a late-medieval feudal politically oppressive society. We don’t mind helping you, showing you what’s worked for us, and what hasn’t worked so well, but why must you insist on playing the proud victim every minute, and pissing us off at every turn?
I think it’s more that dashcams have been more prevalent there for a time, and we’re only just catching up. That said, Russians be cray!