More observations on culture

More observations on Russian culture…

1) Alcohol Consumption - I made an offhanded comment on this in an earlier blog post. I indicated that the consumption was incredible, and by people of all ages. I have been paying more and more attention to this issue as we walk around and I think I see it differently. There IS a lot of alcohol consumption. Walking down the street you will see people of all ages (including teenagers) strolling with an open container of beer. Get off the main streets and you will see curbs and gutters littered with empties. Having said that, you actually see very little public intoxication. The stereotypical Russian who might be staggering drunk on vodka isn’t around that I can see. In fact, at the reception the other night, while the Russians were very quick to pour drinks of vodka for everyone, many of them declined one, and many who took one immediately drank it at toast time and switched over to a large tumbler of water or juice. The Americans in the room were more inclined to drink multiple drinks. I was quick to take the visible drinking and equate it with drunkenness. I have to say that was a wrong judgment based on stereotypes.

2) “Culture” - The Russians really do seem to appreciate the arts - at least those in St. Petersburg. Tonight I was fortunate enough to attend a concert by a small symphony orchestra at one of the original music halls in St. Petersburg. My host indicated that the room we were in had been recently remodeled, but it dates back 300 years. Tonight’s show was three pieces - one featuring violin and piano soloists, one featuring a 12 year old violin soloist, and one featuring a violin and viola soloists. After each piece was completed the place erupted in loud and boisterous applause (and the music WAS good) while several members of the audience would come forward with large bouquets of flowers for the soloists. Not one or two audience members who were token plants to hand out, well, the plants. No, in each case (and different people for each of the three numbers) roughly 6-8 people would bring up flowers. The young boy couldn’t carry off his violin and all of the flowers. This particular theater had shows at least three weeknights this week from what I could make out on the posters (in Cyrillic of course).

3) TV - My room in the University dorm/hotel has a bedroom and a sitting room with a television. I frequently flip channels to see what I can find (I keep hoping to get something, anything, in English. While I have only seen one short cartoon in English, I have seen plenty of American TV - both originals dubbed into Russian as well as remakes done with Russian actors. Some examples, of things dubbed into Russian : lots of cartoons such as The Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park etc, lots of movies such as Clint Eastwood, various comedies, and even Shrek 2 (in anticipation of the opening tomorrow of Shrek 3 I would guess). Some examples of Russian remakes include : Married with Children, Jerry Springer, Divorce Court???, Big Brother, and Jeopardy just to name a few. Of course all of these are LIBERALLY sprinkled with commercials for beer. And unlike American commercials which don’t actually show the beer much, these are almost entirely about the beer.

4) Awards- As I said the other day in a posting, Russians like ceremonies. They like ceremonies and they like ones with lots of recognition and awards. Today we had the closing of our conference. They gave medals to the organizers, they gave medals to the attendees who had come to the most conferences in the last 10 years, and then they gave medals to every American who made the trip here to talk (my colleagues don’t have to know that medal was handed to 60 some people today). THEN, certain session chairs had to get up and give special recognition certificates to the Americans who presented in their sections. And the thing is, when you tour campus and visit with people, they have these things proudly displayed in their offices and labs when they receive them. I wish I knew the context for why these are so important, but it is clear that, at least at the academic levels, awards are incredibly important.

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