Reflections on a smile or Irkutsk to Moscow

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The Oxford Dictionary definition states that a smile is 'a pleased, kind, or amused facial expression, typically with the corners of the mouth turned up and the front teeth exposed.' This human expression seemed somewhat lacking as we travelled throughout Russia and the surly and non-smiling faces became commonplace.



'Make it a game', said the text from my daughter,'see how many will smile back!' Score – 0. No-one responds with a smile if you smile first. Why not? Maybe we should have taken the advice of a friend and just asked them to 'Smile,' please!' According to Hinsz and Tomhave (1991)50%!o(MISSING)f people who are smiled at will smile back. We tried to prove that statistic but came to the conclusion that the 50%!o(MISSING)f people who don't smile back all live in Russia!



The Middle English, possibly Scandinavian origin of smile is related to smirk, but there was certainly no evidence of this either. Are Russians naturally a suspicious people, having lived with decades of betrayals and mistrust? Is there an ethnic predisposition for Russians to be less friendly and open? Apparently so.



In reading more about this it seems that women are more likely to smile than men and that indeed Russians are the least likely to smile with the Americans being the most likely. I wondered if this study was conducted by an American during the cold war but no it was on an English psych blog which went on to say that many of the American smiles could be considered 'fake', part of the selling strategies connected to commercialism, the supposed 'feel good' associated with retail therapy.



But, I digress. We had our fill of being abused by Russian bus conductors who were not in the least bit sympathetic about our lack of understanding. We found it hard to find out information about trains, metro and museums in Moscow. Our impression was somewhat tempered by the more congenial attitude of our staff at the wonderful Babuschka hostel in St Petersburg but only marginally. Changing an order in the cafe across the road was all too much for our waitperson who muttered threateningly and grimaced at our audacity.



We laughed and smiled our way round Russia and decided that for the Russians it was just too cold to smile; your face might crack or your teeth freeze and drop out! They had to stay in Russia and we were leaving.

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Photos

Cheerful Charlies
Or is it cheerful Katerinas?

Lenin
The origin of no smiles?

Commuters
Who are the happy ones in the reflection?

There's always an..
exception!

Smiling
Entering Russia

Smiling 2
Night in Irkutsk
Christine and Meryl (German not Russian!)

All smiles
Lake Baikal

So happy to be in ..
the hermitage.

Cheeky smile
Rodin and friend

Comments

[jacki marshall]

GO GIRL......Go Grae....
Enjoying your offbeat travels.......love what you are doing. When do you arrive in England and for how long are you there? Any plans to JA or USA. I usually come to England for Wimbledon end of June. Saw JB and Ruth at Xmas. He was visiting his daughter who is getting married this year.

[nastia]

I am russian and I smile!
having just returned to my motherland, I find that not many people smile back at me. we ordered blini today and I smiled at the girl serving us, and her face melted into a horror filled confused face. her natural face just dropped. my grandmother told me not to be a strange (derogatory word) and stop scaring people! I was smiling because I liked her manner of speaking/being!! crazy people...... insanity. they prefer arguments here and smiles to friends. maybe that's how they know when not to trust someone if they smile or trust them if they are a friend/love/family. lucky I'm here to break that up and smile at everybody! my grandmother says that here, when people smile, they are called the dirty kazakstan poor promiscuous gypsy girls. makes me sad. makes me want to go back to australia.

[Natasha]

That's true :)
I am from Moscow, Russia (now thinking of creating my own travel blog), I\'ve travelled a lot around Europe, now I can compare :) Yes, in Russia people rarely smile, the thing is we are not used to smile to be polite / to seem polite, we smile only when we are really happy. As life is quite difficult in Russia, there are not many reasons to smile, people are constantly thinking about their problems, and it is reflected on their faces. And - yes - if I see a person smiling in Metro, I think that he/she is probably a foreigner :) As for me, I always smile in turn :) We do not pretend to be happy, if you ask a Russian: How are you? How are you doing? - you will get a very detailed answer about his/her problems, deseases, visits to doctors, work/family problems etc. Generally Russians are friendly and open-hearted, but only to people whom they know. And the place of acquaintance also matters. And Russians will tell you all their life (beginning from childhood) if you have a common problem and ready to discuss it. On the other hand, when we are on vacation or celebrate something, we are very, very cheerful, noisy, we dance, we sing. In some way we don\'t have middle mood, only extremely sad or extremely cheerful. And we are constantly abused by our bus conductors, too :) There are even jokes about it. Our shop assistants have become more polite only recently. You see, it\'s a Soviet era legacy: we had state monopoly and no competition, there was no incentive to be polite: the salary did not depend on your politeness. We had no choice in shops: we could either buy what was sold, or buy nothing. All shop assistants were chatting during working time and if you asked for help in choosing something, they\'d say: everything is on the counter! Still, I hope that did not spoil your trip to Russia, may be you will even return some day, good luck in your journeys!

[Mert]

Smiles and friendship
Thanks for your input Natasha. It certainly didn't spoil our holiday and as I said I think I was so impressed with St Petersburg, simply beautiful and the Siberian countryside was magical.