From babushkas catering to transit trains, to modern marts mushrooming over the Former Soviet Union, every vendor has his individual assortment, price and service. Welcome on a tour from extreme to cosmopolitan.
Omission & presumption of “default” routine procedures wreck more international marriages than cultural barriers do. Honest well-wishing care does not inoculate us from screwing up. “She’s a novice – you’re the boss” is but an illusion of control.
Ask Joseph. ) With experience like his in Russian / Ukrainian travels, relationships and business, you won’t need a Buddhist course in tranquility.
Your native Consumer’s Paradise and your woman’s native Consumer’s Purgatory impose different gravity. Former Soviet people may need time to accommodate physical effort they are used to applying to mechanisms, to quit “household tips” on inventive use of handy means, and sometimes to unlearn pushing on people (though unobtrusive politeness is recommended to foreigners in Eurasia, too). Plus they have to master the “space technology” of Western legal regulations and forms where every word, action, or omission has consequences.
Read prior to speaking love, appointing visits, and getting too many women! ) Risks range from bad international record to physical revenge. Just don’t ask me to spill the sources of Insider Information translated…
In 2007, 70 thousand women were serving and working in the Ukrainian army system. Today’s stats are 50,000. Most positions are, of course, “peaceful”. Medical service, liaison, accounting are top 3 vectors. Many women are in technical operation & maintenance, administrative and paperwork, civil connections, translation, supplies, transportation, cynology.
119 girls are studying at military institutions of Ukraine. Under the Soviet Union, civil universities, in addition to professional education, gave basic military training and reserve ranks to the youth of both sexes. Many secondary schools still have defense lessons, both for boys and girls.
2006, printed sources: Ella Libanova, Vice-Director, Institute of Demography under the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine; Victor Smirnov, journalist
Note: Ukrainian nationals, not ethnic Ukrainians, are discussed.
So different by styles, habits and characters, so alike by dreaming of love’s bliss… Here’s a gallery of most vivid female types – and their potential husbands. Call it a set of caricatures that street artists have been fudging anyplace and anytime, changing only markers, - but so far as this article is published in urban reading, let its author refrain from remorse.
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To a Western man searching Russia / Ukraine for unspoiled virtue, health, high moral values, sound family background, top model beauty, unconditional love, and proper mothering of his children, - hinterland is the last area to seek a wife. Post-Soviet specifics of economy and mentality contradict American-based reasoning on the percentage of “sound” or “flawed” women in small communities, of “deserving” or “evil” girls who relocate upscale, and of “fine” or “filthy” city-borns.
A keen observer can discern a range of more specific social types. A psychologist would consider the entire combination of individual factors to make a right match. And it takes a native to detect ancestry & upbringing by manners, speech, style, even by facial features. But let’s now clarify the first-approximation guidelines.
How do major factors of origin affect a Russian or Ukrainian woman’s character? What marriage behavior can a stranger forecast by them?
Here are some trends you need to know. Feels bad to spill - and to conceal.
May not different social realities, giving different meanings to similar words, prevent a viable international relationship or create tensions on the way to one.
“Working girl”, for starters, is “what you’ve thought” only in the Western reading. In Russian, emphasizing work means serious attitude to life (yet not obsession with career - the very word given some negative connotation since the Russian Empire, and much stronger in the Soviet Union).
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Responding to discussion on this must-read by Master GL, here’s an overview of, errm, “Russian Woman (TM) Communicator”, from home production to foreign handling.
Beg your tolerance to my debris of radioelectronics )
The first thing that little children are taught here, is to speak truth. Read the rest of this entry »
Who said “There are no un-beautiful women”? Themselves the plain? or men who marry them, carry them in arms for life, and hold them as more attractive than star beauties? What’s their hidden power? Says one of such guys, disclaiming himself not handsome.
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On comment 42 to this post at GL’s. More on scam schemes here
Hi Rob, I can imagine your confusion. This letter appears controversial as well as authentic. Here are some thoughts I got…
First, considerations natural from a woman’s viewpoint, that usually scare men. Read the rest of this entry »
“A Russian’s pleasure, a German’s poison”, - a proverb says. Metabolism depends on ethnicity; accustomed guts defer evil outcomes of local habits. Even so, every New Year night “presents” Post-Soviet ambulance with the year’s top yield of patients. Other holidays are lighter yet similar challenge.
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Even if your could-be-bride is a fan of Mr. Bean, - mimicking his manners won’t make you her hero. In the basics of Russian cultivation, grimaces and physiological manifestations fall under certain censorship.
Which makes this post important beyond romantic contacts. However polished the stranger may be…
Slavic norms of public / interpersonal conduct allow much less natural motions than accustomed abroad (especially in America). Some may be judged as, without much exaggeration, crime against civility! And civility’s one of the first virtues which Foreign Men are given credit for.
(Life stories and professional advice)
More than two people have to get along! A fact is easy to adopt; real Little Others take more time to love. When they feel it – are hostilities inevitable? How can the new stepfather or stepmother cope with a life-long challenge sooner?
…barely awarely. Just with routine American vocabulary. I mean vulgarisms. Words stemming from the pelvic area or loo, such fu(n)kin‘ crap not worth a rat’s ass. Ain’t “anatomy discrimination”: the rest of the body is subject to non-verbal control (see the following post).
Oscar Wilde said, “A gentleman is never unintentionally rude”. A Russian joke extends: “A gentleman would always call a cat a cat, even if he’s stumbled against it and fell down.” And one more: “Surprisingly, researches have proven that blondes prefer gentlemen, too.”
My main professional experience is in Ukrainian law. But it’s easy to compare with the Russian Federation Family Code, with their common Soviet basics, built over the Russian Empire’s civil-law system, and modified towards contemporary European standards.
So, here’s a brief to help you estimate general conditions of a marriage with a FSU woman under the law of her country.
Surprising stats: more wives than husbands in the FSU. Polygamy?! No, different attitudes to non-formalized cohabitation. A Russian poll revealed: of all partners living so, 92% women identify themselves as married, while 85% men keep feeling bachelors.
Ironically, Soviet people dub non-wed household-sharing unions with the legally illiterate title “civil marriage”, but scarcely guess that such relationships, throughout history, engender more or less of rights and obligations associated with the desired – or dreadful, as all jokes go – status of “legitimate spouses”.
Gentlemen, you’re gonna be more savvy than most locals! ;)
Poll by Pan-Russian Centre of Public Opinion Surveys, 7-8 October 2006, 1592 respondents in 153 locations of 46 regions, statistical error below 3,4%. Read the rest of this entry »
On beauty, prostitutes, good women, gender roles, consumerism and compensation - through the cultural difference of Former Soviet Union countries
Story 1
I’ve just watched a TV show “Beauty Factory (Made in Ukraine)”, where they take “visually challenged” women and improve their lives with surgery, stylist crafts, psychology backup. Boyfriends fall on their knees to make proposals, bosses promote, children start listening to the Fairy agape… This time even the show team couldn’t hold tears at the happy end, neither could I…
Russian press loves to poll celebrities as same people, who have something to tell, fortified by the authority of their achievement and attraction. Here is the poll by one of the oldest popular newspapers “Arguments and Facts” on the occasion of the “International” Women’s Day March 8.
“What’s a Woman’s Happiness to you?”
A Russian pop song says that “Woman’s Happiness is to have the loved man near, and nothing else is needed.” It describes Read the rest of this entry »
You find her hot and this fact is welcome in her culture. Shall you express utter admiration? Answer: No. When all the kin is bred beautiful, and smart, it’s a minefield playground!
That foreign worship of Slav looks is like Indians’ shock at White Man and his utensils. It is rather uncomfortable to be deified for what has been ordinary. On the other part, it’s rather miserable to take occasional scrap for treasures. And rather dangerous to drink “fire water” after generations of abstinence. Read the rest of this entry »
A link to send Russian & Western online friends ;)
Joseph calls it “Girfriend Rule #1”, I call it “Disclaimer”. Always mind the cultural and linguistic differences, added to individual styles!
These innocent phrases in a profile, email, talk (yours or hers) – resemble customary markers of “Co-Dependency” infection (as opposed to wholesome Mutual Treasuring). Keep cool, as you present yourself or hear that woman doing so! Are they mere figures of speech, or configurations of thinking?
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This great small lady is in her mid-40s. A slender brunette, born in a town of 45000 people and educated to be a kindergarten coach (just like her mother). Which turned a starvation job in the surly time of the Soviet Union collapse.
The most complained-on problem is “visitor-non-friendly” environment. There IS state-of-the-art “civilization”. And many Russian people DO strive to lend a hand, for the sense of patriotism and dignity. Yet they also see more compatriots of less culture (in terms of language skills, helpfulness regardless of them, order, abuse, and racism) than their foreign counterparts have (the brighter is the well-bred visible minority, highly praised by sophisticated travelers from Europe.)
The rule is: the deeper backwards, the harder (insulation in deterioration, deterioration in insulation). But there are capital exceptions worth a contrary rule! No ounce of justification is given to the woodwork habits of numerous hoards of “centers” dwellers or barbaric newly-rich parvenus moving to capital cities or traveling abroad.
Same is true for Ukraine and other Former Soviet countries, maybe in a way more hospitable and internationally disposed… and less accurately organized.
So, here follow the major bummers. Brought to your attention from a Russian website on tourism (a discussed poll “What irritates foreigners in Russia“) as vaccination against possible cultural shocks.
Let not the surrounding dirt mar the human diamonds you are going to meet, nor upset your plans for a Nice Time on a Comfortable Extreme Tour.
“Needless for those who’ve understood, useless for those who won’t”…
As the faith, so the reward… World is Mirror, life is what we make & let done with it… He who thinks prostitutes, gets prostitutes. He who thinks noble, gets the noble.
People seem to savor new recipes of food for thought: self-toothed out of mineral tablets, or squeezed, extracted and served with a straw in an occasion-specific glass. So may I entertain you with one more cocktail of playful spirits.
Chefs promise trouble if the vessel is not cleaned. Right. Enroll to this school of international dating, get blacklisted from heaven with virgin angels, and keep spitting into decent people’s borscht. Or listen to Aunt Natalia and take a chance… )
Scar Clan Charter reads:The most fierce revenge you can take is turning away and building your own happiness.The most ruthless penalty God has is letting enjoy one’s choice.I dedicate this post to Systemic at “A Prostitute’s Game and a Path to Hell“.
Silicon Jungle, Vacland, 2008
As a Real Russian Man, he didn’t want to go to court. He’d better walk away with a valise, leaving his would-be-ex-wife with “everything”. Namely, their house (”only” three bedrooms, but all paid out), his “parade” Lexus (added to her latest sports Toyota; NOT his dear old Mitsubeast), and the family deposit in the bank. Luckily, they have been childless. She renounced having kids, to his own half-realized relief.
- And the firm, - she demanded naughtily. Despite the Russian name he’s bought into so long ago, Sonya was a true-blue American woman. A beautiful one, whatsoever.
Guys’ eyes are valuable mirrors. But a Russian Girl ™ can bewitch any guy… not another Russian Girl ™. What may let - and make - the latter help, and whom? Read the rest of this entry »