Whether you are lucky to deal with a girl who speaks any English, or misfortunate to use a machine translator, these 5 rules would save you and your dates or correspondents a bazillion of nerve cells. The difference in grammars and lexicons may not only prevent understanding, but create quite offensive effects in interpretation.
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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Ironically, matchmaking is the oldest way to marriage. Sage women or parents have done it since the dawn of humanity. Deliberate choice of life partner has grown into “Western” and “Russian” custom in c. XX, and still relies on social proof. Pondering on current divorce rates and the tragic vibe of known love stories, does third party assistance make sense? Let’s rationally weigh all pro’s and con’s (pun unintended…)
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?
Can happiness – this rare value in today’s world – be a discount offer?
Come ye bravest readers, praiseworthy for reckoning with East / West differences. Let’s find the common denominator for appreciating Dear Ones.
(Approved by my Western friend and business partner Joseph, whose Russian chapter of marital history dates back into the last century, - called on for competent male judgement on behalf of the successful and the thrifty.)
…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.”
Well-bred or poorly-cultured, FSUnion’ers are snobbish about grammar, lexics and spelling. Whatever Internet forum in Russian, half arguments pinprick opponent’s language over logic. Discussions on emigration and foreign marriages produce longest threads around; and guess what was the longest off-topic I’ve seen there? Russian English-speakers bonewashing “non-BBC” English / American colloquials! Which they judged as a sign of poor education (big disgrace).
“Speak so I could see you”, Socrates said… If Shaw’s Professor Higgins lived in the Internet age, he’d regard the computer screen not as a hiding veil, but as a white handkerchief to find dirt with. Sadly enough, sometimes it can look dung instead of cozy dust.
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! ;)
West vs. East is the clash of Rules vs. Context. Who overdares? Eurasia.
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 »
Discussion initiated here at GL’s
Well, in terms of Monty Python-esque samples, “Russians” and especially women are humorless.
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 »
Oh, wanna superweapon? In all plots it lacks the user warning: Strikes Back. If you won her heart, get hitched – or blacklisted, with all your aural Kama Sutra reduced to the crass definition “Brainf***er”.
Well, far before this prospect, many boys plod into the puddle just trying to sway the sword. 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!
Hitch-lift city drivers are a popular alternative to taxi here. Some car owners earn their living so, some just don’t miss an extra bill on their way to work / home / errands, some even do favors. Though it now takes a too luckless fate to run across a robber or assaulter if you stop that random car in Kiev (you rather beware of criminals when it’s you at the wheel), foreigners are the “risk group”, and are never let enjoy the low-cost price.
So I disadvise this mode of transportation to you, but often use it myself – and learn lots about life and people through chatting the way.
99,99% lifts are given by men, not “auto-ladies” (however numerous), so they add male perspectives to the comprehensive feminine clue-up I witness in local seamstresses and hairdressers (ah, forgot to mention the abysmal abundance of educative stories by home-improvement freelancers, men and women).
Here is this morning’s sketch I’d like to share.
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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