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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
Read the rest of this entry »
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 »
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!
One could say “Even If This Were the Only Book”… Read the rest of this entry »
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… )
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 »
Honestly, we Russian Women hail the US law on men’s police record disclosure. Just look with our eyes, like you can. In fact, it puts American daters a body ahead ALL other nationals! Read the rest of this entry »
Rich, Poor, Who, Where, What For… HOW MUCH?
What attributes define the middle class?
Amounts to earn and spend in capital cities?
Official reports, public polls, press surveys since 2006 to the latest comment.
Dollar amounts rounded, course contemporary to the publication.
Russian and Ukrainian snapshots appear interchangeably.
Moscow sampling. For the rest of Russian population, divide into 3.
This is the overall picture that a local person can observe. A foreigner should keep in mind that “potential international brides” (women he would likely meet or notice) are a specific sampling, with their peculiarities and differences I’m trying to describe.
I MUST publish this letter. It arrived consisting of 4 texts, Spanish = English = Russian = French. (What a spectacular Global Casanova Software!) The English text was a fair reflection of the Spanish original, and the Russian one was derived from English. Now, if we assume the Russian woman addressee doesn’t know any foreign language well,.. - you’d better see a reverse translation of what she has to read.
“Many Russians mention religion but do not always attend regularly. We know that atheism has been forced on the Soviet Union for 80 years. Now that a believer can attend any church freely, what could interfere with it?”
This is a snapshot of the general perspective of Russian and Ukrainian people’s religious attitudes, applicable to the bride search.
A first-approximation glance from behind the Mirror of their Eyes…
Image is a big constituent of influence and initial perception in the Former Soviet Union, epitomized in face control and dress code at some corporations, restaurants and clubs… outrivalled by the censorship of Russian Women’s X-ray microscopes.
One is “seen in by clothes, seen out by intelligence” as the Russian proverb goes. This manner reflects their National Intuitiveness as well as Vanity, mixing insight with futility and logical reasons with subconscience.
Here is a bit of first-aid, safe-bet advice to hype up Western, and foremost American, performance and output in dating Russian ladies, to show important qualities of taste, choicefulness, male power, based on self-and-mutual respect… and to not offer a dramatic contrast to a girl or woman that has taken so much effort to look pin-up, especially for you.
Also useful for posting & sending photos with online dating facilities.
Russian women are famous as resourceful, enduring, energetic and dependable. In the Soviet and early transition economies, they carried their families (and the society) on their shoulders, homemaking AND breadwinning, while most their men lay mazed with Communist limits and market challenges. New opportunities didn’t add accountability to Russian men… to women, they did.
Actually, the youngest generation of Russian (Ukrainian) Brides, entering the marriageable age of 17 next year, would be the Fourth Generation of Children Raised by Working Mothers.
Why, how, with what results and feelings have Russian Women been carrying out double responsibilities, - here are the facts from our social history and breathing stories of the women I immediately know.