Dear friends! We start new project “Those weird Russians!”

The great Russian poet Fedor Tutchev wrote in 1886:

You will not grasp her with your mind
Or cover with a common label,
For Russia is one of a kind –
Believe in her, if you are able..

Those weird Russians! exclaims foreigners. We are loved and mocked on, respected and misunderstood. Russia is a great large country with a long story. We are proud of Russian prominent poets, writers, composers, generals, emperors. For 70 years we were cut off with the “iron curtain”, thus there are a lot of stereotypes about Russia and Russian people, sometimes weird and not matching the reality.

We are starting the series of articles about us, Russians, our peculiarities, oddity, values etc. We`d be very glad to have your opinion about it.

1. We believe in luck, magic, and coincidence more than in our own labour. We are fond of dreaming of unexpected fortune which comes to our possession. “One of the most popular Russian tales tells about an idler called Emelya and a magic pike. Emelya was spending his days sitting on the warm stove in his house. Once he went to the river to have some water and accidentally pulled out the big pike which could make wishes come true. The pike gave Emelya the power to make his wishes come true by saying the special phrase. So Emelya could get everything he wanted without making any effort and the morality of the story is that your destiny doesn`t depend on the fact whether you are good or bad, but on your luck.”

2. Russians value friendship. We are good friends and a lot of Russian proverbs state the importance of friendship. A friend in need is a friend indeed – if you are lucky to be a friend of Russian, that means that you have a good and reliable friend who will go through thick and thin with you.

Do you know that according to Russian there are two types of friendship: “male” and “female”? Men suppose that only male friendship is a true one and there is no female friendship at all.

3. Russian people are hospitable. We love our guests, so we clean up, cook a lot, dress up before their arrival. If we had guests in our house, we would eat, dance, drink till the morning comes.

Have you seen a cartoon about Winnie-the-Pooh`s visit to the Rabbit?  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2D0zr_P0Ps  

4. We love to laugh and above all at ourselves. We make fun of our government, ourselves, our friends.. We admit having problems: corruption, awful roads, alcoholism, bad work of post office etc. We are not trying to change it, we just make fun of it.

5. Russians are very kind and generous. We are willing to share what little we have and we do help some homeless people, neighbors etc. We help without any desire to get anything in return as we realize that anyone can turn out to be in similar situation. Don’t count out a prison cell; a begging bowl may come as well!

To be continued……..