What a Russian Smile Means
When I approach Sofiya Campbell, she regards me and my exuberant smile carefully. It’s only after we shake hands formally that, with a shock of blonde hair lapping at her chin, she returns my smile. I feel some surprise: Russians, as the stereotype goes, don’t smile at strangers.
Sofiya—not her real name—is a 41-year-old Russian woman who’s been living in the United States for the past decade. I found her in a Facebook group for Russian expats living in New York City, and she agreed to meet and talk about American and Russian culture and, in particular, smiling.
We wait in line for drinks for a few minutes, engaging in the same sort of pleasantries she will spend the next hour explaining her dislike for. At one point, she points toward an arrangement of colorful Italian pastries in the bar’s display case. “I don’t know what that is,” she opines in her Russian lilt, unconcerned that the barista might overhear.
After we get our coffees and find seats, she tells me that she finds Americans’ unfailing cheer—the smiles and “how are yous” of neighbors, servers, cashiers, and journalists—tiring. Russian culture, she says, has a different set of standards for polite behavior.
Sofiya is originally from Kazan, a city 500 miles east of Moscow. A promising student who wanted a career, she enrolled in a pre-MBA program in Moscow before becoming one of two students in the program to be awarded a tuition waiver toward an MBA at California State University, East Bay.
Her good luck would wax and wane in the small city of Hayward, California, where CSU, East Bay is located. Sofiya did well. But as she readied herself for graduation, the financial crisis of 2008 socked the country in the gut, and
