Wed 5 Jul 2006
Several times after returning to the U.S. my mind has taken me back to Russia.
It happens most when I’m driving around Orlando. The streets are so enormously wide. There are residential streets near my house which are three lanes wide! All concrete. Used about 2% of the time. The streets in our previous village, Budaors, were usually one and a half cars wide, and if two cars needed to pass, they did an ad hoc negotiation of which one used the shoulder. Neither case is wrong, but one case reminds me of Russia.
Just like Americans, Russians are a dominant culture. At a conference I attended where 1000 Eastern European Campus Crusade for Christ staff members met, I couldn’t help noticing that the Russians held themselves like Americans. They projected the sense that the conference related primarily to them. Not arrogant, just very matter of fact. Just like Americans.
Just like Americans, Russians are very practical. All across Eastern Europe on the outskirts of every city are large concrete apartment blocks. They are very practical and every one looks the same regardless whether you are in Bratislava or Bucharest. They do not bring pleasure to the eye. Russian building motto: “Why waste money on an architect? Our engineers can design buildings just fine.”
Americans are very practical. All across America in every large city there are large, franchised chains of restaurants. The food is good, but it is all generally the same. American restaurant motto: If one is good, fifty thousand are better. This mindset extends to residential homes as well. American residential home motto: Hire an architect to design a nice looking house, then build 50,000 of them.
Finally, everything Americans build is BIG, just like the Russians. This is manifest in cars, homes, yards, streets, and cities. After living in compact Central European surroundings just before my visit, the wide boulevards of St. Petersburg were quite a contrast. The largest open square I saw in Europe was in St. Petersburg, and the biggest city I saw was Moscow. Back here in America, I see that all the roads are very wide, and the shoulders and cleared land on either side of the roads are even wider. Entire Central European villages could fit inside most American highway interchanges. Just like Russian boulevards.
That’s probably as far as the similarities go, but I was surprised to see them in the first place and even more surprised to be reminded of them here in the U.S.
July 6th, 2006 at 2:22 am
In a western asian country where I live, they didn’t exactly put the village in the highway interchange, but in one of the cloverleafs of the two largest highways there literally is a botanical park where you can picnic and (try) to relax.
July 6th, 2006 at 9:26 am
Russian building motto: “Why waste money on an architect? Our engineers can design buildings just fine.”
I don’t know if this phenomena was Russian or Soviet Communist Ideology as seen through the “Ministry of Buildings” which controlled building throughout the Warsaw Pact. What is interesting to me would be why some Eastern block countries seemed to resist this more than others.
Second, might some of the difference be explained by population densities? Russia is 1/10 as crowded as Hungary though I am sure that Moscow is up there with most European cities. But I think the vastness of a country has something to do with this ethos. What “country” exemplifies this most?—TEXAS
July 6th, 2006 at 9:39 am
You’re right. Population densities would have a lot to do with city planning and the scale of things in general.
July 6th, 2006 at 10:55 am
But it still does not explain the interpersonal aspects that you describe at the conference.
Hey, this is almost a conversation with thought. How un-bloglike!
September 25th, 2009 at 11:38 pm
This is not actually true.
At first, it is not Russians like Americans. It is Americans like Russians.
And the second – they are very different. Try to learn all this stuff deeper.