The Myth of the “Repressed Russian”

There is this idea that Russians are more repressed than Americans and western people, but nothing could be further fom the truth. Russians (both Soviet and modern day) are much more barbaric than their western counterparts. After three years in Russia, I would say it is true that Russians are more emotional than Americans. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being completely relaxed and 10 being extremely excited or agitated, the average American is normally at a 1 or 2, and the average Russian is at a 4. Even in the absence of external stimuli, the Russian is just more excited or upset and that’s his normal condition.

My theory is that because everyone is naturally more emotional, there is far less social penalty for being emotional. So if you are unhappy for whatever reason, you’re more free to express how unhappy you are without fear of reprisal. You can say this situation is retarded and listening to that person talk is like cutting off your ears, and this is understood as you just expressing how you feel, and not an act of aggression against that other person like it would be in the USA.

Here is a fantastic example of this. A worker meets with his woman supervisor at a Soviet car factory:

This photo is frequently shared by western pages on Facebook and the audience always finds it odd and funny. She’s talking about something, and he clearly doesn’t look very happy with her. And yet this was an official state photo released to the public. I’m telling you this is just a normal day in Russia. And also note that maybe he does dislike her, or maybe he’s just unhappy about something else. Or maybe he just always looks grumpy.

I am reminded of something I saw personally. I live with my (Russian) girlfriend in an apartment complex outside of Moscow. There are a few high earners here but the majority of residents are working class making probably around $400 to $600 a month. One time I went outside to walk my dog and there were two very big guys like the worker in the photo quarrelling with a middle-aged woman who’s the community manager (roughly equivalent to an HOA manager in the USA). Recently this woman has taken it upon herself to initiate renovations to the apartment complex and did a very bad job at it, which the men were unhappy about. My auditory Russian is still poor so I didn’t understand exactly what was said, but basically they were saying how unhappy they were about the poor construction, and she was calling them stupid for complaining. And note that the three people in this conversation were about the same distance from each other as in the photo, within that “personal bubble.”

Of course in the USA, if two big guys got up close to a small woman and started loudly complaining, she would feel physically intimidated and afraid that they’re going to harm her. But this is just the normal way Russians quarrel.

I can’t go back in time and see what Russia was actually like in the Soviet era, but Soviet movies seem to give a pretty accurate depiction of how people felt and acted in that period. And it was more or less how it is shown in that photo. In Soviet cop movies, the police may visit a criminal to discuss the crimes he’s committed. These scenes are surreal to me, because it is just so weird to see a cop visit someone’s house and casually discuss his antisocial behavior.

Consider the American crime show Columbo. He’s an Italian who has intimate conversations with the criminals in their homes, and the whole point of the show is that this is a weird way for an American cop to behave. American cops typically act like soldiers in a combat zone, and citizens are treated as suspected terrorists who might be wearing suicide vests, or might pull out a machine gun at any moment. And what makes Columbo believable is that he deals with the rich elites. Of course an American cop would never casually sit down with a common thief and scold him for committing crimes.

So a Russian cop might bully you for the crimes you’re suspected of, but no one has guns pointed at each other.

And for the readers who might insist that this is simply propaganda, it matches daily life I see here. Sometimes I’ll see cops circled up with a guy looking at his documents, but nobody will have their hands on their guns ready to shoot him if he makes a wrong move. And the guy in question might be waving his arms around loudly expressing how unhappy and annoyed he is at being stopped by the police without fearing being shot.

This took me a while to understand. One time during my first year in Russia, when I spoke almost no Russian, I accidentally stepped on the shoe of the guy behind me when the metro train started to move unexpectedly. The guy made some complain to me and I replied I didn’t understand him, and he dropped the conversation. Afterward I understood he just wanted to argue, and there was no sense in arguing with someone who didn’t know what he was saying.

My girlfriend likes to shout mean things at Russian guys who ride their bikes on pedestrian paths or otherwise break the rules. I found this behavior scary at first, as I’m not prepared to fight random people in a foreign country, it even caused some arguments between us. Then I eventually understood that Russians just like to bicker with each other and it doesn’t mean they want to physically fight.

There was a case earlier this week when an American schoolboy scolded a stranger for sitting in his team’s tent and got stabbed to death.

All my life I thought this was normal and only now I understand the truth. It is not normal to be in constant fear of a stranger brutally murdering you if you start an argument with him.

I think Americans fell into the habit of compulsively smiling at strangers on the street because it is necessary to physically demonstrate that you’re not a threat.

This is part of a bigger pattern of “affirmative consent,” which Americans are obsessed with while Russians are not. Even in the most propagandistic periods of Russian history, it was not necessary to constantly affirm your loyalty to the regime. In the USA, it is not enough to simply not oppose the regime. You must constantly perform acts of loyalty. There was no Soviet “Pledge of Allegiance” for example. Soviet school children didn’t necessarily outright rebel against the system, but there wasn’t a ritualistic act when they were expected to demonstrate absolute subservience to the system either. Say what you will, but people didn’t have to sing praises to Stalin daily. If someone did take it upon himself to praise Stalin unprovoked, it would probably be seen as weird and silly.

If you’re an American Walmart worker who overhears your coworker talking about starting a union, you MUST report him to your supervisor, or risk being fired along with everyone else at the facility. If you were a 1950s actor, you had to constantly affirm that you loved America and hated the Soviet Union, or you risked being put on the black list and never work a good job again.

Up until 2025, if you were a patriotic American, you had to constantly praise LGBT and put pronouns in your social media bio. If you failed to do so, you would be labeled a bigot and fired.

It’s all affirmative consent. It is not enough to silently accept the regime, you have to constantly express your love and devotion for it. This is very much an American concept, not a Russian one.

Ian Kummer

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