Why Russians Aren’t Smiling at You in Sochi
The first rule about smiling at Russians is you do not smile at Russians.
by Marina Koren
Feb 07, 2014
3 minutes
When Ed Leigh arrived in Sochi to cover the Winter Olympics, something struck him as odd: None of the Russians there returned his smiles.
When Leigh asked a native why that was, the man told him, “In Russia only two types of people smile: idiots and rich people — and rich people don’t walk on the street.”
For Russians, a smile in public is not the polite expression that Americans reflexively offer strangers on the street. A smiling person must have a good reason for doing it, and it should be obvious what
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