Americans are most similar to Russians

My uncle Eugeni, when served in the army, was stationed in Chukotka – less than 60 miles from the United States – across Bering Strait. That’s where he heard jazz on the radio a lot. The movie “Sun Valley Serenade” impressed his generation too. So, he mastered playing several jazz instruments. That’s why probably I like jazz. When we are kids, we like the same things that are liked by those we love, don’t we?

And that is how the first time I heard the name of the distant and wonderful place, where everybody plays this so joyful and so sad music called jazz – America!

When we were moving to the US, I expected to hear jazz everywhere. Well, it turned out true for New Orleans only. In the other parts of the country one can hear jazz as often as in Moscow. The most popular music is rock, pop, rap, and so on – same as in Russia. Nevertheless, thanks to Internet, I have assembled extensive jazz collection, especially in jazz history. The early jazz – with its simplicity and immediacy – I like the most.

We did not know much about life of the ordinary Americans, when we came here. Soviet TV, as any TV probably, showed more problems and scandals than successes and positive sides of American life. That’s why I was very surprised to see many churches with regular attendance here. One declares himself openly an atheist here as often as one declared himself a person of faith in the USSR. Today some 43% percent of Americans claim they go to church every week, while in fact it is more like 20%. In Russia today, only 7% of people attend the church service regularly, but this number grows.

Openness, hospitality and generosity of Americans and Russians are the same too. I suspect, it is something to do with the country size. Both are very big and invoke a sense that there is a lot of space for everybody.

And another similarity: many Americans and many Russians never traveled abroad, so they have the feeling that “everybody” lives the same way. So, they tend to teach foreign visitors the life wisdom. Besides, both countries are superpowers and feel entitled to advise other nations on any question.

As for the moral climate in big corporations, it is exactly the same: budget planning and activity imitation that were so familiar in the USSR. Not everywhere, but easily can be found. Technologies are a bit different, language, jargon, but the rest looks very familiar: big meetings and managerial pep talks, personal goals, working up the system and double-thinking. In small commercial companies there is much less of that or not at all. That’s why growing tendency of mergers and acquisitions upsets and scares me, although I do not think it will come here to the same degradation as in the USSR. The open market keeps everybody on their toes, so far.

Life of an immigrant is not easy, so any similarity helps. And, in my experience, between Americans and Russians, there is more common than between any other two western and eastern nations.