I’m Russian - AMA

[LillyCandC]

I moved here 15 years ago - ask me anything :-)

Thank you so much for this thread! what do you think are the biggest culture shocks for your friends and family who have left? Have they come to the uk?

Did your family have one of those houses in the country (I can’t think of the name!!)

have you ever been to Siberia?

How many "Russian' habits do you maintain in the UK?

What part of Russia are you from?

I love Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Chekov. Are there any contemporary Russian writers you would recommend? I'd have to find a good translation, of course. Oh, and any interesting films? I enjoyed Solaris and Burned by the Sun (Mikhailkov, I think?)

Oh I haven’t been on this site for a while!

@user9630721458 these are all very good footnote literature authors! I quite like Ulitskaya and Vladimir Sorokin (Day of the Opritchnik) to name a couple. Solaris is a great film so is Burned by the Sun! (Thanks for the trip down memory lane with that one!). I like Soviet movies actually, they have a lot of moral context which is great. Quiet flows of the Don? It’s a novel by Sholokhov but it has a release on big screen (very sad though!)

@Lelophants I wasn’t born in Russia and my family is half Russian and half Ukrainian. I lived in Siberia and in Moscow.

@LadyMonicaBaddingham to be completely honest with you, I don’t think I have many. One is to take my shoes off whenever I visit someone’s house, another one is - I never turn up empty handed even if I bring my child over for a play date and I tend to feed people up in my house too.

@Blahblahgingerbreadlady you’re very nice! Yes, we did have a dacha (summer house) and I spent all my childhood summers there swimming in the river nearby and gobbling up all the homegrown berries -and veggies. We also had banya there (Russian sauna). I lived in Siberia near lake Baikal for a while. We were really poor back then as a family but it is probably one of the best memories I have of my life :-).

@7vio ooh that’s how I feel too! Massive hugs! I know that it’s harder for the Ukrainian people and these problems we have over this side of the fence have nothing on the real war but it feels so weird and lonely and completely shatters my personality to pieces.

@Peacelily67 i think they are very very torn and apprehensive that they could be painted with the same brush as the regime. It’s hard enough being a cultural transplant - uprooted and not belonging anywhere… but when you’re also vilified for something that you had no control over like your nationality.. it’s quite upsetting. I love England and I have been here for long enough to almost rid of my accent but I still very weird when people ask me where I’m from. My first instinct is to avoid the question. I also don’t know Ukrainian refugees really feel towards Russians. Some of those I met are very friendly and happy to make new friends (granted I lived here almost for as long as I lived in Russia) but things I read online (including death threats to Russian children) are quite scary.

Thank you for your insight. I appreciate it 🙏

I met a Russian recently who doesn't like telling people in Europe but especially London his nationality, as he feels judged.

Do you feel the same?

hello, I hope you are well xx