Cultural Diversity Cultural Background Summary

Cultural Diversity

Cultural Background Summary & Reflection feel most in touch with my Russian cultural background during the New Year, a far more important Russian holiday than the traditional winter festivals of Christmas and Hanukah. In America, everything stops for Santa Claus but because of the different schedule of the Russian Orthodox calendar, Russians await the New Year with greater anticipation. Even under communism secular Russians celebrated the New Year with sacred reverence, and many Russian Jewish families have adopted the New Year celebration and made it a part of their family's annual traditions. My entire extended family comes together on New Year in America for a traditional Russian New Year. Everyone brings presents and traditional Russian foods like caviar, smoked salmon, blini (small pancakes).

My family stays up late into the night, laughing and drinking, and celebrating our common connection and what the coming year will bring. More than gifts, being with others and celebrating the New Year is important. Everyone talks about what everyone else is doing. Everyone drinks, even younger people, not to get drunk as might be common for people who spend the New Year with friends alone. Instead, making toasts and spending the New Year is part of the Russian culture, and alcohol is not a taboo and a drug, but part of community celebration.

While some of my non-Russian-American friends are quite emotionally or physically distanced from their parents and grandparents, and these typical Americans reveal very little about what is going on in their lives to their relations, many of the most important decisions I have made in my life have had roots in familial influence and opinions. Because my family has sacrificed so much so the next generation could live a better life, especially during the difficult period after they come from Russia to America, I respect my family's values, opinions, and reflections about what is important in the world. Also, my grandparents have had a very important role in my upbringing, as is common in Russia. One of my Russian friends says his happiest memories as a young boy is playing chess with his grandfather.

I think that a critical part of the American immigrant experience is that opportunities are never taken for granted, because the memories of the past are lived over and over again, in the shared memories of one's family. In perhaps a more 'negative' fashion, because success is so important in my family, although education is valued the need to make one's education count in a very important way, to make money and to make the family proud of one's accomplishments in a very material fashion is also an important part of the immigrant experience. I would say this is more a part of the Russian-American immigrant cultural values I have been exposed to since I was a child than Russian values, however.

There is a stereotype that Russians are brusque on the outside. I would say that there is a tendency in my family and other Russian families to be direct and not to beat around the bush. Also, people in Russia and of a Russian background tend not to be demonstrative in public, or dwell on social niceties. In private, families are very affectionate, physically and verbally, to their children particularly and loved ones in general. Children are very valued in Russian culture. Although many chores as a child, in comparison to my friends not from Russia, it was also stressed that it was most important that I studied hard, and had my eye focused on the future. My studies were always my most important job. Also in terms of supposed 'brusqueness,' when in a store or dealing with a school or government agency, my family and Russians in general, 'no' is never an acceptable answer. My family has a sixth sense for when they are being taken advantage of by someone else, possibly a common 'folk' memory of what it was like living in Russia!