Anti-American attitudes in buddy film narratives

Sergei Rodion was born in January 1979 in St. Petersburg, Russia. He recently turned twenty-nine years old and still lives in the city of St. Petersburg. His parents originally moved to St. Petersburg from Perm, a city in Northern Russia. Sergei has no children at present, his wife of six years, Masha, still has not given birth to any children although they have tried for many years.

As a child, Sergei's parents, Leon and Fatya Rodion, worked in the manufacturing industry. Leon had an important position within an aluminum alloys production plant as the plant supervisor. As a result, Sergei lived a very privileged lifestyle as a youth. Having been born during the height of the Cold War, St. Petersburg was at the heart of Russian industrialization. The city is known for its machine building and especially power equipment. Sergei spent the majority of childhood playing with children of other plant workers and grew very accustomed to that particular culture. His current job is also within alcohol production industry, he is a quality assurance manager at the local brewery plant. St. Petersburg is Russia's largest beer producing city, with five major breweries throughout the city.

Currently, Sergei's yearly income is slightly above middle class. He lives in a moderately expensive apartment complex with his wife and his mother. His father passed away ten years ago at the age of fifty six. Sergei loves St. Petersburg and he does not plan to ever move away from the city. Sergei's parents came to St. Petersburg during the 1970s as an enormous population migration movement during the Cold War. The Soviet Union made St. Petersburg the production center of the empire, and as a result, the population increased by 1.5 million in fewer than five years as million of people went in search of better employment. Sergei is extremely proud of his parents because they were able to gain an important position to help the government cause. Sergei and everyone within his family were proud members of the communist party. His father was the chairman of the Communist association within his power plant, and his parents went to many regular meetings in Moscow for party faithful. Growing up, Sergei's favorite author was Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov. His many books about the rise of communism as a socialist movement during the Second World War inspired his imagination. Sergei was well read and he read many of great works during his early childhood.

However, the greatest memorable time period of Sergei's life was when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990. Russia declared their independence from the Soviet Union in June of 1990 and was finalized in 1991. For Sergei this was a significant blow to his idealization of Soviet society and communism. For Sergei this represented a hard blow to his ideological beliefs and about the spirit of socialism. His parents, as strong supporters of the communist government suddenly found themselves to be blacklisted by the city. By 1993, Leon could no longer find employment and the family, which had been very successful and respected in the community were reduced to extreme poverty. Sergei, in his teens spent most of the time doing odd jobs at factories such as a coal-boy, in order to help his family. He was not able to finish school. At the same time, he saw the St. Petersburg he loved grow to complete economic recession as the industries that sustained the Soviet Union were shutdown in the wake of its collapse. He also looked on as American companies such as Ford Motor Company, McDonald's, and many other American companies. Sergei still remembers the old city as Leningrad, and calls St. Petersburg by its Soviet name when he is with his friends.

Sergei finally was able to find steady employment in 1999, after the death of his father. The Russian economy had stabilized and he was finally able to secure employment in the brewery business. Being financial secure, Sergei still continues to be very interested in politics. He has a strong resentment of the United States, which he believes is the root of capitalist evil. He strongly resents the changes in St. Petersburg, especially to the youth who knows nothing of the all encompassing beauty of the communist dream. He was ecstatic when Vladimir Putin became the President of Russia. As a strong supporter of the United Russia Party, Sergei believes that Russia needs to unite together and cast out the strong foreign influence to become a major world power again. He desires a strong Russia that does not need outside influence and foreign corporations to help its economy. He hates all American newspapers and journalists because they habitually criticize Putin as a demagogue. However, he sees Putin as the savior of Russia who is strong enough to ignore the bad publicity and foreign pressures to continue to resurrect the Russian economy.