Don’t Smile at Strangers. It Looks Like You Want Something.

Walk through a Metro car expecting the faces you know from a London shop or a California checkout and you will invent a nation of hostility. Maria Arapova, writing in the Journal of Language and Cultural Education in 2016, names the mismatch without flattery to either side. Russians, she reports, following Iosif Sternin and others, treat the smile as personal, not social. They smile readily with friends. In a formal public place the smile is rare. Western Europe and the United States prescribe courteous smiles to strangers in order to make the street comfortable. Each side then fails the other. Americans and Europeans find unsmiling Russians sullen. Russians, abroad, wonder why a stranger is smiling when there is “nothing to smile at.”

Perov’s Dostoevsky is not a sociological sample. He is the face the West already had on file: clasped hands, no performance of cheer. Use him as a warning against the cliché he also feeds. Arapova’s point is not that Russians cannot be glad. It is that a smile to a stranger is not a cheap coin. In her surveys of 2006 and 2013, four settings showed the gap: a brief meeting in the street or on transport; a citizen facing an official; a politician or executive presenting themselves; and the shop. In the street, British and American brief eye contact often comes with a smile. The Russian pattern is eye contact, sometimes longer, with the smile optional and still uncommon, though younger people, she notes, are changing. The shared meaning is affiliative — I am not a threat — but the forms differ. The long Russian look then alarms the Westerner. The Western smile then asks the Russian for a plot: is this person in a good mood, do they want to meet me, have they mistaken me for someone else?

A sign with a reason

Sternin, in a 2000 essay on the smile in Russian communicative behaviour, argued that a Russian smile is meant to be sincere and should not simply mirror someone else’s. There should be a concrete reason. Ambiguity worries people. He cited the proverb Смех без причины — признак дурачины: laughter without a reason is a sign of stupidity. A 2017 paper in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, by Krys and colleagues, tested a display-rule model and quoted that line. Gasparyan, cited there, added that when the cause of a smile is unclear, Russians more readily guess mockery; Americans more readily guess happiness. Arapova records the same suspicion: laughter and smiles in Russia have often carried irony. A person who smiles at you in a queue may be greeting you. They may also, in the older reading, be laughing at you. Sternin’s classroom questions — “What’s so funny?” “Have I said anything funny?” — are what a smiling face can still summon.

Most Russian authors investigating smiles often state that the smile in Russia is personal, not social. Russians are quite friendly and often use the smile as a form of informal communication with friends and acquaintances. They openly show different shades of positive emotion, however, in the formal environment of a public place, smiles are rare.

Offices, shops, teeth

In a Western office of the state, Arapova writes, a public servant’s smile can mean: I will help; we are, as citizens, on a level. In Russia the same setting has often meant the opposite emphasis: the work is serious, the institution is above the private person, a smile would look like carelessness. An individual under that pressure may offer an ingratiating smile upward. She quotes Vladimir Sollogub’s 1850 “An Old Lady”: laughing means familiarity; a timely smile means I understand, I rejoice, I agree, but I do not dare put myself on a par with you. Until recently, she adds, a high public face stayed serious. Gorbachev’s smile, from 1984, is her marker that the mask began to move. Service smiles are newer still. In Soviet shops, wages did not depend on charm, and a seller of scarce goods did not need to win you. Since the 1990s, staff trained on Western models are taught to smile at every client. The street has not become California. Foreigners, Arapova notes, still read Russians as gloomy. Russians who have travelled often now smile back, and mean friendliness by it.

Hofstede Insights, summarising Sternin for managers, puts the visitor’s risk in one line: a smile at a stranger can already mean an invitation to talk. “Do we know each other?” is the question the face may raise. In-groups get the warm face; out-groups get the formal one. You will know you have crossed when people begin to smile at you because they want to, not because a handbook told them to. Teeth, in the same briefing, are not a plus in a first formal meeting. A constant grin can look like duty, or like a person who has done something wrong. The 2017 experimental paper found Russians more likely than Americans to inhibit happiness displays toward strangers while remaining expressive with friends — a pattern the authors link to display rules, not to an inability to feel glad.

How to hold your face

Do not conclude that the country is unhappy. Conclude that cheer is not a public utility. Smile when something is actually funny, or when you already share a table. In a shop, a nod and clear speech will do more than a row of teeth. If a stranger smiles at you on the street, you may smile back; Arapova says Russians who know the Western pattern often will. If nobody smiles in the Metro, you have not been insulted. You have been left in peace. Perov’s portrait, hanging in the Tretyakov, is a man who had reasons not to perform gladness. Most of the people on your train are only following a rule that says a face should mean something, or it should rest.