Learn Russian Culture and Habits
Use the Teach Yourself Series To Understand Locals Before You Travel
Traveling to Russia? Understanding the local customs, history and language by reading World Cultures: Russia in the Teach Yourself series will be invaluable.
Plenty of books claim to explain the mysteries of that massive land, Russia, and her fascinating array of people. But one we particularly recommend is the World Cultures: Russia guide from the Teach Yourself series. Learn about Russia’s background, the culture and creativity and the reality of living and traveling in Russia today before your trip, and you’ll get that much more out of your travels.
An Overview of World Cultures: Russia
While the Teach Yourself series of books covers a huge range of topics, the World Cultures guides are focused on both tourists and those who’ll have an extended stay in the country. Divided roughly into three sections, the Russia guide covers:
- The making of Russia, including a very readable summary of its history and an explanation of how the Russian language works
- Creative Russia, covering areas like literature, art, architecture, music, dance and crafts, highlighting both the well-known personalities and some little-known but highly talented creative forces in Russia
- Living in Russia now, looking at politics, education, health, transport, sexuality and the typical daily routine of modern Russians
The Pros and Cons of World Cultures: Russia
Even for someone who’s spent a reasonable amount of time in Russia, there’ll be new information in this book. It’s written by husband and wife team Tatyana and Stephen Webber, who work as a Russian language teacher and Russian studies lecturer respectively, and clearly havea lot of first-hand knowledge of the country. Sections like those about the dance-music scene after 1991 or the modern experience of religion in Russia are great background for starting conversations with Russians once you get there. The book also contains a lot of references to useful websites and other extra resources to follow up an area you’re especially interested in.
Of course, it’s just one book, about a massive country with a long, complicated past, so it probably almost goes without saying that those who want to understand Russian history in greater depth will be disappointed. And it doesn’t have the immediacy of the internet, so more recent events don’t rate a mention.
On the whole, however, it’s a very readable (and often entertaining) account of what we should know about Russia before we visit. If you can digest much of this before a trip (or take it for handy Trans-Siberian time-passing) you will surely both understand Russia and her people better and be able to make a few Russian friends along the way too.
