As a female who was born in Russia but living for over 20 years abroad, I can say that definitely ladies from the post-Soviet countries have some distinctive features about them. These features make Russian women unique.
3 major things that make Russian women unique
- They devote giant efforts to looking beautiful every day (not just on special occasions).
- They want men to lead in a relationship (aka “hunter-prey” dating model).
- They genuinely believe that a woman’s happiness lies in having her own family (husband & kids). Family is indisputably the #1 value in their lives.
I was born in Russia and work as a Russian dating coach for 17 years. The 3 points above became even more pronounced in the last decade than they were 20 years ago.
How the history influenced personality traits of females in Russia
While western women kept moving forward on the road of feminism and getting more and more equal with men, Russian ladies had it all before, during the Soviet times—since 1920s. They had 70 years to enjoy “100% equality with men in everything”, which females in America and Europe didn’t have at the time.
So, after the collapse of the USSR in early 1990s, Russian society bounced back to “traditional family values” of pre-communistic times.
- Russian girls used to be 100% equal with guys during the era of Soviet Union: Jobs, titles, gender balance in parliament and among members of the ruling communist party.
- Both girls and guys were called “tovarisch” (comrade), no gender-specific terms.
- Fashion used to be nearly prohibited during the epoch of the USSR. I remember the period when wearing jeans or listening to rock-n-roll was considered “capitalistic influence” and you could be kicked out from the youth communist organization (komsomol) for doing that, which would mean the end of your career prospects for life.
- Using makeup and being fashionable was nearly equalled to trying to destruct socialistic morals.
So, you can probably appreciate that all these “gender equality” issues became the fixture of “old times” in the view of modern Russian women—the things that they purposefully try to shrug off. This is why nowadays girls in Russia are so devoted to ideals of femininity and beauty: For them it feels like “new modern values” as compared to the old communistic ethics. They actually feel it is progressive, not limiting, to be able to feel and behave like a woman, to be treated by men in a special way.
In short, what makes Russia’s females remarkable comes from the country’s distinctive history. They simply cannot be different because this is the way they were brought up.
Even when ladies from Russia live abroad for decades, they still retain certain cultural values and remain true to them for life.
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Elena’s conclusions in this article do make sense when observing how current Russian women behave and appear in public. You’ll observe traits in women in public from both eras. From the Feminist Soviet times – “tough” traits, showing little or no emotion in public; and really interesting is how they do NOT look at men…ever…they simply go about their business. Living in Russia for years, and accustomed to noticing the looks from Western women when in public, in Russia I often wondered what was WRONG with me, because no woman would ever look at me – in fact I could… Read more »