The Intransigent Myth

“How are you going to survive living in an igloo, eating whale blubber all winter?” “I’m sure it snows there in summer.” “You’ll be shot by the mafia the first time you go outside at night.” “I doubt they have stores there, or indoor plumbing for that matter.” “How can you teach university classes, when they couldn’t possibly have universities there?” “Isn’t everyone there a prisoner?” “That’s where all the nuclear bombs are stored.” “Everyone there is irradiated. People glow in the dark. The birds have ten pairs of wings, and the fish have three sets of eyes.” “They have wild bears walking down the streets.” “What language do they speak there? Siberian?” “I wonder if Eskimos are taller than we are.”
These were just a few of the questions and statements delivered to me in a barrage of nervous banter, as I told one after another American acquaintance of my plan to spend two years teaching university classes in Siberia. During the months preceding my departure, I encountered a variety of Siberian myths, each expressing a different level of knowledge and form of disillusionment. Even the most informed acquaintances based their expectations on a mythical vision they had constructed in their minds. No one really knew what Siberia was like, myself included. We could only guess. While my expectations were perhaps closer to reality than those of my fellow Americans, who had never ventured to Russia as I had ten years earlier, they were still far from what unfolded upon my arrival in Siberia.
Perhaps as unsettling as the Siberian myths that appear in American minds whenever the so-called remote, wintry corner of Russia is mentioned are the new myths that have emerged since my return to the United States. I have spent the nearly two years since my return from Siberia trying to educate and enlighten acquaintances, audiences and readers of my book, Stumbling Across Siberia, attempting to debunk the plethora of Siberian myths. In the process, I have observed a disquieting development: the creation of a new, unintended Siberian myth based on my descriptions of Siberian reality.
Nor have my attempts to educate Siberians on American lifestyles and issues been any more successful. In place of one myth, my Siberian audiences have substituted another. The new myth they have constructed has not moved any closer to the reality I have been trying to paint.
I would like to explore what I call the “not seeing is not believing” phenomenon made apparent by my attempt to generate cross-cultural awareness between Siberians and Americans. My Siberian and post-Siberian experiences underscore the difficulty in debunking myths across vast distances through third-person emissaries. My observations indicate myths are broken more easily through immersion, long experience, reiteration, lack of exaggeration, emphasis on boring daily routines, and awareness that the human mind likes to construct a temporarily immutable framework to process incoming data.
From these observations I conclude that my novel in progress, Samovar Grill, will debunk Siberian myths more effectively among American readers than Stumbling Across Siberia, a collection of short stories too brief to meet the criteria listed above. Video conferencing and projects that involve extended cooperation, such as the year-long Humans Write Community Program launched recently through my organization, Human Rights Educational Initiative (HREI), will be more effective in replacing myth with reality than shorter term projects and Internet communication that does not involve face to face communication… though frequent Internet chatting over an extended period of time could be equally effective. And visitors traveling between Siberia and the United States will affect perceptions more realistically by conversing about daily life, supplemented where possible by numerous photographs and home videos, rather than focusing on major social issues and community agendas.
I will begin by discussing the specific myths I had heard or read before going to Siberia and the reality that replaced these perceptions as I settled into Siberian life. Next I will discuss my attempts to debunk these myths upon my return to the States, along with the unintended myths generated by my ill-fated efforts. I will add to this experience the unintended consequences of my equally unsuccessful attempts to change Siberian perceptions of American myths. I will conclude by discussing the causes and implications of the “not seeing is not believing” phenomenon and my personal efforts to follow the prescription generated by this analysis. I believe international projects that recognize and address the difficulties in debunking foreign myths will provide an effective basis for multilateral cooperation.

The Land of Wild and Woolly

I grew up in Miami, Florida. I love the sun, surf, warmth, and green things surrounding me. A little over a decade ago, I moved to New York. Winters were unbearable. I spent half the year longing desperately for summer. Imagine my surprise when a representative of the Civic Education Project (CEP) phoned to offer me a teaching position in Siberia. My first and only unsettling thought was of the weather: How cold did Siberia really become in winter? I started checking the Internet and discovered numbers like minus 40 and minus 50 Fahrenheit. I panicked.
I immediately became obsessed with finding and packing warm clothes, not realizing these extreme temperatures referred either to the far north of Russia, near the Arctic Circle, or to only a few weeks or even days in January throughout the rest of Siberia. I spent the better part of four months preparing for temperatures to which I would be minimally exposed, and I was totally unprepared for the Indian Summer that greeted me with sweltering heat upon my arrival in late August. I was also ill prepared for and surprised by the hordes of mosquitoes thriving in the warm Siberian summer. I had never realized Siberia is really just a giant swamp that thaws into a mud bath three to four months out of the year.
The weather was one of two myths I shared with my American acquaintances prior to my arrival in Siberia. The other was a concern for the environment. As a Russian studies minor in college, I was well aware of the ecological trauma left across the face of Russia by the Soviet regime. I also knew Siberian cities had served until recently as the locus of weapons manufacture. Reports held that unknown quantities of nuclear and chemical waste were buried across Siberia, often in urban centers. The water was reported undrinkable, the air barely breathable. I imagined something like the industrial wasteland I had encountered while writing a paper on environmental politics in southern Poland years before. I expected a drab, gray, dusty metropolis covered in soot and marred by chemical erosion.
I was overwhelmed to discover something completely different. On the 26-hour train ride from Moscow to Ekaterinburg, the western terminus of the trans-Siberian railroad, the landscape grows increasingly lush with each passing hour. By the time the train approaches the Ural foothills separating Siberia from European Russia, nothing is visible but giant swatches of evergreens, birch stands, streams, lakes and verdant hillsides. Ekaterinburg breaks into view as a bustling industrial city dotted with green parks, cut by a flowing river and surrounded by forested hills. Beyond Ekaterinburg, as the railway makes its way through the Siberian heartland to the Russian Far East, the scenery becomes even more dramatic. Fir-covered mountains, winding rivers, gentle hills and rustic, wooden dachas fade in and out of view for days. The industrial wasteland of Siberia exists but is well camouflaged among the green forests and hills.
While I did not succumb to more than these two Siberian myths, my American acquaintances did. And upon my return to the States, I attempted to enlighten each of them regarding every single myth they had mentioned to me before my departure. The most commonly held myths represented Siberia as a freezing, desolate and harsh land peopled by Eskimos. The natives spoke a language called Siberian, and though Siberia was close to and or somehow connected historically with Russia, it was a different country entirely. Siberians did not speak Russian. They lived either in igloos or in wooden or clay huts scattered along dirt roads. They ate whale blubber and had to fight off wild bears running through their villages. They were ignorant, backward and poor, with little educational infrastructure and no cultural life. They had no cities, universities or major industries. The only existing institutions were prisons, hidden here and there across the frozen tundra. Some Americans still picture Siberia as a giant gulag.
Acquaintances a little more familiar with Russian and Soviet history had a slightly different conception of Siberia. Their impressions ranged from Siberia as a reckless, chaotic mafia hideout; a center of corruption; a black hole for American aid money; a region abandoned by the central government; a drab, depressing urban wasteland peopled by political fanatics supporting either Communist, neo-imperialist or ultra-right wing nationalist parties; to an oppressive region where women were not respected and children not protected; a place where everyone was lazy, drunk, unwilling to participate in civic life, determined simply to steal and horde money; a giant, frozen wasteland where democracy and constitutionalism were unknown.
Others who styled themselves as worldly and aware of the state of affairs in post-Soviet Russia viewed Siberia as the beneficiary of Soviet technology, a booming industrial Mecca with an advanced technological infrastructure, highly developed educational system, a land of pioneering medical breakthroughs, peopled by a new McDonalds-MTV generation of American cultural junkies.
I knew before leaving New York each of these vastly differing images was wrong, but for the most part I chose to humor people until I had experienced Siberia myself. When I returned from Siberia, I was ready to attack each of these inaccurate myths head-on, through several media: conversations and email discussions with family, friends and acquaintances; comments to strangers and passersby in various social and professional settings; public lectures; and writing, including several articles and a collection of short stories, self-published and marketed via Internet as Stumbling Across Siberia. So determined was I to educate Americans on the realities of Siberian life, I failed to foresee the consequences of my approach.
My anecdotes and techniques were appropriate for shocking Americans into abandoning their mythical images of Siberia. But I offered nothing to replace those myths. I assumed Americans would accept Siberia as just another place where human beings live, work, play, laugh and struggle perhaps a little harder than we do to get through daily life. Instead, most Americans who listened to or read my stories constructed a set of new myths as erroneous as the first. Siberia was still so distant for them, they were incapable of relating to it except through a mythical construction.

Unintended Siberian and American Myths

When I describe the Siberian summer to an American, I expect the person will realize Siberia is not covered by ice and snow twelve months out of the year. It is just a place where winters are long and harsh and summers short and hot, the quintessential continental climate. Instead, my attempts to debunk this myth result in one of two new myths in the minds of those listening to me: the temperatures are so extreme that the climate is simply unbearable, the weather conditions adverse to human life and prosperity; or the winters really aren’t so bad after all, and the whole Dr. Zhivago scene is a gross exaggeration. Neither of these new myths is any more accurate than the original, but they are the result of my attempts to paint a picture of reality for American acquaintances.
Regarding the Eskimo, igloo and whale blubber myth, Siberia has an indigenous population in the far north with a lifestyle similar to that of Eskimos or indigenous people from the far north of Canada and Alaska. They eat whale blubber and other fatty fish products, just as Siberians from further south eat lard sometimes when the temperature plummets to extreme lows, particularly if they are on the road or otherwise exposed to harsh cold for long periods of time. I ate a handful of lard while traveling on a train in late December, shivering and weak from the flu, and I felt better almost instantly. I have met thousands of Siberians but not, to my knowledge, any Eskimos. I have never been to the far north of Siberia, though I have a few Russian friends who either have lived or traveled there. They say it is as harsh as it sounds, but the northern fringes represent only a small fraction of Siberian territory. This fraction, however, is generally what many Americans consider reality for the whole of Siberia.
Sadly, those who have listened to my Siberian stories now believe no such Arctic region exists. They have abandoned their idea of Siberia as poetic or rustic, as a vast, unscathed and majestic frozen tundra. In this new myth, part of Siberia’s diversity, geographical and cultural heritage has been lost. It is as if people believe that if all Siberia does not look like a polar region, none of it does. Furthermore, when I mention that most Siberians do not eat whale blubber and nearly just as many have never seen a whale in their lives, except on television – rather, they eat produce from their gardens, traditional Russian meals and, unfortunately, imported Western junk food and prepared, packaged meals – the conclusion is that the Russian diet is poor and must result in malnutrition for the entire population. Tell that to a Siberian mother who has just prepared for her family a wholesome dinner of beet soup, black bread, a salad made from sliced eggs, green peas, mushrooms, calamari rings and mayonnaise sauce, stuffed chicken breast, hand-mashed potatoes, a cheese-smothered and breaded squash casserole, an angel food cake and hot tea with blackberry jam… on a weeknight.
The same type of about face has resulted from my attempts to undo the myth of Siberia as desolate, primitive and boring. To anyone who has lived in and traveled through Siberia, the area hardly seems isolated or desolate. Certainly Siberia has isolated geographic pockets, like any other vast land including the United States. But within Siberia’s largest cities or resort areas such as the Lake Baikal region, desolation and isolation are the last adjectives anyone would use to describe the place. More significant is Siberia’s isolation from the rest of Russia, particularly Moscow. The further east one travels, the more frequently one hears such sarcastic remarks as, “Moscow? Where’s that?” or “The capital city of what? Not Siberia?” or “St. Petersburg? Isn’t that somewhere near France?” When I relay this sense of isolation from Moscow, however, the equally erroneous conclusion drawn by Americans is that Siberia is full of openly rebellious provinces peopled by natives who feel absolutely no affinity for anything Russian.
This conclusion is reinforced when I inform Americans that Siberia has long been and still remains part of Russia and that the historical and current native language of Siberians is Russian. For that matter, many Siberian families trace their immediate roots back to the western, European part of Russia, prior to Stalin’s forced relocations or more recent economic opportunities provided by the oil industry. Upon realizing Siberia is still part of Russia, though very distant geographically from Moscow, Americans again derive an image of rebellious provinces. Amazingly, though sections of the Hawaiian and Alaskan populations frequently express disagreement and a sense of distance from Washington, most Americans never consider these states rebellious; yet similar circumstances in Siberia evoke this image. The equally erroneous, corollary conclusion to the realization that Siberia is still part of Russia is the image of Siberians as only ethnic Russians. Americans do not seem to understand the tremendous ethnic mix found in every Siberian city: Russian, Tatar, Turkic, Arabic, Persian, Armenian, Chinese, Mongolian, Korean, German, among others.
To dispel the image of Siberia as primitive, backwards, boring, lacking in modernized facilities and infrastructure, education and cultural life, I offer the example of the major Siberian cities and a lifestyle on the surface not much different from some U.S. second cities. The new myths created by this drastic substitution of images prompt the following equally false conclusions: Siberian life is decadent, centered on discos, drugs and alcohol; regardless of the high reputation of many Siberian universities, without sufficient resources, educational achievement will be limited; no young Siberian could possibly want to stay in the area – high levels of education and culture, coupled with a modern infrastructure sadly not maintained, should compel every young Siberian to relocate far to the west; the combination of modern institutions with a nearly bankrupt economy indicates a bleak future for Siberia – a precarious and depressing position somewhere between the West and the so-called Third World.
When Americans begin to understand Siberia is not only wilderness, they immediately switch to a mental image of drab, Soviet-style urban sprawl. They fail to understand that even in Siberian cities, such as Irkutsk, Novosibirsk and Tomsk, architecture ranges from St. Petersburg neoclassical to charming wooden houses with beautifully carved latticework. As I try to replace the image of bears roaming the streets by offering the conciliatory image of wild dogs wandering through city parks and along residential sidewalks – citing my own close encounter with a couple rabid dogs – the conclusion is that walking down Siberia’s city streets is dangerous and rabies is prevalent. True, the infrastructure is a strange mix of new construction and abandoned projects, making many sidewalks treacherous to walk. But in downtown areas marble storefronts, newly repaired boulevards and sidewalks cleaner than their counterparts in New York are common. Reality is not so extreme as Americans want to imagine.
For those who believe Siberia is nothing more than a giant gulag, a series of prison camps and penal institutions to which Russians from the European part of the country are sent, my attempts to correct this thinking have been equally unsuccessful. I explain that the Stalinist prison camp system no longer exists but offer that Siberia, like most other regions on earth, has working prisons. I add that the Siberian prison system, like much of the other infrastructure, is in disrepair and lacking in funding and staff. I also explain that corruption and false arrest is a problem that contributes to overcrowding. Furthermore, because of poor health conditions in Russia at large, admittance to a Siberian prison is like a death sentence, in that the likelihood of contracting tuberculosis, hepatitis, AIDS and typhus is high and chance of effective treatment low. Epidemics throughout Siberian prisons are not uncommon. The conclusion derived from this unpleasant picture is, however, too extreme: Siberia is home to cadres of corrupt police; justice is completely unknown; the entire population is dying in the squalor of Siberian prisons.
Surprisingly, Americans more informed on the current state of affairs in Russia, including those who have traveled abroad and consider themselves worldly, fall into the same trap of constructing new myths as incorrect as those I have tried to dispel. To answer charges of rampant corruption and widespread crime, along with the image of Siberia as a black hole for Russian government funds and U.S. aid money, I counter that such an indictment belongs only to the mafia and certain local government officials. On a daily basis, however, mafia control is not felt so strongly by the average Siberian resident; and just as many honest local officials are fighting off their corrupt counterparts, working miracles in the local dumas and creating a slowly but steadily growing foundation for democracy.
While my descriptions break the American image of all Siberians as corrupt and undemocratic, the new myth is equally false and unproductive: in Siberia, according to this new myth, the mafia controls everything, and local government is so corrupt and tied to the mafia that democracy will never grow in the permafrost. My stories of local heroes and grassroots democracy, of successful strides in building civil society, seem to go unnoticed. The subtle dynamic is lost. My American audiences force details into a black-and-white image construction that equates Siberia with corruption. If the majority of the population is not corrupt, that is still not good news. The fact that corruption exists, be it among just a few mafiosi or local officials, apparently indicates all incoming data must be fit into this model, rather than spread among two competing models much closer to Siberian reality: entrenched corruption versus grassroots attempts to displace or work around it. The equally unfortunate corollary conclusion is that U.S. investment in Russia is pointless. This potentially self-fulfilling prophecy is accepted by Americans, rather than the more productive counterargument that selective investment, guided by a more sophisticated understanding of Siberian political-economic dynamics, would be very effective.
For those who share my concern for the environment, I did not return with good news. However, the situation was not as bleak across the board as we had feared. Rather, I began to equate the situation to an ecological time bomb. The critical information that individuals and corporations require in order to make rational decisions concerning the environment and public health is sketchy and not easily obtainable. Delayed effects of environmental waste buried across Siberia are still unknown. Despite my assurances that daily life goes on, often successfully and healthfully, amid environmental uncertainty, my audiences construct a new image even more drastic and inaccurate than their initial misrepresentation: the entire Siberian landscape is radioactive; every Siberian inhabitant probably glows in the dark; people would be better off starving than eating anything grown in Siberian soil.
In a similar vein, my attempts to enlighten Americans who believe a bankrupt successor Russia has inherited all Soviet advancements in medicine and technology result in an even more dismal mental picture. Americans who have heard or read my stories of outdated technology and medical bankruptcy now assume the entire region is a technologically emasculated medical disaster zone. As a result of this new myth, I’ve heard the same tragic remark over and over: “I know one thing for certain: I will never go to Siberia, and I will never become close to someone from Siberia… it would be too heartbreaking to be friends with someone who will probably die in a few years.”
While the poor state of health care in Russia and especially Siberia is not an exaggeration, I do not consider my Siberian friends and acquaintances to be dying, and I do not expect their lives to end suddenly in the near future. But even in situations where I have met Siberians suffering from severe and perhaps terminal medical problems, the joy of these wonderful relationships far outweighed the heartbreaking thoughts of possibly losing these friends in the future. Americans who conclude Siberian friendships are out of the question do not understand what rewarding relationships they are missing.
Additionally, Americans overlook the potential for Russian medical care to advance quickly, given a reasonable amount of investment and overhaul. The Soviet medical system was very advanced, and the Russian successor system lags behind less than a decade. While the rapid pace of medical advancement means that even one decade is significant, Russian doctors and hospitals trail close enough to catch up in a short period of time. The longer the international medical community waits to make the investment, however, the further behind they slide.
Whenever I have discussed this problem with American doctors, however, the first reaction is that the international community needs to focus on regions much less advanced than Russia. These doctors still believe Russian medicine is the same as Soviet medicine. When I explain the system is bankrupt, therefore nowhere near the same any longer, they conclude this is a result of corruption and mismanagement. It is not an American or international problem, but a Russian issue that Russians must work out for themselves. Such ignorance may carry a heavy price, not only in terms of Russian healthcare but globally, given the rapid spread of disease across international borders.
This reaction raises the issue of misconceptions concerning Siberian politics. Even the most informed Americans maintain an image of Siberia as a bastion of political extremism. In these American minds, desperate Communists, neo-imperialists and rhetoric-obsessed nationalists breed faster across the Siberian tundra than the Arctic hare. Discussion of Siberia’s political and economic isolation from Moscow only reinforces this view. When I try to provide a more realistic context for Siberian political activism, one myth is replaced by another that resembles reality no more closely than the first. I describe local Communists as lost bureaucrats trying to find their feet in the new democratic Russia; Americans jump to the conclusion that no one in power is interested in reform, but only in keeping as many bureaucrats lost and disenfranchised as possible. I explain that nationalist rhetoric appeals to vulnerable youth estranged from society with little hope for the future; my audiences conclude these young people have no role models or family support. I mention that most Russians, Siberians included, have no neo-imperialistic designs; Americans and, I should add, many other Westerners, conclude Russians have no interest in participating in the international community, in peacekeeping efforts, and in assuming responsibility for the problems facing global neighbors as a result of decades of Soviet misrule. None of these conclusions is any more accurate than their predecessor myth.
Americans interested in Siberian community life also substitute one false myth for another. I have been informed by many different Americans that they understand Siberians as lazy drunks, unwilling to work, uninterested in civic participation, bereft of supportive family ties or strong community life. Women are oppressed, their male counterparts abusive, and what little civil society exists is weak and chaotic. Constitutionalism and rule of law do not exist in Siberia, and the population does not care – on the whole, people are very unemotional and disinterested in life.
To such ignorant statements, I have a plethora of replies. Siberians are not lazy drunks. They are some of the most industrious and creative people I have ever lived among. They face an extreme shortage of jobs. Many public as well as private sector employees go six or more months without pay, and pensions promised to retirees are never produced. Depression and frustration do lead to consumption of alcohol, but the problem is not as widespread as Americans believe. Drugs are also a problem, particularly because the sale of drugs serves as a source of income for mafiosi and the consumption of drugs appeals to frustrated, alienated youth – the same problem plaguing the American landscape. These problems would be worse were it not for the strong family and community ties I discovered throughout Siberia.
Abuse of women and children exists, as it does in the United States, and child abandonment is also a problem. To the degree that equality has bred resentment, men who disliked the Soviet model of the working woman now prefer to have their wives stay at home. They do not chain them down, however, particularly because economic conditions necessitate women in the workforce. Most oppression comes in the form of yelling and complaints that dinner is late or sometimes comes out of an imported box, or the baby is crying too loudly because mommy hasn’t been home all day. Americans face the same problems and are significantly more workaholic than Russians. Siberians work long hours because they have no choice. Many middle and upper class Americans do this only because they are addicted to money and power, or because they want to escape the confines of family life and responsibility for their children.
Civil society and civic participation are an outward extension of Russia’s close community life and are growing because of grassroots efforts across Siberia. The nurturing process is slow, only because resources are not available from the central government. Geographical distances, made worse by a weak telecommunications and transportation infrastructure and lack of central government money, leave Siberia to develop civil society largely on its own. The situation at the time of the American founding was not much different, yet the outcome over time was very positive. Siberians are eager to be involved politically and actively in community life. They are very caring, emotional, expressive people.
As I explain these realities to American audiences, a new set of false myths emerges. According to this new myth, the drug problem in Siberia must be overwhelming. If people suffer from a shortage of work, they must be uncreative. Furthermore, the shortage of jobs will lead to a massive brain drain. All young Siberians must be trying to get out of the country. They all will end up in the United States, and they will turn their backs on Siberia forever. To the extent Siberians are experts at time management, with those who hold jobs maximizing their working day to increase their income and provide support to their extended families, they must be lacking in family and social life. They have no time for relaxation, for holidays or vacation, no time to play with their children or enjoy cultural life. If Siberian women have a tough life, it must be due to the harsh and oppressive treatment inflicted on them by the vindictive and insecure Siberian men. Moreover, Siberians must live in a constant state of fear and emotional exhaustion. Being Siberian cannot be any fun. Community life sounds no more developed than in the 18th and early 19th century United States. If civil society is growing, the pace is too slow. Progress will be sidetracked and people will lose interest over time. Furthermore, the Russian government faces a hopeless prospect trying to govern a territory so large with so little money.
Reality is quite different. The drug problem in Siberia is not any more overwhelming than in the United States or any other country with access to the international drug trade. Siberians do attack the unemployment problem – and all other problems – creatively… much more creatively than most Americans deal with their own difficulties. Russia certainly has suffered a brain drain, yet most of the university students I taught in Siberia were determined either to stay or to leave and return as soon as possible. Most have accepted they may never have the chance to leave and must make the most of the opportunities presented to them within Siberia. The Internet will provide an outlet for ambitious students to benefit from economic situations in other countries without ever leaving Russia. Regardless of where these students live five or ten years from now, all have vowed to devote their lives to making Siberia more livable and a place to which their children could safely return and call home.
Despite the difficulties of daily life and the tough work schedules of the majority of Siberians who are employed, family, community and cultural life, holidays, vacation and relaxation are extremely important. Siberians struggle on a daily basis to maintain a quality of life many workaholic Americans have willingly abandoned. Siberian women share their male companions’ views of the importance of quality family life. Their struggles with each other generated by the intrusion of economic realities is an emotional give and take that in most cases does not break down into the hostility and vengefulness Americans expect. Siberian women are not only liberated; they have acquired a toughness that would impress American advocates of women’s liberation. Siberian men are not the evil masterminds of female oppression many Americans seem to think. Siberians are not emotionally drained, and they know how to have fun even in situations where Americans would see nothing but hopelessness. I encountered some of the most amusing incidents and spontaneous celebrations ever in Siberia. Community life is stronger as a whole in Siberia than in the United States, but it is not a throwback to the distant American past. Rather, it is a model to which Americans might want to aspire. Civil society is emerging steadily. Support and participation grow stronger with each success. Far from becoming sidetracked, the process constantly gains momentum. The physical distance from Moscow and lack of money is making Siberians innovative rather than disgruntled and rebellious.
The final myth I encountered was the image of Siberians as American junkies, more aware of U.S. culture, politics and business than most Americans. In reality, Siberians know as little about the United States as Americans know about Siberia. The primary sources of information in Siberia concerning the United States are movies, magazines and television shows depicting the lives of glamorous, wealthy Americans living in mansions surrounded by manicured lawns under bright blue, lens-filtered skies. American images float into Siberian minds in snippets and incoherent bits, many of them generated by fictional descriptions translated as reality.
In teaching U.S. politics to Siberian university students, I soon realized I needed to spend less time on the structure and processes of U.S. government – which bright students can understand by reading any decent textbook – and more time explaining social issues faced by American citizens and addressed by U.S. politicians. In the process, I encountered American myths as inaccurate and intractable as American images of Siberia. According to Siberian students, the United States is not plagued by any of the following social problems: poverty, crime, unemployment, poor health care, low-quality education, child and spouse abuse, alcoholism, drug abuse, lack of gun control, environmental pollution. No U.S. politician is selfish or corrupt; important political issues are never buried in bureaucratic quagmires; everyone in a position of power is highly and openly accountable to voters. As I tried to dispel each myth one by one over the course of a semester, I encountered first a fierce refusal to believe my descriptions of American life, followed by emergence of a new myth that portrayed the United States as a decadent, corrupt country where injustice and police beatings are prevalent, everyone is impoverished and miserable, and lakes and skies are rancid with smog and other toxins… a picture not entirely different from Americans’ new mythical representation of Siberia.
When I describe this situation to Americans, the myth of Siberians as American junkies is replaced instantly by an equally erroneous myth of Siberians as ignorant of life outside their borders, uninformed in world affairs, and highly gullible, unable to differentiate movies from real life. This myth overlooks the reality that Siberian students, as a whole, are largely more informed in world affairs than their American counterparts. Furthermore, they cannot be blamed for drawing conclusions based on American films, considering that Russian and other European films follow real life much more closely than most Hollywood productions. Indeed, Siberian students’ biggest criticism of American films is the overwhelming number of happy endings. They prefer something a little less mythical. Having read this comment, Americans will likely conclude Siberians are obsessed with tragedy. This conclusion could not be further from the truth.

Not Seeing is Not Believing: Debunking and Cooperative Actions

At first glance, the dynamics described in the previous section sound almost comical. The swing from one extreme to the other, the inability of the individuals involved to grasp the subtleties and nuances of Siberian or American life seems ridiculous. The perpetrators of these myths seem uninformed, unintelligent and incapable of projecting their minds into a dynamic reality outside the one in which they live. Yet my audiences have consisted of well-educated, often very worldly individuals not prone to exaggeration. Why, then, do they insist on generating new myths as fantastical as the images I have tried to erase?
I believe the problem centers on the shape of new information and the medium by which it is delivered. When discussion is focused on a place, a landscape, listeners or readers automatically create in their minds a setting appropriate in scale. In other words, they create a visual image of a place, a landscape, in its entirety. Then they wait to fill this empty construction with images: colors, sounds, textures, characters. In order to paint the scene correctly, in its entirety, ideally these individuals should view a complete replica and transfer the data to their blank canvases. If they do not receive a picture of the entire landscape to copy, however, they simply transfer the images they are offered. These images represent only small portions of the landscape; yet if these are the only portions the audience has to work with, these images will be utilized to fill in the entire picture. The newly constructed landscape will be a full-fledged version of a small slice of life in the original setting.
In attempting to debunk cross-cultural myths, the would-be educator must be sensitive to this dynamic. Rather than providing information in bits and bytes, the cross-cultural communicator will break down myths more effectively by painting the whole landscape, allowing recipients of this information to transfer into their minds the place in its entirety. These individuals then can study the newly constructed landscape, measure the new reality against their mythical conceptions, note discrepancies, break down their own myths, and maintain the new landscape in their minds, without devising new mythical assertions to throw at the old.
In terms of concrete steps would-be myth destroyers can follow, effective procedures will involve immersion of the audience into the culture in question; discussion and reiteration of daily routines followed by members of the other culture; and lack of emphasis on extreme situations. Day-to-day similarities should be discussed prior to consideration of differences, to provide a comprehensive context for the latter. Anecdotes need to be shared ad nauseum, with relatively boring, everyday stories interspersed with the more spectacular, shocking incidents that also require mention.
I have modified my own efforts accordingly. While Stumbling Across Siberia, a collection of short stories I wrote based on my Siberian experiences, is must reading for anyone interested in experiencing Siberian life at a safe distance, it is insufficient as a standalone, particularly for Americans who might be willing to venture into Siberia in person. My work now centers on writing novels set in Siberia, a medium that allows me to paint a more complete picture of everyday reality. Likewise I have designed new projects for the HREI, an organization I created while working in Siberia, more conducive to helping participants construct in their minds realistic images of the places in which their fellow participants live, including Siberia. Long-term cooperative projects, such as the Humans Write Community Program and the HREI Round Table Program, show promise as forums in which cross-cultural myths may be broken down effectively. Finally, with the help of friends living in Siberia, I have tried to develop a new format for lectures on life in Siberia, to include more descriptions of daily life, more anecdotes that capture the routine to offset the more spectacular stories audiences still need to hear, and more photographs depicting family and community life, along with more glimpses of the vast and diverse Siberian landscape during different seasons.
I hope that as more Americans travel to Siberia, in person or through the Internet, they will return with an increasing portfolio of stories, photographs and commentary by Siberian acquaintances and will offer an elaborate, descriptive and whole landscape for their fellow Americans to absorb. In the process, the Siberian myth will be replaced in American minds by an intentionally accurate reality. As a result, Americans currently afraid to travel to Siberia or to begin allegedly heartbreaking relationships with Siberians hopefully will receive sufficiently detailed and accurate new images that will change their minds. Until that transformation occurs, they cannot grasp what they are missing.