America Through Russian Eyes

From talking with some of my Russian students, here is what I can glean about how America looks through Russian eyes:

1) Whereas an American child learns from an early age that his country has "fifty nifty United States," a Russian child learns that America consists of three large provinces. These are, in no particular order of importance: New York City, Hollywood, and Texas. New York City and Hollywood are well known from movies, as is Texas, which Russians seem to think is the setting for all Western films.

2) The Russian seems unclear as to where any of these provinces are located. I have been asked more than once whether Hollywood is near New York, and have gotten blank stares when I made clear that this is like asking whether St. Petersburg is near Vladivostok.

3) In all three of these states, the people wear ten-gallon hats and drive around in SUVs roughly the size of a woolly mammoth.

4) Americans all drink beer straight from the can. Oddly, this is thought to be chic, as Russian beer comes only in glass bottles. What the attraction is of beer in a can, I cannot say.

5) At one time, it was thought that millions of American children could not go to school because they are too poor. Now that the Iron Curtain has lifted, this image seems to have vanished along with Komsomol membership cards. But given the quality of schools in places like Bushwick, Brooklyn--where the schools cannot be seen as schools at all but rather as somewhat contained war zones--this stereotype may be more accurate than a lot of the others.

6) American border control exists solely for the purpose of making Russians wait around pointlessly for six hours after they deplane at JFK.

7) September 11th does not figure highly in Russian images of America. But at least 9/11 is not linked in the Russian mind to Mossad, nor have I heard anyone suggest that all the Jewish workers in the Twin Towers knew to stay home that day.