From vodka to beloved opera classics – DW's Anastassia Boutsko takes a look at World Cup host Russia's most popular exports and clears up some cultural cliches.
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Russian exports that made it big abroad
From vodka to beloved opera classics – DW's Anastassia Boutsko takes a look at World Cup host Russia's most popular exports and their sometimes European roots.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Metzel
Russian Matryoshka dolls
The popular souvenir from Russia, a lathed wooden doll dressed as a female peasant and containing several smaller versions of herself all the way down to a baby, was invented and designed by the folk craft painter Sergey Malyutin. He was inspired to create the so-called Russian nesting doll in 1896 after receiving a hollow "Daruma" Buddha doll on a journey to Japan with his wife.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/J.Kalaene
Russian vodka
"Russians are heavy drinkers." You've heard that before, right? But it's not completely true. According to the World Health Organization, Russia landed at number 16 in a ranking of countries that drink the most alcohol (11.7 liters of pure alcohol per capita). Germany ranked at number five (13.4 liters), while Moldova topped the list. Nearly half of Russians do not drink alcohol at all.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Tirl
Russian cuisine
In contrast to France or Italy, Russia is a vast country with diverse culinary influences that lacks a distinct national cuisine. In the past, peasant food in the villages would center around seasonal crops, including the beet used in Borscht, while nobles ate European dishes. Russian cuisine today is a hodgepodge. "Herring under fur coat" (pictured) is derived from the Norwegian "Sildesalat."
Image: DW/L. Ganssmann
Russian ballet
Russian culture's calling card came in the form of 18th-century courtly entertainment from France to St. Petersburg's court. French choreographers such as Charles Didelot and later Marius Petipa helped the grand dance art to blossom and founded lasting ballet schools.
Image: Imago/ITAR-TASS
Russian art
Ilya Repin, Ivan Kramskoi, Ivan Shishkin and other renowned artists made up a highly influential movement of Russian realist painters. Their education at the leading Russian art academies lead to permanent stays in Western Europe. Landscape painter Ivan Shishkin, whose Morning in a Pine Forest (pictured) is considered one of the great Russian realist works, studied in Geneva and Düsseldorf.
Image: gemeinfrei
Russian cinema
Russian filmmakers like Sergei Eisenstein (pictured) and later Andrei Tarkovsky are considered radical innovators in film. As the director of the groundbreaking silent film Battleship Potemkin, Eisenstein has continued to have a great influence on filmmakers around the world, with the likes of George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola paying homage to his masterwork.
Image: imago/United Archives International
Russian literature
There is no Russia without Pushkin and Gogol, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. And there are no great Russian writers who did not maintain close ties to European culture across the centuries. Pushkin wrote his letters in French; Gogol spent 10 of his 43 years in Italy and Dostoevsky and Tolstoy were in intense dialogue with the Western humanist tradition.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/ ZDF/Morris Puccio
Russian music
Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov or Tchaikovsky's Pique Dame are world opera classics, and 20th-century symphonies are unthinkable without Shostakovich or Prokofiev. Russian music's special national character developed in the mid-19th century with the founding of the New Russian School of composers that included Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, author of operas like The Tsar's Bride (pictured).
Image: Stephanie Lehmann
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Whichever way you look at it, we Russians often hear that we hail from a land of bears, forests and drunkards. Those of us living abroad and flying to Russia for Christmas are warned against over-consumption of vodka. If my son recounts tales of wild bears attacking our dacha (country house) near Moscow, none of his fourth-grade classmates doubt the veracity of his story.
Have you ever searched for "Russia" in Google Images? In addition to the map of the enormous country, right near the top of the search results comes the epic Cathedral of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat, better known as Saint Basil's Cathedral on Red Square. There's a general perception that this is your average Russian church.
According to recent research, the imposing church was built in the 16th century by Italian architects who also built the Moscow Kremlin and its cathedrals.
The Moscow Kremlin, with Saint Basil's Cathedral to the right, embodies the Russian architectural cliche that actually has Italian Renaissance roots Image: DW/M. Mohseni
It is believed that the builders of the church, which has a foundation stone laid to mark the victory over the Tatars, were inspired by the Italian Renaissance but also by oriental architecture.
The 10 domes stand for the 10 saints who were celebrated during the siege of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible; St. Basil is one of them. In any case, the cathedral is absolutely atypical for Russian church architecture. But like many Russian stereotypes, this one is worth a second look.
Click through the gallery above to explore Russia's most popular exports — which often tie in with the national cliches.
