Laura Pickens, an American who moved to the southern Russian city of Krasnodar in 2009, says 17 years in the country have left her considering herself half-Russian, even as drone attacks and air raid sirens now punctuate her daily life. She told the Russian outlet Lenta.ru that neither the pandemic lockdown, the loss of her business nor the war has made her doubt that Russia is her home.
Pickens was born in the United States in 1981, during the final years of the Soviet Union. She said her school lessons portrayed the USSR as an "evil empire" of bread queues and a backward regime, but she always suspected there was more to the story. At 26 she met her future first husband, a Russian, and immersed herself in the Russian community in the US before relocating to Krasnodar with him in 2009. The marriage later ended, but she chose to stay, learn the language, and raise her two sons, who were born in a standard Russian maternity hospital.
Learning Russian in bars, not classrooms
Pickens said she never attended a single Russian class, learning instead through conversation, including in bars, where she said embarrassment faded after a drink and people simply talked. She said she now reads Russian news and social media fluently but still struggles with writing and mixes up grammatical cases. She has not read Russian classics in the original language, she said, but has read some in translation so her sons, who she considers both American and Russian, know their heritage. Her favourite Russian classic, she said, is Mikhail Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita."
Pickens works as a speaking coach and said she has logged more than 10,000 hours of conversation with Russian clients, giving her deep insight into how they see their own culture and literature even without having read every book herself.
Bureaucracy then and now
She described Krasnodar in 2009 as still operating on Soviet-style logic, where everything ran on the principle of "because it must," with no one quite sure why. Registering her migration documents then meant visiting separate buildings for the migration office, medical tests and a drug test, she said, recalling taking a drug test in a plastic outdoor toilet, pregnant, under blazing sun, with instructions scrawled on handwritten notices. Today, she said, Krasnodar's migration centre occupies a former shopping mall car park converted into a single building where applicants move from window to window using an electronic queue, fully linked to Russia's Gosuslugi digital services portal. The bigger shift, she said, was in attitude: from indifference toward migrants and workers to an explicit focus on customer experience, a change she said is visible even in shops, where staff now ask how they can help.
Individualism versus the collective
Asked about the biggest difference between Russians and Americans, Pickens pointed to individualism, which she said Americans are taught is the source of innovation, citing entrepreneur Elon Musk as a product of the American dream of standing out, including through unusual baby names. She said Russia, by contrast, still carries a Soviet-era belief that the group matters more than the individual, alongside a stronger pull toward conformity and a narrower, classical standard of beauty than in the US. She described a Russian client who moved to Miami and was startled to find another woman on her phone in a sauna, a moment Pickens called a perfect illustration of the cultural gap.
Two Russian marriages, one decision
Pickens has had two Russian husbands and two divorces. She said she respects many Russian men but struggled in marriage because she grew up with a vocabulary for discussing emotions that her husbands lacked, describing their communication style as rigid and authoritarian. After her second divorce she decided to stop dating Russian men, a deliberate choice, and is now with an Australian partner. She said Russian hospitality is nonetheless overwhelming, joking that when she sends her boyfriend on the train from Moscow to Krasnodar, Russian men "adopt" him, plying him with vodka, sausage and card games until he arrives drunk, sweaty and with new best friends.
Feeling Russian abroad
Pickens said she discovered how Russian she had become during a visit to friends in Australia, where she noticed herself giving blunt, honest feedback in the Russian style rather than softening it in the Western way, and being seen by others as cold. She said she and Australians share cultural references but that they will never understand her daily life the way her Russian friends do. She also described adjusting her appearance to context: insisting her Australian boyfriend wear a proper shirt instead of a graphic T-shirt in Istanbul, then dressing more casually herself for Australia.
Citizenship, war and a falling ruble
Pickens is not yet a Russian citizen but said she is in the process of applying for citizenship and considers herself half-Russian, noting her sons were born in Russia. She said she was in the country when the ruble collapsed against the dollar, which she said rose from 30 to as high as 120 rubles, when she lost her business in March 2022, when she lived through Covid lockdowns, and now as drone raids and air alerts occur. She said she has not been to the United States in 14 years and considers Russia her home.
She recalled a trip to Serbia where she said graffiti against NATO and the United States made her aware, as an American, of the lasting anger over Western influence in the region in the 1990s, while as someone who has lived through drone attacks and sirens in Russia, she felt she could relate to Serbians in a way most Americans could not.
Fatalism, resilience and a system that works despite itself
Pickens said Russian fatalism unsettled her when she first saw people crossing streets without looking, reasoning that fate would decide their outcome. Over time, she said, living under drone attacks and sirens changed her view, since it taught her that some things cannot be controlled no matter what one does, making the same fatalism a way of coping rather than surrender. She said the same people who do not look both ways before crossing are remarkably resourceful, a combination she described, citing a line she attributed to Ronald Reagan, as fitting Russia being "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."
She also called Russia, despite being formally run by men, a functional matriarchy in practice, and said the country cannot be understood without its absurdity. As an example, she cited a school requirement that parents register on the messaging platform Sferum, where neither parents nor teachers understood how or why, only that it was mandatory. She also described being unable to drive her son, who has arthritis, onto hospital grounds for admission until a security guard let the car through for 100 rubles in cash.
A separate encounter with a plumber, she said, involved him arriving within seven minutes but bringing old, broken equipment, shouting instructions at her while sewage flooded the bathroom, and being paid afterward even though the visit was officially free.
Pickens said the Russian phrase "everything will be fine" is not naive optimism but closer to an incantation, a refusal to let hardship and absurdity ruin one's mood, noting that Russian classic literature rarely ends happily, unlike American stories. She also praised Russian humour, saying it grows directly out of absurdity and often does not translate.
