Claims about Russian women (and men)

A trained observer of psychology, Alina had made careful note of the strategies that seemed to work for these gazelle-like young women. For example: “A man values a woman a lot more if she is constantly dragging presents out of him,” she said, “and he values her a lot more than the woman who says, ‘No, no, no, I don’t need anything.’ ” Alina cradled her teacup, half awestruck. “They get everything this way,” she said. “I think that these things should be explained to girls in childhood. It’s very important. And it doesn’t matter if the girl is smart or not, because you can have a girl who goes to university and gets a Ph.D. and is tremendously accomplished but then loses to these pretty young things who will take away her husband before she can count to three.”

Here is more from Julia Ioffe in The New Yorker, interesting throughout.