Kul'turnyi assimiliator: Trening adaptatsii k zhizni v Sankt-Peterburge [Culture Assimilator: Training of Adaptation to the Life in Saint Petersburg] (review)

This book contains the results of empirical research conducted by the scholars of the Faculty of Sociology, St. Petersburg State University, under the support of the Russian Foundation for the Humanities and the Saint Petersburg City Administration within the program "The Russian Foundation for Humanities, Saint Petersburg, 2008." The main objective of the book is to assist different migrant groups in adapting to professional and everyday life in a large Russian city. Nowadays, large Russian cities can be considered locales of intercultural contacts. According to the Russia Federal Agency for Tourism, 6.825 million people from the CIS (the Commonwealth of Independent States) and 3.769 million people from other foreign countries arrived in Russia during 2007. St. Petersburg is the major destination for these people as it is a dynamic and developing economic, cultural, and educational center. The number of multinationals and joint ventures staff, as well as foreign students and locals married to foreigners and living in St. Petersburg, has been continuously increasing. Many foreigners expect to raise their income and standard of living in St. Petersburg. All the categories of people mentioned above opt for various acculturation strategies depending on the economic, social, and cultural resources they possess. However, all of them go through a similar process of adapting to the socio-cultural environment of the Russian metropolis. The common experience they share enabled the authors to develop a basic training program for overseas citizens aimed at optimizing their acculturation and boosting the efficiency of international cooperation.

The book consists of two parts. The first part presents the training program "Kul'turnyi assimiliator kak sredstvo adaptatsii inostrannykh grazhdan k zhizni v rossiiskom megapolis. (na primere Sankt-Peterburga)" [Culture Assimilator as a Way of Adaptation by Foreigners to Life in a Russian Megalopolis (For Example, St. Petersburg)] (by R. K. Tangalycheva). The authors of the training program employed the methodology of a general culture assimilator by R. W. Brislin and K. Cushner. This simulator is based on 18 themes faced by migrants during the period of their adaptation. Culture assimilators introduce a number of critical incidents or short stories that bring people from different cultures together to solve a problem. Traditionally, a reader is presented with four to five alternative choices to explain problems and asked to select the one that best suits the situation from the host culture's point of view. The researchers also focused on various approaches to the study of acculturation problems, especially the one suggested by J. Berry who elaborated four "acculturation strategies": assimilation, separation, marginalization, and integration.

Seventy people from five regions and thirty-two countries were involved in the research. The researchers conducted twenty-five expert interviews and classified the participants into six focus groups. Executives of foreign companies and diplomatic services' functionaries, high profile foreign professors and instructors of foreign languages, and post-graduate students were involved as experts. All of these people have been living and working/studying in St. Petersburg for at least three years and speak Russian fluently. The groups of interviewees were formed in the following way: two groups of students and post graduate students studying at St. Petersburg universities and institutes; two groups of employees of multinational and joint ventures; one group of labor migrants; and one group of persons married to foreign citizens and permanently residing with their spouses in St. Petersburg.

The second part of the book is authored by N. A. Golovin, I. J. Guliaeva, A. S. Voronina, O. S. Krasnenko, I. J. Kretser, R. K. Tangalycheva, E. J. Terebilova, A. M. Khokhlova, and L. I. Iatina. It presents the elaborate training program which includes 139 critical incidents grouped under 6 thematic headings. Under the heading "Business" there are situations concerning distribution of profit, admittance of employees, negotiations, the role of informal relationships, attitudes toward...