What am I talking about?

There are a lot of new readers on here since I posted last, so, first off let me thank everyone for being here. It means a lot to me that people I have not seen in years have decided to follow this blog. The fact that there are 21 of you so far will keep me writing well. If you have a comment or question, please post it. I want this to be something people really participate in.
Since so many of you signed up recently, you may miss the first post. That would be a mistake.
Still, let me do some more explaining about the Russian Smile, which has to have popped up now and again in certain individuals throughout history, but still I believe this may be the only time in history that it has been an identifiable, widespread phenomenon.
To explain what causes the Russian Smile, it will help to think about where you don't find it. In many parts of India, innumeracy is common, with the result that some landlords hold their tenants' families in hereditary debt slavery, but when I ask people who have been to India whether they've seen a crooked smile with shining eyes, they don't know what I mean, whereas travelers in Eastern Europe or in areas of the US with lots of immigrants from former Communist countries start with recognition when I describe the Russian Smile. If you're born into a long, unbroken line of credulous debtors, you will be one, too and won't smile bitterly at your life. Shock is a key element in the Smile.
Now think of Rwanda or Sierra Leone. I suspect that no one there smiles about what has happened there, because it is too horrible for sarcasm and no one is trying to justify those actions with overly demanding moral dictates like Communism did.
But Russia is a special place with a comfortable level of discomfort, where until 1991 there was one loud and one quiet voice in society about how things should be, and the people who reached maturity when the loud voice was still talking are the ones most apt to Smile.
I wonder what will happen to the Smile when everyone of that generation is dead and gone, and see myself as an archiver or preservationist of what seems to be a unique gesture in history.
There is dissatisfaction, and there is disilusionment, which usually comes after someone has a moment of shocking insight that explains everything that led up to the shock.
The idea that the Smile will die when the last Russian now in his mid-30's is gone is not a certainty, even though the unique conditions of sudden, mass disilusionment first in the messianic state religion of the USSR then in the botched liberalism that came after it, will never be repeated. Since I don't know the science on kids' imitation of their parents' facial expressions, I don't know where the Smile is heading.
Until now I have spoken of the Smile in an abstract way. I could try to just describe this situation and that so everyone can imagine how it looks, but in order to really understand the Smile you need to know what led up to it. That's what I'll use this blog for, although in the next post I'll take a complete detour.