When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the communications trade union for
which I then worked received several delegations from the emergent nations and
we ran courses for them on how market economies operated and how free
collective bargaining was conducted. As is my practice when lecturing to
foreign audiences, I had my visual aids translated into the vernacular, so I
used overhead slides in Russian, although of course I spoke in English and had
an interpreter.
I cannot read the cyrillic alphabet and know very little Russian, so I just
worked through my slides in order. However, there came a point when I could
tell from the statistical data on the latest slide that, for the previous ten
minutes, I had been speaking to the wrong slide. British students would have
pointed this out in seconds, but none of the Russians had said a word.
I was perplexed and asked why nobody had told me that I had been speaking to
the wrong slide. Eventually one brave soul volunteered an answer and the
interpreter translated: "In our country, no one challenges the
teacher".