I’m female (American) and lived in Russia for several years in the 1990s. I’m not terribly surprised at women’s expectations that a man will help them with their bags, because without fail, any man I was ever with in Russia would pretty much wrestle my bag out of my hand to carry it for me. As an American and a particularly independent person, I found this jarring and slightly annoying at first, but I got used to it and learned to expect it and not be bothered by it. These days, if someone wants to pull my bag out of the overhead for me, I let him (although with the warning that it’s heavy!)

I think you’re just dealing with a “when in Rome” situation here, and you might as well just go with the flow rather than trying to impose your own cultural expectations/attitudes on an entire population of people that do not share them. Will it kill you to help? Or even hurt you? It might actually change your own attitude about the value (to yourself) of being proactively helpful to strangers; it often makes you feel like a better person after you do it.

I see two distinct issues here: the cultural expectation and the implicit demand for help in the absence of a polite request. To me, it's rude to just look at the person and the bag or to order someone to help, but a polite request is different, although I can understand the recipient of such a request saying no for whatever reason and maybe more so if the requester is not the proverbial little old lady or seems to have too much carry on stuff anyway.