The practice of printing titles top-to-bottom vs. bottom-to-top seems to be more than a Western Europe vs. Eastern Europe thing, though, because French books (and I think German as well) are printed bottom-to-top just like Russian books.
I really don't care, either, except that it can lead to discomfort when one is browsing a mixed shelf, say at book sale.
I've only seen Top-To-Bottom-Spines on US-Books so far. Also agree with the point, that if a book is lying face-up there's no need for readable spine-text. If it's face-down, there is.
All English-language books I've ever seen beside foreign-language books (so that I could notice the distinction) read from top to bottom. It's not just the US.
I thought that modern Russian literature is generally thought of as being kick-started by Pushkin and his generation.
Hence literary Russian is very heavy with borrowings from French, which became so ingrained into the fabric of the language that native speakers don't even notice.