Russian Blog

The Russian blog community is a fascinating world of general discussions, private reflections and random efforts to earn an extra ruble or two – in short, just like in all other blog communities around the world. In Russia there’s still some ambivalence about what to exactly call this ‘action’ (once again we’re back at the beloved subject of Russian verbs, and now for some more profound reflections, as I promised last week). Blogs are usually visible in many other media outlets in Russia, most of all in magazines and papers, for example «Русский репортёр» always reserves at least a whole section just for blog comments on some current affair. For a long time I didn’t understand what the word «ЖЖ» meant, which I met often in different contexts, as I couldn’t for all my life imagine what these two letters stood for. Later it was explained to me that it stood for «живой журнал» [live journal] which is a straight translation of the most popular blogging site’s English name into Russian – www.livejournal.ru. But is there any verb for ‘to blog’ in Russian? Mostly when I heard Russians speak of this new action, they called it «вести дневник он-лайн (или по интернету)» [to keep a journal on-line (or on the internet)], it was only later that the English word made it into the Russian language completely - «блог» [blog]. Since saying the whole sentence above every time you’ve blogged or when you’re about to blog takes a lot of time and effort, I started to shorten it down to «блоговать» [“to blog”] and for a long time, almost six months now, have I been thinking that this creation was something all of my own. Little did I know that many other Russians, just like myself, blog too much and too frequently to say more than one word, and that discussions about this new verb have been going on for sometime now. Read more about that here and here. As of yet it is unsure when this new word is going to become an official part of the «великий и могучий» Russian language, as it is a rather conservative tongue. But one can always hope that the following will become a common thing to be heard both in villages on the Don and in the suburbs of Saint Petersburg: «я блогую, ты блогуешь, он блогует, мы блогуем, вы блогуете, они блогуют».

Everyone who’s read «Мастер и Маргарита» [“The Master and Margarita”], or perhaps only seen one of the many movies or TV-shows based on this wonderful fantastic novel (published first only in 1967, in an English translation, despite it’s author finishing writing it before his early death in 1940), knows that Михаил Афанасьевич Булгаков [Mikhail Afanasevich Bulgakov, born in Kiev 1891] is the man in Russian 20th century literature. I don’t know about you, dear readers, but personally I laughed all the way from page one of his masterpiece up until the very end, because his humor is just my kind of humor (though not everyone agrees with me and Bulgakov, I suppose and I understand this; one of my Russian friends, for example, said he couldn’t take it anymore after the first thirty pages, and put it down to never take it up again). Myself, I enjoyed everything about the book – the spicy Soviet satire, the peculiar episodes with Yeshua and Pilate (about which my roommate here in Yekaterinburg, an American girl from Minneapolis, receiving her Bachelor Degree in Russian Literature at Ural State next week, wrote her graduation thesis), and especially Margarita flying naked over Moscow. Now, as it happens Bulgakov didn’t just write one novel, even though he is mainly remembered by world literature for giving it a devil by the name of professor Woland, who arrives in Moscow ‘to try to do some good’, he also wrote other books, as well as many plays and short stories. By profession he was a doctor, something rather common among Russian writers, for example, Антон Павлович Чехов [Anton Pavlovich Chekhov] was also a doctor. Not too long ago I came across one of Bulgakov’s shorter works of fiction, «Собачье сердце» [“Heart of a Dog”], it is more like a novella than a novel, which is why I read it both fast and with great enjoyment. It was written in 1925, but not published in Russia until 1988, due to containing some rather curried criticism of Soviet society in the 1920’s. Not long after it was published, a movie was made based on it, read about it in Russian here and in English here. Almost directly after I finished reading the novella I watched the movie, something I can highly recommend, because since Bulgakov worked and wrote for the theater most of his life, it wasn’t necessary to change any of the dialogue in the book for the movie script – that’s how much of the man Bulgakov was!

According to the following article, «Развитию России мешают пять проблем» [The development of Russia is hindered by five problems], the Russian economy will become the sixth largest in the world by the end of this year. This optimistic opinion was shared with the public on the international economics forum during past week by Russia’s first vice-premier Игорь Шувалов [Igor Shuvalov]. But in order for this to happen, Russia must fight five problems, he says, and these are:

When I in my last post stated that, according to the vice-premier of Russia, this country has five problems getting in the way of its development, one reader (thank you, Stas!) brought it to my attention that, initially, Russia only had two problems. And initially they were called «беды» [trouble, singular form «беда»] instead of the modern «проблема» [problem]. Already sometime during the first half of the 19th century, one classic Russian writer (philogy as well as history scholars are still undecided if it was Пушкин [Pushkin], or Гоголь [Gogol], or perhaps Карамзин [Karamzin] who said it first) stated that «В России две беды: дороги и дураки» [In Russia there are two troubles: roads and stupid people]. A couple of years ago, while on a train somewhere in Siberia, I heard someone add to this the following: «И одна ремонтирует другую» [And one is fixing the other]. I found an interesting article in Russian about this here, which deals mostly with explaining the problem of bad roads in Russia. Though bad roads may be an exclusively Russian thing (and bad news for all of us Russophiles who dream of roadtripping from coast to coast instead of taking the train), I must say that stupid people are common in most places…

One of you readers commented a couple of posts ago that one of the most helpful works when it comes to trying to understand Russia is Orlando Figes’ “Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia” (1998). Clearly, I cannot argue with this, as I have not yet had the pleasure to read it, but I intend to do so as soon as I can get my hands on it – for some reason or other, English-language books are still rather scarce in most Russian cities (unless you’re looking for easy-read classics printed in Russia for schoolkids). But I have read many good reviews concerning this work, like this one for example, and everyone I know who’s read it speaks warmly of it. Another good work on the history of Russian culture is “Between Heaven and Hell: The Story of a Thousand Years of Artistic Life in Russia” (2002) by W. Bruce Lincoln, which I wish I could recommend to you along with some remarks of my own, but I must once again confess that neither have I read this one. As always, I very much intend to, if I can only get a hold of it, that is. What kind of post is this today, then? Only me talking about things that I have only heard about and only know «заочно» [‘in absentia’, or in this case ‘from other people’], without bringing anything of my own to the table? «Нет, дамы и господа!» [No, ladies and gentlemen!] You know I’d never do that kind of thing, not to you and not to this blog. Besides, I’m always full of ‘opinions’, no matter what the subject is, even more so when it comes to ‘Rossiya’. The third (or first, depending on how you count) most influential work on Russian cultural history, is “The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture” by James H. Billington. Despite being written already back in 1966, long before the ‘tumbling down’ of the USSR, it contains many solid facts and lots of insightful reflections still as fresh today as they were forty years ago. The author of this immense work (which stretches over 597 pages, and then includes almost 200 pages of precise footnotes, ending with an extensive index of all the people, works, places, ideas, and so on and so forth mentioned in it – making it the perfect academic work for anyone who’s always dreamed of letting out their inner Russian scholar and go crazy!), has a very impressive biography, I must say. Check it out on wikipedia – and try count just how many titles this man has earned during his long and fruitful career. There’s even a Russian version of it!

Yesterday I got back from Moscow, after spending four turbulent days in the capitol of the Russian Federation, and I'm very sorry for not having blogged while being there. In general I'm sorry for not blogging lately, but I promise to redeem myself very soon. I wanted to blog while in Moscow, because it is after all a more exciting place than the Urals, but I had very little free time. I wasn't there just for the pure fun of it, I'm afraid: I had to pass three finals in Russian Literature from my Swedish university at the Swedish Embassy there. This took nine hours all in all, six on Monday and three on Tuesday. After that I did have some time to enjoy the capitol, and I walked around on Red Square (for the second time in my life!) with all the other foreign tourists, who I think joined me as I made my way with the crowd toward Old Arbat Street, and then onto New Arbat Street. Moscow is not Russia, not at all and becoming less like the rest of the country every day, but it is one of those few places on Earth which you simply MUST visit at least once in life! It's such a wonderfully beautiful mix of new and old, cheap and expensive, full of crazy souvenirs, like expensive yet fake fur hats and old USSR memorabilia being sold everywhere you go. I failed to catch a glimpse of Lenin, though - I didn't get to Red Square until 2 p.m., and the good old communist closes at 1 p.m. On Sunday, the day after I flew in and the one day I had all to myself, I went to the Dostoevsky Museum. I intend to write about this tomorrow, because the visit deserves a post of its own. Other than that, all I did was take advantage of drinking good, Western style (though over-priced) big mugs of black filter coffee at different coffee shops and looking at people (20 million inhabitants make a diverse and splendidly mixed crowd, especially on the metro) and buildings and cars. I also spent a large amount of time window shopping - Moscow is the place to go if you want some kind of - any kind of - luxury item. And I know I can't buy anything, but a girl can always dream...

Maybe it doesn’t come as any surprise, because I haven’t tried to hide it, as well as not to flaunt it too much, but today is the day for me to come out of the closet and confess – yes, I’ve got it bad for Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский [Fyodor Michailovich Dostoevsky]. I guess everyone knows by now that my mayor at Ural State is Russian literature, but I figure I should probably make very clear that I have chosen to narrow down my scope to the author of such classic novels as «Преступление и наказание» [“Crime and Punishment”], «Братья Карамазовы» [“The Brothers Karamazov”] and «Идиот» [“The Idiot”]. To tell you the truth, I could write a post about Dostoevsky every single day. My former boss at the Dostoevsky Museum in Omsk (Siberia!), where I worked as a guide and translator for a year, Виктор Вайнерман [Viktor Wainerman], actually wrote a book a couple of years back with a very similar concept – «Достоевский на каждый день» [“Dostoevsky For Every Day”]. And after all, what would Russia be without that wonderful literature and those famous writers? In Russia writers are highly respected by society, and classic writers (i.e. already deceased ones) are treated with special care. This respect and special care has generated a passion among government officials for making museums of writers’ old apartments or other places where they spent some time, to exhibit their old belongings to the public there and create a space where scholars can study their works as well as gather other scholars together a couple of times a year for conferences. In Russia there are six Dostoevsky Museums – in Saint Petersburg (located in his last apartment), in Старая Русса [Staraya Russa] (where “Brothers Karamazov” was written), in Даровое [Darovoe] (the village outside of Moscow owned by Dostoevsky’s parents), in Новокузнецк [Novokuznetsk] (in Siberia, where he was first married), in Omsk (where he spent four years in prison) and in Moscow (in the apartment where he was born and grew up). There is also a Dostoevsky Museum in what is now Kazakhstan, in the town of Семипалатинск [Semipalatinsk], now known as Семей [Semej], where he spent a good five years, first as a soldier and later as an officer. It was also there he fell in love with his first wife. As you can imagine, every museum has a very limited amount of authentic objects, as there just isn’t that much to go around. Still each of them tries to stay true to the time and spirit of Mr. D, furnishing their museums with 19th century items and different editions of his works, some in Russian and some in other languages. The museum with the most authentic artifacts is in Moscow, naturally so because his widow moved to Moscow after his death and preferred to have his personal belongings, like his glasses and his pen, close at hand. And this was the museum I visited for the first time a week ago.

[Sometimes I write witty articles about Russia for the biggest daily paper in my hometown of Gothenburg, Sweden. I thought I’d share a translation of my latest one with you.]

In the middle of a hot June night I woke up from my innocent Swedish sleep to see the Ural Mountains on fire. Inhuman screaming came from all around and mixed with shots and blasts and high-pitched beeps from cars honking their horns relentlessly below my window. The air, usually heavy with radiation in this neck of the woods, was loaded thick with patriotism and it didn’t take me long to realize that the reason wasn’t war, but soccer. The Russians had beaten the Swedes. Soon after this my Russian friends and acquaintances started harassing my cell phone with patronizing sms’s and condescending excuses, all of which I saw through immediately. Would the country that placed its flag on the bottom of Antarctica ever be able to fool me? After four years here I know their intentions, I if anyone am aware of their plans, and its high time for the rest of you to grasp what’s about to happen:

Russia is going to take over the world.

Since today is THE day of Russia’s big soccer match against Spain [in a matter of hours!], while 20 times more Russian flags are being sold than usually at this time of the year, I thought we should start our discussion about «глаголы движения» [verbs of motion] with one of the more appropriate verbs: «бежать» [to run]. This is a verb of motion that’s определённо [specific], which means that it describes a motion в определённую сторону [in a specific direction]. It has a ‘friend’, let’s call it that, like all other verbs of motion, in this case it’s «бегать», which is неопределённо [unspecific] and stands for a motion в разные стороны [in different directions]. Each and every motion in Russian is described in verb couples like this one (or verb-friends, if you may). Let’s see if we can use this verb in a suitable soccer situation: «Футболисты бегают по футбольному полю» [The soccer players are running (around) on the soccer field]. That’s a movement that’s unspecific, as they’re plainly chasing a little ball around and not really moving in any definite direction. The specific variant of this movement could be «Футболисты бегут к воротам» [The soccer players are running toward the goal], since they sometimes go forward just once, in one direction, without coming back, only to score a goal once. Even though one could of course add to this, seemingly simple verbs, an abudance of different prefixes and have a field day explaining all sorts of activities in any way imaginable, here there and back again, but I’m thinking we are to learn how to walk before we run. That’s why I think we should, logically, go back and take on the verb couple «ходить» [to walk (around, there and back again)] and «идти» [to walk (in a specific direction, only once and not back again)].