Russian Blog

Wisdom is meant to be shared with others. No piece of advice given to me proved to be so wise in regards to learning Russian as the one I am about to share with you today. Back in the days when I was biding my time in Sweden after studying one semester in Saint Petersburg and before heading out into the wild unknown in Siberia, I managed to spend an entire week attending classes in Russian Language at Gothenburg University’s Department of Slavic Languages. (Little did I know back then that I was to receive my Bachelor from that very same department roughly three years later without attending any more classes, but that’s a whole other story!) The professor who taught Russian grammar told us this during our first class: “If you’re only going to buy one book about Russian language while in Russia, let it be a «толковый словарь русского языка» [Explanatory Dictionary of Russian Language], and I bet you’ll never regret it.” I put his words to the test as soon as I arrived in Omsk and the first thing I aquired at the book store was a big green dictionary of some 940 pages by С. И. Ожегов and Н. Ю. Шведова for 220 rubles. It proved to come in handy so often that I brought it with me back home to Sweden, and bought yet another one just like it when I moved to Yekaterinburg, this time black and for 10 rubles less. If you’re going to Russia, be it for a short period of time or to study a couple of months at a Russian university, it is now also my most wise advice for you to bring one of these babies back home with you.

Despite making the unforgivable mistake of forgetting to post my text to go with the picture in the last post, it still received more attention than all the other recent, more grammar-related posts. After all, even though we'd all really like to speak better Russian, it is no secret any more that it is this country's literature and writers that make our hearts beat a little bit faster. And after reading through your comments on the death of Александр Исаевич Солженицын [Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn] I realized that we all have a personal relationship with this writer, our own point of view on him, a love affair of sorts with his works. I remember when I first started reading «Один день Ивана Денисовича» [“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”] in February 2005, just after arriving in Omsk, and the family that I lived with caught a glimpse of it. The mother's first reaction was to ask me: «Почему ты читаешь эту книгу? Это очень грустная книга.» [“Why are you reading this book? It is a very sad book.”] I tried to explain to her that it was interesting to me, that I wanted to know about the past and that I had heard many things about the book, as well as about its author. My words didn't make any difference to her, as she seemed to have made her mind up about him a long time ago about him – he was not her cup of tea (today [070808] Moscow Times published an interesting piece that throws some light upon how Russians themselves look at Solzhenitsyn: "Solzhenitsyn's Troubled Prophetic Mission"). As for me, Solzhenitsyn holds a special place in my heart not so much for what he wrote, but for what he meant to my grandmother. She owned all of his books in Swedish, and when she passed away last year I was left with his entire production in translation. I made a promise to myself to read them all in time, but for now he is of importance to me mostly because he was my grandmother's favorite writer.

As I was sitting down to write today's post about grammar (the subject was actually rather interesting, and something that could be useful for most, but I guess it's nothing 'pressing', as it could probably wait a day or two) I surfed through my usual Russian language news sites, and came across many horrendous titles about the current war. And I come to wonder, even though I should know; «Что происходит в Грузии?» [what's going on in Georgia?] What strikes me the most is the difference between what the Russian media writes about it, and what you can read in, for example, English-language papers such as The Moscow Times. Are there really two wars? In one the Russians are bombing Georgia, and in the other defending themselves from being bombed by Georgia? In this confusion I thought I would turn to you, dear readers, and ask a very important question - where do you go to read Russian news? Do you visit Moscow Times? Or do you prefer Russia Today? Maybe you read Russian papers online, like Комсомольская правда, Известия or Русский репортёр? What English-language sources are best for information about Russia? In a situation as this one it would be good to know where you, Russophiles like me, turn for information. It is of course not imperative to have any kind of point of view, or even opinion, on this conflict, as it is very complicated, but I would like to know what kind of sites, maybe bloggs you read in times like these. This article that I found today, called "Conflict Opens Front In Media", I can highly recommend to anyone who'd like to read something about how the war is portrayed on Russian TV.

During the spring of 2008 positive images of Russia dominated the media worldwide. So much was coming from Russia that was postive, and I think I'm far from alone when I honestly say that it makes me feel sad to see everything change so drastically. Beacuse of a war. And I can't ignore this war - I'm going back to Russia in less than three weeks - I'll have to go right through it. It doesn't matter "who" started it. What matters is that this war very fast changed how Russia is percieved in the world today. It took many years for the country to work itself up to getting all that good 'pr' it got during this year. And now it will take even longer to get it back. The picture above I found in a post called "Ossetia" on EnglishRussia. (The pictures posted there are originally from a site with the name "Альманах: Искусство войны" [Almanac: The Art of War]). It caught my attention because the banner in it contained the sentence "Год приднестровья в Южной Осетии" [The Year of transdniestria in South Ossetia]. I had never come across the word приднестровье before, let alone the English translation of it. What does transdniestra mean? Of course my first reaction was to run as fast as I could to wikipedia, which explained it to me in the following terms: "Transnistria, also known as Trans-Dniester, Transdniestria, and Pridnestrovie (full name: Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic), is a breakaway republic within the internationally recognised borders of Moldova, with the official status of an autonomous territory." The Russian version of the article is pretty much the same. And I guess there is no need for me to elaborate on why this banner is hanging between trees across a street in South Ossetia.

Да, дамы и господа [Yes, ladies and gentlemen] – it's been too long since a classic picturepost was posted in this blog. That’s why I thought I’d take today to post a couple of pictures of the things I miss most about Russia, well aware that this will most likely make it rather biased. So be it! After almost two months away from the Motherland, I am craving all things Russian and can’t wait to go back. Yes, Sweden is good (as are many other Western countries, like the Netherlands and USA, for example) – streets and air are clean, there is always toilet paper in public restrooms, people excuse themselves when YOU bump into them, you can pay with your creditcard everywhere (even in church!) and order prevails in all areas of life and society. In other words – скучно [it is boring]! After all, can a fellow Russophile fail to understand why I wake up craving thick, deep red borsh with smetana and cheap tickets to see Swan Lake in the middle of the night? No, I didn’t think so. So here it is – «Русские вещи, по которым я скучаю» [Russian things that I miss]:

It has happened again, and this time it happened rather suddenly – I found something in Russian language that I haven’t given much thought to as of late but which amused me to such an extreme that I could not refrain from sharing it with you all. The other day I was browsing through a thick book on Russian grammar in Norwegian [it is one of those eccentric, unexplainable twists of fate that Norway should be the country to produce the best grammar book of Russian for people with a Scandinavian language as their mother tongue, because they truly have, sometimes I even wonder if it’s not the best book of Russian grammar in the whole world, that’s how good it is, this Russisk grammatikk by Terje Mathiassen. Plus, Norwegian is a hilarious language, just as amusing to read as Ukrainan is to a Russian, I suppose] and it dawned on me that I have never discussed the very intriguing «сравнительная степень прилагательных» [comparative of adjectives] here. How bizarre! How shameful! «Стыдно мне» [I’m ashamed] or even «стыд и срам!» [(for) shame!], as a native of Russian would be sure to put it, after making further aqientence with this my slip-up. Maybe you’re asking yourself, what’s the big deal? What could possibly be so interesting (though I would personally in this case use ‘fascinating’) about dealing a little bit with the comparative of adjectives? Well, if it sometimes gets as complicated as ‘this book is good, but this book is better’ in English, then who knows just how linguistically juicy things could get in an advanced Slavic language?

My last post may or may not have been a little too optimistic [the comparative got me carried away there for a moment], something I intend to make up for today with a more serious post on a gloomier subject. As I have to read my favorite Russian paper online these days, I stumbled on an article this morning that made me very sad: «Не все дома» [this article has made use of an idiom in the title, which can be translated literally – “Not everybody is home” (as is what I suppose the author of the text was going for) – or with English idioms of the same kind, such as ‘nobody’s home’, ‘not all there’, ‘to be gone in the upper storey’, ‘to not have all the horses in the stable’, ‘not the brightest crayon in the box’, ‘to be eighteen bob in the pound’ and so forth]. The article is about how the Russian tradition of «идти в гости (к кому-нибудь)» [visit, pay a visit, go on a visit (to someone)] is dying as Russians are more inclined these days to meet up with friends in coffee shops. To a person like me, who can’t come up with anything I love more than being invited over to someone else’s house (this is perhaps mostly due to my Swedish heritage, where being invited over always includes a complete tour of the home, or often house, including all private spaces) this is nothing but a pure disaster. Especially since the Russian way of ‘going as a guest’ includes much more than it generally does in the west – in Russia when they invite you for a cup of tea, that’s not all they have in mind. What they have in mind may perhaps be a cup of tea, but that’s far from everything there is to it; more likely you’ll be treated to a huge dinner that will stretch out into infinity with many courses and wine and then deserts and coffee and vodka and cucumbers and deeply intriguing conversations on life, death, politics, love and the meaning of it all. The article begins as follows:

Though I'm sure that most of you have already heard about, or perhaps even seen, this video before, I decided to opt for something a little bit easier as I did the first video post ever on this blog (and incidentially, also my first video post ever!). The other day, while browsing Siberian Light, I came across a post of theirs with a couple of videos called "A musical tribute to Russia's leaders" and it all came back to me - I remember first hearing this song sometime during last spring. Of course it is hard for anyone who a) is not a woman or b) nor a Russian and c) do not have a thing for blonde stern-looking men in sharp suits who like to do sports and fix up rough economies to understand this appeal of Владимир Владимирович. I can't say I'm behind him politically, but I blame the fact that I wouldn't mind having him around the house once in a while to screw in lightbulbes and such on being part of the 'weaker' sex...

Here are the lyrics in Russian as well as English.