Dear Language Enthusiast,
Greetings from Transparent Language! As we approach the year 2000 many
questions arise around the issues of Y2K, as well as cultural and religious responses to
the new millennium. Here at Transparent Language, Inc. we thought this would be a good
opportunity for you to look at a contemporary topic and how is managing it. Included below
are some interesting facts and trends relating to the Y2K issues in Russia.
You will also find tips for using RussianNow! appended to this newsletter.
Sincerely,
Transparent Language
www.transparent.com
In English:
One of the interesting social developments we can observe in Russia at the turn of the
millennium is the increasing popularity of non-traditional religions and their penetration
into everyday life. For instance, the Los Angeles-based Church of Scientology is
particularly involved in Moscow's education and social welfare systems. The electronic
news magazine MoJo Wire has found out that the church of Scientology paid for a new
reading room to be built at the Moscow State University, named after Scientology's founder
L. Ron Hubbard, is providing financial aid and curriculum planning to the city's
kindergartens, and is active in the city's drug rehabilitation center, Narconon. Alexander
Asmolov, Moscow's deputy minister of education, explained that after decades of Soviet
rule, the Russians are "willing to support any group that offers a way out of our
spiritual crisis."
One such group is the notorious "Aum Shinrikio" cult, which was responsible for
releasing poisonous Sarin gas in the Tokyo subway system several years ago. This cult,
which honors Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction and regeneration, claimed to have 10,000
followers in Japan and even more--20,000--in Russia.
Spiritual confusion among the population may be understandable when one considers that
even some of the mainstream churches of Russia and the former CIS are receiving
unfavorable press coverage recently due to accusations of their past involvement with the
Soviet secret police, or because of their blatantly anti-Semitic pronouncements. For
example, the electronic news magazine "Russia Today" reported that the Russian
Orthodox Patriarch, Alexi II, has been described in a recent news story in Estonian media
as almost certainly having been a key agent of the KGB for nearly 40 years. "Russia
Today" reported that files from the Estonian KGB suggest that he owed his promotions
within the Church to KGB patronage in his role as "Agent Weasel". The same site,
reporting on events in Belarus, quoted the Minsk Jewish community activist Dr. Yakov Basin
as saying that the Belarussian Orthodox Church continually propagates anti-Semitic myths
in its publications. A recent issue of Tsar Koinae Slova (Word of the Church), for
example, advised readers to "be aware of cruel cults, where human sacrifices are
being practiced," and then identified Hasidic Jews as members of such a cult. Despite
the protests of the Jewish community in Minsk and throughout Belarus, the Church continues
to publish titles like "Murdered by Hebrews," stated Dr. Basin.
Turning to the computer-related issues facing Russia at the turn of the millennium, we
find that, although officially Russia and its neighboring CIS states have calmly reassured
its citizens and the world that the computer failures associated with the Y2K problem will
not have a major impact on the nation, not everyone agrees. The Reuters Information agency
reports that, in a disturbing newsbrief, Serhiy Parashin, head of Ukraine's Energy and
Information research, is warning that computers hit by the millennium bug might paralyze
Ukraine's five nuclear power plants next year. Parashin is the former director of the
troubled Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Some analysts predict that the country's entire
electricity supply could collapse if three or more of Ukraine's five nuclear stations
stopped. It is believed that Ukraine operates more than 20,000 computerized information
systems, and most of them have not been adapted to beat the Y2K bug.
In Russia, the State Telecommunications Committee, which is supposed to coordinate efforts
to check computers in state bodies to prevent failure when the century ends, has stated
that the '2000 problem' cannot be resolved entirely in the remaining time, and that it
would take 50 years to resolve all of the problems associated with Y2K. The American
Chamber of Commerce responded with its assessment that failure to address computer-related
Y2K issues will have a disastrous impact on Russia's economy. Not only the economy, but
also international security may be compromised if Russia fails to prepare for Y2K. U. S.
Defense Secretary William Cohen proposed that America and Russia share early warning
information in order to prevent nuclear weapons being set off accidentally. Russian
Nuclear Power Ministry spokesman Vladislav Petrov, however, did not seem concerned, when
he recently stated that his ministry was content to adopt a "let's wait and see"
attitude. "We don't have any problems yet. We'll deal with the problem in the year
2000," he said.
Interestingly, as experts analyze the Y2K computer problem in greater detail, it turns out
that dates other than January 1st, 2000 may become global problems. For example, two
months after the turn of the millennium, programs could malfunction because they cannot
figure out if 2000 is a leap year. Every four years, an extra day is added to February to
make up for the slight difference between the 365.24 days of the solar year and the usual
365 days of the Gregorian calendar. If a year is evenly divisible by four, it is a leap
year. The extra day brings the two time systems nearly in line with each other, but not
quite. To account for the remaining difference, a lesser-known second rule requires the
calendar to skip a leap year every 100 years. By convention, those non-leap years occur at
the turn of centuries, such as 1700, 1800 and 1900. Many programmers were aware of the
second rule and wrote their programs to accommodate it. But, unfortunately, there is a
third rule to accommodate the slight distinction between the solar year and Gregorian
calendar: every four hundred years, a non-leap year becomes a leap year. So, 2000 is a
leap year. And, according to experts, it's going to be a problem for those who haven't set
their calendars accordingly.
Tips for RussianNow!
The following are some hints to help maximize your use of Russian Now!
Don't miss the Grammar information in the Grammar Window in the lower right-hand corner of
the screen! This window tells you the part of speech of the selected word in the Title,
along with other information.
LanguageNow! also includes a special Grammar Basics file to help you focus on grammar. To
open it, choose 'Reference / Grammar Basics' to see the first page of Grammar Basics, or
select a word in the Title, click the 'Word Tools' button, and select a grammar topic
which applies to that word to go directly to the appropriate topic.
