Posts from April 2008

Yeltsin gets a street, Dostoevsky gets married & Russian soldiers commit suicide

Posted by josefina No Comments
Apr 24 2008

Politics, huh? Russian politics are great, very entertaining and at times rather frightening – just not my shot of vodka, if you get my drift. When I started out as a ‘watcher & commentator on Russian life’ [particularly from a Siberian point of view] back in 2005 at the tender age of 20, I was very angry with myself because I lacked political awareness and couldn’t comment wisely on any current events of certain weight. I still lack political awareness but have since grown to accept this and thus I can now comment on current events as much as I’d like. Perhaps I should’ve looked into the ‘argument’ that aroused this past week between Georgia and Russia, but I’m afraid it didn’t really catch my attention. However this headline did: «Достоевского признали женатым» [Dostoevsky was declared married]. The article – perhaps only interesting to me and other «достоевсковеды» – is about finding the marriage certificate of Dostoevsky and his first wife, Maria Isaeva, in the Siberian town of Новокузнетск, where they were married in 1857. Here’s a little excerpt:

«Находку прокомментировала Валентина Ветловская, специалист по творчеству Достоевского: – Любой документ, касающийся жизни и творчества Достоевского, на вес золота.» [The find was commented on by Valentina Vetlovskaya, a specialist on the works of Dostoevsky: - Any kind of document that has anything to do with the life and works of Dostoevsky is worth its weight in gold.]

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«В этом доме в 1972 – 1977 гг. жил Борис Николаевич Ельцин, Первый Президент Российской Федерации» [In this house between 1972 – 1977 lived Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin, the first president of the Russian Federation.

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Only in Russian: Хлопотать!

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Apr 21 2008

Once in a while you come across a new word in a foreign language that just grabs a hold of you hard and refuses to let go for a long period of time. This word can be as plain as vanilla ice-cream, but it is more often than not an exotic word, and frequently also hard to translate fittingly into an equivalent of your native tongue. For me such a word in Russian is the verb «хлопотать» which is rather difficult to translate properly into English, though its meaning can be understood on a purely ‘logical level’ by most people, not only Russophiles I presume. But in order to truly understand what this verb stands for, and what kind of action it represents, one must have knowledge of Russian society, not only of present day but of it during the Soviet Union and even earlier in history. People in Russia – not always necessarily Russians, since this action effects everyone who happens to find themselves on the country’s territory, Tatars as well as Americans, both Germans and Ukrainians alike – are constantly forced to deal with endless «хлопоты» [a noun only existing in plural form, and I suppose no one is surprised as to why]. Let’s enter into the world of this fascinating little verb and the various words it has given birth to since entering into the reality of life in Russia.

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«На поле всегда хлопот полон рот» – could be translated [rather poorly] as “In the field you always have your hands full (of work)”. To illustrate this are two youngsters picking potatoes in September 2007, as a part of the ‘kolkhoz’ work every student has to perform after entering into an institution of higher education in Russia. Yes, this tradition was established in the USSR…

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Putin Not Getting Married Anytime Soon!

Posted by josefina No Comments
Apr 19 2008

According to www.lenizdat.ru where the following article was published “Блогеры не правы. Путин не женится на Кабаевой” [The bloggers are wrong (not right). Putin isn't marrying Kabaeva] it’s far too early to start speculating of future baby names for the offspring of the former president and the olympic athlete. Perhaps one should not only put off such speculating for the future, but stop it completely. Here’s a peculiar qoute from the article indicating that though not marrying Alina, Vladimir is still, first and foremost (as we all have been suspecting, I suppose), a ladies man:

“Первое, что я хочу сказать. В том, что вы сказали, нет ни одного слова правды, — сказал Путин, передает “Газета.Ru”. — Второе, вы упомянули статью в одной из наших газет, в которой действительно упоминается наша чемпионка по гимнастике Алина Кабаева…” — сказал президент. “И в других публикациях подобного рода упоминаются успешные и красивые девушки. Думаю, что не будет неожиданным, если я скажу, что они все мне нравятся. Так же как и все российские женщины”, – добавил он.

["The first thing that I want to say. In that which you said there's not one word of truth", said Putin, as reports "Gazeta.ru". "Secondly, you mentioned an article in one of our magazines, in which truly the name of our gymnastic champion Alina Kabaeva is mentioned..." said the president. "And in other publications of similar sort there are mentioned also other succesful and beautiful girls. I think that it will be no surprise if I say that I like them all. Just like I like all Russian women", he added.]

Bummer – what about the Swedish women? Don’t you like us, Vova? Or at least me? A little bit?

Random Russian Reports

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Apr 17 2008

For some reason whenever I’m searching for some interesting piece of news from the Великая Родина [Great Motherland] to comment on here, there’s nothing even remotely interesting to be found on any of the many abundant Russian news sites. I’m not just trying to find a news story to comment on in a purely ‘journalistic’ way, no, my goal is more of a linguistic one – the articles have to contain at least one good sentence from a Russian grammatical point of view. Just like in most countries today, Russian journalists aren’t always that concerned with remarkable grammar or skilled stylistics, but prefer to write simple, dry sentences without any of that juicy use of cases or imperfect/perfect verbs or impersonal constructions. While surfing Комсомальская Правда [which has an amazing website on which you can choose your city or region, and after that get almost nothing but local news – but if you don’t have an uncle living in Penza or friends in Ulan-Ude, you should pick the capitol… if you think you can handle all the gossip about Russian stars that cover the pages of the weekly paper] I came across this headline: Гомосексуалистов Содома и Гоморры убило астероидом? [Were the homosexuals of Sodom and Gomorra killed by an asteroid?] Of course the article, though perhaps worth a quick glance nevertheless, is, as the Russians would say, полная чушь [complete nonsense], but the construction used in the headline with the perfect verb убить [to kill] combined with the instrumental case, чем, did catch my attention. The sentence in the headline is of my personal favorite kind – the impersonal kind. In such constructions the verb is written in third person singular, in every tempus, making the past form of it «убило астероидом» [killed by an asteroid]. In such a simple way the sentence above conveys that the death was accidental and not the fault of the people killed (i.e. in this case that the ‘homosexuals’ of the Old Testament weren’t actually punished by God, but suffered death because of foreign objects coming from space). You can of course use other ‘reasons of death’ like for example, «убило молнией» [killed by lightning] or «убило чумой» [killed by the plague].

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Though perhaps not that easy to make out on this small photo, the sign on the building says «1а проспект Ленина» and could therefore be located in any given Russian (or former Soviet Union) city.

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20th Century Russian Lit Reading Tip: «Зависть»

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Apr 14 2008

Sometimes the lists of books assigned for you to read during the course of a semester for a class at an institution of higher (or middle) education can make you feel anything but excited or even a tiny bit thrilled. Usuallly the student asks himself (or herself) the following question (given that the class being taught revolves around a for the student interesting topic): “If I haven’t read it already then it must mean that it is bad or boring or… just not my kind of book.” This was pretty much exactly what was going on in my head when I found the novel «Зависть» [“Envy”] on a directory of recommended reading in preparation for the examaniation in Russian Literature at Gothenburg University’s Slavic Department. Up until a couple of months ago I knew practically nothing about 20th century Russian literature (although I can pride myself on knowing EVERYTHING about the classics that belong to the century prior) which is why I was not surprised to find it’s author Юрий Карлович Олеша [Yuri Karlovich Olesha] completely unknown to me. I am now ashamed of my previous ignorance. This book is a wonderful work of fiction, a truly enjoyable piece of art, both humorous and astonishing (especially in it’s plentiful and eccentric – because of its Soviet Union in 1927 setting – Biblical references) and very easy and fast to read. I finished it in two days, not very surprisingly though since it is no more than 130 pages long (in my copy that’s a cheap paperback edition from www.azbooka.ru).

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A love for books in Russia doesn’t have to have a negative affect on кошелок [the wallet]. In almost every Russian bookstore from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok you can buy the classics of 19th and 20th century literature, both Russian and foreign, in low-priced soft cover copies like this one for no more than 100 rubles.

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