Posted by Josefina
After his death in 1924, the face of Владимир Ильич Ленин was used for mainly religious purposes, as he became known as a sort of ‘icon’ for the Soviet Union. After the death of the Soviet Union, the face of Lenin, and even more so his profile, has been used for a wide array of purposes, many of them purely commercial, some even rudely capitalistic. If Lenin must have been spinning in his grave – uhm, I mean mausoleum, back in the days of building communism and being on the constant watch-out for a classless society, then I suppose he’s getting sweaty with movement in modern Russia of today. Here and now you’ll run into Lenin in places where you least of all expect him to, like in advertisement for juice or on children’s t-shirts, while at the same time statues of him are being torn down quietly all over the country. But then again, the Russian mind has a history of being complex and even more so the Russian soul – and which one of these two body parts was it that he had more influence on? If there’s a Bolshevik Hell, I’m sure to burn in it: I call the minor statues of Lenin [those are often forgotten and will probably be the last to go, if they ever will that is] «Ленинчик» [“little Lenin”] which has the suffix «чик» in the end, which used in this waysand in this context is what in Russian is called a «уменьшительно-ласкательный суффикс» [diminutive-endearment suffix]. Such a suffix is often used when wanting to express certain feelings (perhaps of endearment) toward certain things, or if the things talked about are small. In my case, though it is risky to be your own therapist, I’d say my distortion of the Russian leader’s name is an expression of my familiarity both with him and the statues of him. Come to think of it, I’ll probably not go straight to Bolshevik Hell for this – in usual manner The Party will probably invite me up for tea in Communism Heaven first, where they’ll treat me cookies and smile at me, right before denouncing me in their paper “Heavenly Pravda” and purging me… Anyway, that’s not important – and may be offensive to some – what I wanted to discuss was this ad that I came across today:
«Такси им. Ленина – такси принадлежит народу!» [Taxi in the name of Lenin – taxi belongs to the people!] Even I know that the great Il’ich didn’t waste any time talking about silly bourgeois means of transportation, but still the phrase sounds familiar. What was it that, according to the Vovochka of the 20th century, belonged to the people? Was it власть [power]?
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Posted by Josefina
The most confusing part of Russian language – putting aside, of course, those six cases for the moment – is the verb. The Russian verb is both confusing and difficult to master for foreigners, especially for foreigners with a non-Slavic native language. The reason why this is so is because of a little thing called ‘aspect’, of which each and every Russian verb has two, and that’s the subject for today’s linguistic discussion – how to know if you’ve actually done something to the end, reaching some kind of result, «сделал что-то», or if you’ve only done something, «делал что-то», not to the end, without reaching any results, but still spending quite the amount of time on this certain process. Aspect is in Russian called «вид», and the two different kinds of aspect are «несовершенный вид» [imperfect aspect] and «совершенный вид» [perfect aspect]. In the example above, «сделать» is perfect, generally showing a process already over and with a achieved result, while «делать» is imperfect, stressing the process, which doesn’t necessarily has to lead to any result. But using this very verb-couple (that’s what the two aspects together are usually called, seen not as two verbs but one, as they share a one and the same meaning) is really making it easy for oneself – even a Russian would be able to tell the difference there between imperfect and perfect. The fact is that the whole ‘aspect’ thing is so difficult and confusing that many native speakers seem to find it hard to explain, though they don’t make any of the mistakes that foreigners do, especially when you start thinking: “Did I achieve something with this, or did I not? Was it really perhaps all about the process?” For example, a university professor once told me that the perfect «написать» to the verb «писать» [to write] doesn’t apply to large works of fiction, such as for example novels, because it takes too long to write. Then another university professor said that’s that it’s okay to say «я написала роман» [I have written a novel] if you only just finished writing it, thus making it more of ‘I finished writing a novel (only just recently)’.
For example, in this sign the use of the imperfect aspect of a verb in present tense applies: «Категорически запрещается курение в помещениях, на территории и в радиусе 150 метров от территории академии» “Smoking is categorically prohibited (reflexive verb) in the premises, on the territory and in a range of 150 meters from the territory of the Academy” [by the way, way to go Russia! Fighting against smoking amongst the youngsters – very impressive.]
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Posted by Josefina
[Photo: AFP/Andrej Isakovic courtesy of
www.dn.se]
Today the famous Nokia-beeping of an sms woke me up in the middle of the night with the following words from my mother in Sweden: “Congratulations Russia won! How does it feel? Hugs, mom”. Relieved as I am from owning a TV, it was only on an intuitive level that I understood that I had slept myself through yet another ‘Sacred’ Eurovision Song Contest. For non-europeans it might be difficult to fathom this phenomena, and even more so after watching the show itself, I imagine. The status of the competition differs in all of the European countries, iin some people couldn’t care less, in others it’s almost religion [my seculative native land falls into the former category]. In Russia this Contest is only beginning it’s journey to becoming a true folk fest, whereas in Sweden it’s more about the National rounds leading up to the final contest in May than actually watching heart-wrenching ballads from Malta or listening to the discobeats of Israel. It was Dima Bilan’s second try to conquer the hearts and charts of Europe [he won me over already in 2004 with his hit "На берегу неба"] and he did it, with the song “Believe”. And the cherry on top of it all must be that the Russian president, everyone’s favorite ‘teddybear’ Dima Medvedev, rang him up at 2 a.m. and congratulated him.
Комсомольская Правда writes: “Евровидение-2009″ пройдет в Москве!” [Eurovision-2009 will go down in Moscow!]
Известия writes “Рудковская: “Евровидение” в России должно стать лучшим в истории шоу.” [Rudkovskaya (Dima's producer): "Eurovision" in Russia must become the best show in history]
My ‘homies’ at E1 write: “Дима Билан стал победителем Евровидения-2008.” [Dima Bilan became the winner of Eurovision-2008] and also feature a list of the 25 contestants and their places in the rating - revealing my poor Sweden at a sad number 18. It’s a long way from Abba and “Waterloo” in the 70’s…
If you want to know more about modern Russian music, while the Russian iTunes store is still non-existing and all you can buy at your local music store is Alla Pugachyova, visit Far From Moscow. This morning I recieved an e-mail from a certain David MacFadyen with the following: “In the light of yesterday’s Eurovision result, I’m writing from the University of California, Los Angeles. We’ve just created the only English-language site dedicated to new music from Russia. Every day we add video, audio, and quick sketches of the artists.” Now doesn’t that sound like a dream come true?
Posted by Josefina
«Им мир по колено – выросло первое поколение стабильности» [They couldn’t care less (about the world) – the first generation of stability has grown up].
One of the first things I noticed when I arrived in Russia back in 2004 was how much the young teenage generation differed from their parents and even from people in their twenties and thirties, despite a difference of a little more than ten years between them. It didn’t take long for me to clearly realize that those born during perestroika or straight after the collapse of Soviet Union are completely different people, living in another world. They’re opinionated and optimistic and goal oriented and brave, altogether with a fearless outlook on the world (perhaps because they’ve never been behind an iron curtain?). Immediately I felt that all of Russia’s hopes for the future is in this very new generation, and I wasn’t afraid to speak out about my views, yet many people, both Russians and foreigners, didn’t understand me for over four years time. Now it turns out that at least Russian Newsweek is on the same page as me, in any case according to their front page story in №21 (194) 19-25th of May «Поколение Путина выбирает стабильность и карьеру» [‘Generation Putin’ chooses stability and a career]. First it was the picture that caught my attention – I meet all of these ‘young types of Russians’ on a daily basis, I know then, and I know them well. Secondly, the interesting use of the word «колено» [knee] in a phraseology-like construction also intrigued me. Though I was not successful in solving the riddle and failed to uncover its whole meaning, I can’t help but to suspect it being a spin-off from the colloquial expression «(мне, тебе, ему, ей, им, вам, нам) море по колено» [(I, you, he, she, they, you, we) couldn’t care less].
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Posted by Josefina
«На Берлин. За Сталина.» [To Berlin. For Stalin.]
Walking through my Russian hometown of the moment, I came across this ‘graffiti’ on a truck. Yeah, it’s kind of funny and that’s the reason why I decided to take a picture of it. It reminded me of those Soviet propaganda posters from WWII with the happy soldier tying his boots with the words «Дойдём до Берлина!» [We will reach Berlin!]. This made me curious to know if there was any propaganda made back then with the same words as on this truck in 2008? I googled the sentences above and guess what the first picture that came up was? A pic almost identical to mine above, only that it was taken in Moscow about two months ago, from a Russian blog. Is this a trend among Russian truck drivers? Is this a way of showing patriotic feelings to other drivers on the road? Or is it another symptom of the sentimentality felt by large parts of the Russian public towards everything Soviet lately?
At first I named this entry ‘Back To The Future’ [after the famous movie, that’s rather obvious – by the way, the same movie is in Russian called «Назад в будущее»] but then I realized that it would fit very badly in the context, and so I changed it to «Вперёд в прошлое». From here on I shall stick to these words when choosing titles for my entries: “Call things by their right names,” as Boris Pasternak wrote in «Доктор Живаго» (did anyone else watch the movie “Into The Wild” directed by Sean Penn? It doesn’t really have anything to do with Russia, yet it is still a great movie, but in the end of it *spoiler warning* the main hero reads Tolstoy’s “Family Happiness” and has an appifany about life, and then he dies holding Boris Pasternak’s Nobel Prize winning novel in his hand…)
Спасибо!"
