I've been thinking about this for a long time. Over Christmas, I met up with Nana and Justin for lunch in Mansfield and, among other things, discussed our adventures living abroad. At one point, Nana asked what it is that Russians really have figured out. She was referring to neat things Russia has that America doesn't; one example she gave from Korea was ondol, or floor heating.
This is a good mental exercise/discussion point when you're living in a foreign culture, since it provides a balance for all the times said culture makes you want to bang your head against a wall. (I know it's not just me; Justin and Nana affectionately(?) refer to Korea as "the land of the 90% solution.") Unfortunately, at the time, I couldn't think of an answer. Not that I don't like Russia, and not that there aren't plenty of neat things about Russian culture. It's just that the technological and consumer innovations I was trying to think of – things like heated floors, online bill payment, parking vouchers for drivers of hybrid cars, or dual-purpose waffle iron/panini grills – aren't exactly Russia's forte. This is not shocking when you consider how recently the country had things like restructuring its entire government and economy on its mind. Plus there's all the bureaucracy, a leech that's been sucking at Russia's potential for efficiency and innovation since at least the time of Gogol.
But let's not dwell on the negative. The point is that you have to think outside the box a bit to come up with them, but there are plenty of enviable ideas that Russians have caught onto and the rest of us haven't. Today, I'll feature one that's near and dear to my heart: music schools.
Russia's system of music education was founded by Anton Rubinstein, as any Russian music school graduate can tell you. Having gotten a peek at it through my balalaika lessons, I think it's a great system. In America, if you want to learn a musical instrument, you either join the school band or orchestra, find someone to give you private lessons, or maybe buy a guitar at a flea market and try to teach yourself. In Russia, though, the musically inclined finish their day at regular elementary and high schools and then, three days a week, head off for a few hours at a public music school. Any good-sized city will have at least one; I think Taganrog has exactly one, while Vladivostok, which also had a college and a conservatory, had at least three or four. (In the villages, you're stuck with whatever they offer at the House of Culture. Sorry.)
The course of study at music school roughly includes your instrument of choice, a secondary instrument (sometimes one in the same family, but usually the piano), performance in the appropriate ensemble (band, orchestra, folk orchestra), ear training, the school choir, and music theory. Just like regular school, you have to show up for class and pass exams. It takes either four or six years to finish music school (I forget, but I think it's six), and when you do, you get a diploma that, among other things, allows you to enter music college, the next level of music education. (The conservatory is the third and final level.) Not everyone finishes music school, which means you get the knowledge (or some of it) but no diploma.
The disadvantage of such a rigorous system is that I think on the whole there are fewer musicians in Russia than in the U.S. system, where it seems like about three-quarters of us scraped away at a violin or made dying cat noises on a clarinet for at least a few years in middle school. The advantage, obviously, is that the average Russian musician is much better and more well-rounded than the average American one. (I didn’t even learn what solfege was until college...) Also, they provide the infrastructure for concerts and competitions for young musicians as well as a venue and means of support for professional concerts and recitals. Therefore, there are more of both the former and the latter than there are in the U.S.
I should also mention that I think, although I'm not entirely sure, that the same kind of system is employed for visual art schools. For sports, it's a little different – something about "Olympic reserve teams" that I don’t entirely understand – but the same concept of total dedication to and complete education in the extracurricular activity of one's choice.
Stay tuned for the next installment of "Things (I Think) Russians Do Right," which will probably be about dachas!
(The parentheses in the title are not meant to indicate uncertainty, but as an acknowledgment that a silly American making pronouncements about what's "good" and "not good" about Russian culture is a bit ridiculous.)
27 March 2008
All Look Same?
Scene: a Russian Orthodox cathedral, sightseeing with the visiting German girl and two Russian babushki. The babushki were buying candles to place in front of the church's icons.
One babushka said: "Girls, are you going to buy candles too?"
The other said, "Of course not! They're Catholics!"
I automatically replied, "I'm not Catholic, I'm Protestant!"
She replied, "Pfft, what's the difference?"
At that, I got a little defensive and said, "There's a big difference!"
She dismissed that with a wave of her hand and the pronouncement, "Well, you're all Catholics to us!"
At first I wanted to write about how annoying that was, even though I know that expressing annoyance at things like that is counterproductive. But I let it sit for a few days and now I feel much less annoyed. However, I'm still a little confused by it.
I understand why the babushka, and Russians in general, go for religious pigeonholing; to most Russians, Orthodoxy is a heritage as much as a belief, and something like 90% of Russians identify as Orthodox even though only a few percent actually practice. So it's understood that giving someone a religious label isn't actually a comment on their personal belief.
I also understand why she, individually, labeled us as Catholics. The Russian popular conception of Christianity is that it's divided into two camps – Orthodoxy and Catholicism. I mentioned this earlier, when people kept referring to "Catholic Christmas." (The funniest thing to me is that Russians often refer to America as a Catholic country, which is pretty ironic when you consider the stigma and labeling of "otherness" historically attached to Catholicism in the U.S.) So her conception of us as "white girls = Christians; non-Russian white girls = Catholics" was reflective of the average Russian view. (Unfortunately, Russians, especially older ones, often seem to forget that not all European-looking people have Christian heritage; that, I think, is the fault of a long history of institutionalized anti-Semitism.)
So what confuses me is why Protestantism is missing from the picture in Russia. I mean, you could argue that very few Americans know anything about Russian Orthodoxy, but I'm not sure it's really a parallel; the Protestant Reformation was a pretty major event in European history. In fact (correct me if I'm wrong), it seems like you couldn't really study European history without learning about the Reformation. Plus, it's not exactly recent news. So how has Russian society apparently failed to notice that it ever happened? Why do Russians seem fuzzy on the idea of what a Protestant even is?
I'm sure this ignorance is partly an effect of Soviet atheism. But it's interesting to ponder why it's manifested itself in this particular way: not uncertainty, but absolute faith in a completely incorrect fact. Then again, maybe that's just human nature.
The last thing the woman said to me still seems kind of rude. That's not so much a Russia thing as a babushka thing, though; since babushki have lived longer than the rest of us, they get to say whatever they want. At least that gives the rest of us something to look forward to about being old!
One babushka said: "Girls, are you going to buy candles too?"
The other said, "Of course not! They're Catholics!"
I automatically replied, "I'm not Catholic, I'm Protestant!"
She replied, "Pfft, what's the difference?"
At that, I got a little defensive and said, "There's a big difference!"
She dismissed that with a wave of her hand and the pronouncement, "Well, you're all Catholics to us!"
At first I wanted to write about how annoying that was, even though I know that expressing annoyance at things like that is counterproductive. But I let it sit for a few days and now I feel much less annoyed. However, I'm still a little confused by it.
I understand why the babushka, and Russians in general, go for religious pigeonholing; to most Russians, Orthodoxy is a heritage as much as a belief, and something like 90% of Russians identify as Orthodox even though only a few percent actually practice. So it's understood that giving someone a religious label isn't actually a comment on their personal belief.
I also understand why she, individually, labeled us as Catholics. The Russian popular conception of Christianity is that it's divided into two camps – Orthodoxy and Catholicism. I mentioned this earlier, when people kept referring to "Catholic Christmas." (The funniest thing to me is that Russians often refer to America as a Catholic country, which is pretty ironic when you consider the stigma and labeling of "otherness" historically attached to Catholicism in the U.S.) So her conception of us as "white girls = Christians; non-Russian white girls = Catholics" was reflective of the average Russian view. (Unfortunately, Russians, especially older ones, often seem to forget that not all European-looking people have Christian heritage; that, I think, is the fault of a long history of institutionalized anti-Semitism.)
So what confuses me is why Protestantism is missing from the picture in Russia. I mean, you could argue that very few Americans know anything about Russian Orthodoxy, but I'm not sure it's really a parallel; the Protestant Reformation was a pretty major event in European history. In fact (correct me if I'm wrong), it seems like you couldn't really study European history without learning about the Reformation. Plus, it's not exactly recent news. So how has Russian society apparently failed to notice that it ever happened? Why do Russians seem fuzzy on the idea of what a Protestant even is?
I'm sure this ignorance is partly an effect of Soviet atheism. But it's interesting to ponder why it's manifested itself in this particular way: not uncertainty, but absolute faith in a completely incorrect fact. Then again, maybe that's just human nature.
The last thing the woman said to me still seems kind of rude. That's not so much a Russia thing as a babushka thing, though; since babushki have lived longer than the rest of us, they get to say whatever they want. At least that gives the rest of us something to look forward to about being old!
24 March 2008
Checking in
Yikes, almost a week since my last post! Sorry about that. I'll post something soon.
This is just to say that right now, I love the South. +19 (66F) today, and I got a text message from Amara up north that started with, "So the short-lived but fierce blizzard that we got while I was in the internet cafe..." I'm not anti-winter, but I was struck today by how happy the warm weather makes me feel, and how unpleasant the idea of still having snow on the ground sounds.
I hope it's similarly spring-like wherever you are! And happy (late) Easter to all who celebrated!
This is just to say that right now, I love the South. +19 (66F) today, and I got a text message from Amara up north that started with, "So the short-lived but fierce blizzard that we got while I was in the internet cafe..." I'm not anti-winter, but I was struck today by how happy the warm weather makes me feel, and how unpleasant the idea of still having snow on the ground sounds.
I hope it's similarly spring-like wherever you are! And happy (late) Easter to all who celebrated!
18 March 2008
Notes on Underground...ish
I was talking to my mom yesterday and mentioned that I have a paper due this week (for the institute's scientific conference – "Notes on Some Lexical Characteristics of the Emerging Russian Variety of English," a.k.a. BS) as well as a belated St. Patrick's Day lesson/event to plan. "Two deadlines? Sounds like procrastination's in the forecast!" was her reply.
Oh, Mom. You know me all too well. This post is the result of Procrastination Effort #1. (Only #1 because I only just started counting.)
On Saturday's trip to Chaltyr', which was actually a trip to Tanais, we also went to Rostov, since we were practically there anyway. This trip was for the benefit of a German girl who's here doing a three-week internship at the airplane factory and the institute. As our little party (me; Julia, the German girl; the institute's German teacher; the institute's driver; and the driver's 12-year-old daughter, Anya) was strolling in Rostov, talkative young Anya spotted a shop selling hip, punk-ish/Goth-ish clothes. "Hey," she said. "A shop for emos!" Not realizing that the word is a borrowing, she turned to us and said, "Do you know what an emo is? Emo comes from the word 'эмоция' (emotion), and it's these psychos who try to kill themselves."
Ha. If I didn't know what 'emo' meant, that wouldn't leave me with a very clear idea, but I was amused by her 12-year-old's view of the world. Then I started thinking: what exactly is 'emo' in Russia? I know it has a lot of similarities to the American emo subculture (if something that corporately driven and mass produced is really a subculture), but I wonder if there aren't also differences? That is, do these kinds of trends or movements tend to shift between cultures relatively intact, or do they change significantly in transit?
I don't have an answer, because I don't have any emo students or acquaintances to ask or judge by. It would be interesting to find out, though, because in general my impression is that deviation from the norm into a subculture is still a lot less common, and therefore more difficult, in Russian society than in American. As such, it seems like it becomes much more a part of a person's identity; for instance, walking down the street wearing Goth clothes in Russia, you stick out from the crowd more than you do in the U.S., thus subjecting yourself to harsher judgment. And that makes it more of an investment.
There are other differences, too; for one, Russia today is still emerging from a Soviet culture where overt nonconformity was discouraged; for another, Russians generally seem to take their hobbies and lifestyles seriously, adopting much less of a Jack-of-all-trades approach to their free time than Westerners do. A musician is a musician. An athlete is an athlete. Why would you try to be more than one? (Russians are often nonplussed by the fact that I play an instrument, go to fitness classes, and turn out knitted items on a regular basis. Not to mention the blog!) Considering all that, one would think that the kids who get into various subcultures would feel pretty proprietary of them, and that that in turn would lead to innovation.
But this, like the paper I'm supposed to be working on, is kind of BS. I'm no anthropologist.
Oh, Mom. You know me all too well. This post is the result of Procrastination Effort #1. (Only #1 because I only just started counting.)
On Saturday's trip to Chaltyr', which was actually a trip to Tanais, we also went to Rostov, since we were practically there anyway. This trip was for the benefit of a German girl who's here doing a three-week internship at the airplane factory and the institute. As our little party (me; Julia, the German girl; the institute's German teacher; the institute's driver; and the driver's 12-year-old daughter, Anya) was strolling in Rostov, talkative young Anya spotted a shop selling hip, punk-ish/Goth-ish clothes. "Hey," she said. "A shop for emos!" Not realizing that the word is a borrowing, she turned to us and said, "Do you know what an emo is? Emo comes from the word 'эмоция' (emotion), and it's these psychos who try to kill themselves."
Ha. If I didn't know what 'emo' meant, that wouldn't leave me with a very clear idea, but I was amused by her 12-year-old's view of the world. Then I started thinking: what exactly is 'emo' in Russia? I know it has a lot of similarities to the American emo subculture (if something that corporately driven and mass produced is really a subculture), but I wonder if there aren't also differences? That is, do these kinds of trends or movements tend to shift between cultures relatively intact, or do they change significantly in transit?
I don't have an answer, because I don't have any emo students or acquaintances to ask or judge by. It would be interesting to find out, though, because in general my impression is that deviation from the norm into a subculture is still a lot less common, and therefore more difficult, in Russian society than in American. As such, it seems like it becomes much more a part of a person's identity; for instance, walking down the street wearing Goth clothes in Russia, you stick out from the crowd more than you do in the U.S., thus subjecting yourself to harsher judgment. And that makes it more of an investment.
There are other differences, too; for one, Russia today is still emerging from a Soviet culture where overt nonconformity was discouraged; for another, Russians generally seem to take their hobbies and lifestyles seriously, adopting much less of a Jack-of-all-trades approach to their free time than Westerners do. A musician is a musician. An athlete is an athlete. Why would you try to be more than one? (Russians are often nonplussed by the fact that I play an instrument, go to fitness classes, and turn out knitted items on a regular basis. Not to mention the blog!) Considering all that, one would think that the kids who get into various subcultures would feel pretty proprietary of them, and that that in turn would lead to innovation.
But this, like the paper I'm supposed to be working on, is kind of BS. I'm no anthropologist.
15 March 2008
Stereotypes are Bad, but Meat is Good!
This post is kind of a hodgepodge.
1. Since it's been almost a week, I'll say that requests for my extra Птица тылобурдо cd are now officially closed. I received three, and based on the three contestants I've decided to go for a drawing rather than a contest to determine who'll get it. I couldn't come up with a Leslie-related contest (possible areas: knitting, Russian, linguistics, music) in which one or another of the contestants wouldn't have an unfair advantage. So, winner, I'll be contacting you as soon as I get around to actually doing the drawing.
2. The recent bane of my existence: a video circling the internet, dubbed into Russian, of Americans being interviewed saying stupid things. ("Where's the Berlin Wall?" "Uh... How the hell should I know?" "How many sides does a triangle have?" "A triangle doesn't have any sides," etc.) I've had three or four Russians bring it up and/or show it to me, and I have the hardest time trying to convince them that Americans aren't actually as dumb as that makes them look, and that we're actually no dumber than Russians are.
Recently:
A friend, checking that I'm not as dumb as those people: "Ok, then, where is the Berlin Wall?"
Me: "In Berlin. Or it was. They tore it down, so it's really not anywhere anymore."
Him: "Huh. They did? I didn't know that. Good for you."
Not that that proves his dumbness, either. Everyone has questions they're going to look dumb answering. But Russians who don't study English (and many who do) have a very negative, distorted picture of the U.S., and that picture includes the stereotypes that we're all fat and driveling idiots. Most Americans have a distorted picture of Russians, too, but at least Russians don't shoot themselves in the foot by posting videos of themselves wearing fur hats and drinking vodka with a trepak-dancing bear and a hammer-and-sickle flag in ten feet of snow while being oppressed by Evil Dictator Putin. Or videos of themselves saying, "Sitting on a cold floor will make you infertile!" "If Obama is black, that means he's probably stupid!" and other things that we would find as ridiculous/offensive as they find our collective inability to locate Europe on a map.
Anyway, enough ranting. On a lighter note:
3. Today I went to a miraculous place by the name of Чалтырь/Chaltyr'. I had heard it mentioned in passing by my students, who described it as "a village between Rostov and Taganrog" and "Russian Las Vegas." I assumed that the former was true and the latter some kind of joke, but it turns out that they weren't actually poking (too much) fun at it; it's where all the cool Taganrogers go to hang out.
It's an Armenian village that's been around since the time of Catherine the Great. I don't know whether people go there for gambling or quickie weddings, but they do go for shashlyk, which is Caucasian barbecue, marinated, grilled, and served with a sort of ketchupy sauce and fresh onions. Pork is the most traditional, but you can also get chicken, beef, lamb, or even sturgeon shashlyk. It's an adopted Russian staple, a versatile food that can be as delicious eaten off disposable plates in a beer garden as it is served as a holiday meal in a classier, more authentic restaurant. I think it's best when it's part of the ritual of "shashlyking", which consists of decamping to the country for a whole day of grilling and drinking. We did it once in February in Vladivostok; we almost froze to death, but it was amazing.
Anyway, shashlyking may be the most fun meat-grilling experience, but today's shashlyk was by far the tastiest I've ever had. Perfect marinade, perfect grilling, perfect sauce. It was the kind of meal where afterwards you want to just lie down and meditate on all the deliciousness you just ate. I also want to go back to Chaltyr' to go exploring – besides a long strip (Vegas?) of shashlyk joints, it looks like they've got at least one Armenian church, and a couple of stores with Georgian names (I think – unless Armenian uses that same writing system).
4. Finally, tomorrow I'm off to Rostov to give a talk on the 1950's in America, something I know next to nothing about. As I'm sure any grantee can tell you, giving talks on topics you know nothing about is one of the key aspects of the Fulbright experience. At least I have a film – a History Channel documentary – to help me along, and afterwards we're going out for Georgian food. Mmm, bean pies (lobiani) and cheese bread (khachapuri) – more of the Caucasus' little culinary miracles.
1. Since it's been almost a week, I'll say that requests for my extra Птица тылобурдо cd are now officially closed. I received three, and based on the three contestants I've decided to go for a drawing rather than a contest to determine who'll get it. I couldn't come up with a Leslie-related contest (possible areas: knitting, Russian, linguistics, music) in which one or another of the contestants wouldn't have an unfair advantage. So, winner, I'll be contacting you as soon as I get around to actually doing the drawing.
2. The recent bane of my existence: a video circling the internet, dubbed into Russian, of Americans being interviewed saying stupid things. ("Where's the Berlin Wall?" "Uh... How the hell should I know?" "How many sides does a triangle have?" "A triangle doesn't have any sides," etc.) I've had three or four Russians bring it up and/or show it to me, and I have the hardest time trying to convince them that Americans aren't actually as dumb as that makes them look, and that we're actually no dumber than Russians are.
Recently:
A friend, checking that I'm not as dumb as those people: "Ok, then, where is the Berlin Wall?"
Me: "In Berlin. Or it was. They tore it down, so it's really not anywhere anymore."
Him: "Huh. They did? I didn't know that. Good for you."
Not that that proves his dumbness, either. Everyone has questions they're going to look dumb answering. But Russians who don't study English (and many who do) have a very negative, distorted picture of the U.S., and that picture includes the stereotypes that we're all fat and driveling idiots. Most Americans have a distorted picture of Russians, too, but at least Russians don't shoot themselves in the foot by posting videos of themselves wearing fur hats and drinking vodka with a trepak-dancing bear and a hammer-and-sickle flag in ten feet of snow while being oppressed by Evil Dictator Putin. Or videos of themselves saying, "Sitting on a cold floor will make you infertile!" "If Obama is black, that means he's probably stupid!" and other things that we would find as ridiculous/offensive as they find our collective inability to locate Europe on a map.
Anyway, enough ranting. On a lighter note:
3. Today I went to a miraculous place by the name of Чалтырь/Chaltyr'. I had heard it mentioned in passing by my students, who described it as "a village between Rostov and Taganrog" and "Russian Las Vegas." I assumed that the former was true and the latter some kind of joke, but it turns out that they weren't actually poking (too much) fun at it; it's where all the cool Taganrogers go to hang out.
It's an Armenian village that's been around since the time of Catherine the Great. I don't know whether people go there for gambling or quickie weddings, but they do go for shashlyk, which is Caucasian barbecue, marinated, grilled, and served with a sort of ketchupy sauce and fresh onions. Pork is the most traditional, but you can also get chicken, beef, lamb, or even sturgeon shashlyk. It's an adopted Russian staple, a versatile food that can be as delicious eaten off disposable plates in a beer garden as it is served as a holiday meal in a classier, more authentic restaurant. I think it's best when it's part of the ritual of "shashlyking", which consists of decamping to the country for a whole day of grilling and drinking. We did it once in February in Vladivostok; we almost froze to death, but it was amazing.
Anyway, shashlyking may be the most fun meat-grilling experience, but today's shashlyk was by far the tastiest I've ever had. Perfect marinade, perfect grilling, perfect sauce. It was the kind of meal where afterwards you want to just lie down and meditate on all the deliciousness you just ate. I also want to go back to Chaltyr' to go exploring – besides a long strip (Vegas?) of shashlyk joints, it looks like they've got at least one Armenian church, and a couple of stores with Georgian names (I think – unless Armenian uses that same writing system).
4. Finally, tomorrow I'm off to Rostov to give a talk on the 1950's in America, something I know next to nothing about. As I'm sure any grantee can tell you, giving talks on topics you know nothing about is one of the key aspects of the Fulbright experience. At least I have a film – a History Channel documentary – to help me along, and afterwards we're going out for Georgian food. Mmm, bean pies (lobiani) and cheese bread (khachapuri) – more of the Caucasus' little culinary miracles.
10 March 2008
Russian Music Plug/Giveaway
For Women's Day on Saturday, I went to a concert that one of my new students this semester invited me to. It was put on by a group called Птица тылобурдó/Ptitsa tyloburdó, and I ended up really liking them. They're a group of six women from Izhevsk, the capital of the Udmurt Republic, which is a region to the northeast of Moscow.
It's sort of hard to describe their music – they do some traditional Udmurt chants, some other ethnicky music (Russian, Finnish, Russian ethnic minorities), and lot of what they call "ethno-jazz," which I guess isn't a bad description. Much of the latter is based on the poetry of local bards. (A "bard" in the contemporary Russian sense is a poet-songwriter.) They use a lot of interesting percussion instruments, as well as hammered dulcimer, mandolin, bass guitar, and various members of the wood flute/ocarina/recorder family.
Anyway, I ended up getting their cds, and they accidentally gave me two copies of one of them (Пух и перья, their first album), so now I have one to give away! I'm a poor judge of what music people will like, so instead of just making a guess and sending the cd to a friend, I'll provide links to their music:
Птица тылобурдо on last.fm
Птица тылобурдо on poslushai.ru
and you, faithful reader or happenstance blog visitor, can let me know if you're interested. Maybe I'll think of some kind of contest to determine which of the interested parties (and I'm sure there'll be hundreds) gets the cd.
And for those of you who read Russian (or don't read Russian, but like looking at pictures), their website is here.
It's sort of hard to describe their music – they do some traditional Udmurt chants, some other ethnicky music (Russian, Finnish, Russian ethnic minorities), and lot of what they call "ethno-jazz," which I guess isn't a bad description. Much of the latter is based on the poetry of local bards. (A "bard" in the contemporary Russian sense is a poet-songwriter.) They use a lot of interesting percussion instruments, as well as hammered dulcimer, mandolin, bass guitar, and various members of the wood flute/ocarina/recorder family.
Anyway, I ended up getting their cds, and they accidentally gave me two copies of one of them (Пух и перья, their first album), so now I have one to give away! I'm a poor judge of what music people will like, so instead of just making a guess and sending the cd to a friend, I'll provide links to their music:
Птица тылобурдо on last.fm
Птица тылобурдо on poslushai.ru
and you, faithful reader or happenstance blog visitor, can let me know if you're interested. Maybe I'll think of some kind of contest to determine which of the interested parties (and I'm sure there'll be hundreds) gets the cd.
And for those of you who read Russian (or don't read Russian, but like looking at pictures), their website is here.
08 March 2008
Musings on Trash and Democracy
7:30 p.m., Smirnov Street, Taganrog: A woman and her young daughter are riding the tram. The daughter has a small piece of colored paper – an advertisement or somesuch – that she throws on the floor of the tram in typical toddler fashion. Her mother scolds her roundly for throwing it on the floor, picks it up, opens the window of the tram, throws it out the window onto the street, closes the window and sits back down.
I don't understand why Russians care so much about clean floors, but don't seem to care about having clean streets, sidewalks, parks, beaches, lakes or forests. Ok, I take that back. What I really don't understand is why Russians don't appear to make the connection between their individual actions and the condition of the environment in this country, which they are only too happy to complain about. Do Americans only make that connection* because of the government and educational system's concerted efforts to teach us conservation?
Since other things the government tries to teach us don't stick, I think the determining factor is instead our differing perceptions of the impact an individual can have on society and the world. That is, Americans avoid littering for the same reason that they vote, and Russians litter for the same reason that they don't vote.
Voting, of course, is a more complex matter, because it's also influenced by the American assumption that elections will be fair and the Russian assumption that they'll be rigged; on top of that, there's the American assumption that having politician A versus politician B in power will lead to different results, and the Russian assumption that all politicians are equally criminal/ineffective. Obviously, none of these assumptions is universal, but I think they're widespread enough to make a big difference. But are Russians' feelings about democracy specific to the political sphere and caused by actual corruption therein, or are they symptomatic of a larger disbelief in one's power to affect the processes at work in one's country and the world?
Anyway, that's two wordy blog posts in one day, which is really too much. I think I'm going to go for a walk and eat some ice cream. And then throw the wrapper in a trash can.
*By this I'm not saying that Americans never litter – I did Adopt-a-Highway in high school, so I've seen some of the random crap that people throw out of their cars – but I'm sure anyone who's ever been to Russia will agree with me that Americans litter a lot less than Russians do.
I don't understand why Russians care so much about clean floors, but don't seem to care about having clean streets, sidewalks, parks, beaches, lakes or forests. Ok, I take that back. What I really don't understand is why Russians don't appear to make the connection between their individual actions and the condition of the environment in this country, which they are only too happy to complain about. Do Americans only make that connection* because of the government and educational system's concerted efforts to teach us conservation?
Since other things the government tries to teach us don't stick, I think the determining factor is instead our differing perceptions of the impact an individual can have on society and the world. That is, Americans avoid littering for the same reason that they vote, and Russians litter for the same reason that they don't vote.
Voting, of course, is a more complex matter, because it's also influenced by the American assumption that elections will be fair and the Russian assumption that they'll be rigged; on top of that, there's the American assumption that having politician A versus politician B in power will lead to different results, and the Russian assumption that all politicians are equally criminal/ineffective. Obviously, none of these assumptions is universal, but I think they're widespread enough to make a big difference. But are Russians' feelings about democracy specific to the political sphere and caused by actual corruption therein, or are they symptomatic of a larger disbelief in one's power to affect the processes at work in one's country and the world?
Anyway, that's two wordy blog posts in one day, which is really too much. I think I'm going to go for a walk and eat some ice cream. And then throw the wrapper in a trash can.
*By this I'm not saying that Americans never litter – I did Adopt-a-Highway in high school, so I've seen some of the random crap that people throw out of their cars – but I'm sure anyone who's ever been to Russia will agree with me that Americans litter a lot less than Russians do.
Wearing Ritas While Playing the Gomra.
Over the past year or two, as my reading skills have improved in Russian, I've discovered a weird consequence of being able to read both Cyrillic and Latin script without conscious effort: unexpected processing errors when my brain gets confused about what alphabet it's looking at.
In normal situations this doesn't pose a problem, as what language I'm reading is clear to both me and the reading processors in my brain. However, occasionally you come across a stand-alone word that unexpectedly throws you off.
Let's start with an example of an intersection between the two alphabets: the brand name "Puma." Many Russians think (or joke that) it's pronounced "Rita," because Latin p looks like Cyrillic r, and Latin u and m resemble stylized or cursive versions of Cyrillic i and t. (So Рита in print becomes Рита in cursive. Looks just like English puma, right?)
But that's not really a processing error as much as an error in alphabet choice. For an example of my brain's processing problems, let's look at this tape measure:
My brain knows it's American, because I remember getting it in a box from my parents and because there's clear, understandable English written right on it. "Ok," my brain says, breezing past the white and gray text with no problem and getting to the yellow brand name, "we're reading in English!"
I do fine – K-O-M-E-L-O – until we get to that last letter. We're supposed to be reading in English, but that letter looks so much more like a Cyrillic p (п) than any Latin letter that the train derails. I get alarm bells and flashing red error messages, and the word basically refuses to be processed. If you've ever tried to remember what it was like to be really little and able to look at something without reading it, that's what this feels like to me. I can force myself to "sound it out," but I come up with "komelop." I can tell myself it says "komelon," even though I can't read it that way per se. I'm sure if this were a familiar English word – or even if it had a –g on the end to make it look like "come along" – that pesky п/n wouldn't pose a problem. But the way it actually is, I can't look at the word and automatically process it, which feels pretty trippy.
Edited to add: I just noticed that if you cover up the KO, you get 'melon.' Sure enough, if I block out those first two letters, I have no trouble reading the whole thing in English with no alarm bells or error messages or anything.
Today I had another interesting processing experience. I was listening to a domra album on my computer, and I clicked on the picture of the album cover in iTunes.
I glanced at this part of the cover:
I somehow noticed the English text in black before I noticed that Vladimir Yakovlev's name is written in Russian. My eyes traveling upwards from there, I caught the word домра (domra - the g on the album cover is an alternate form of cursive Cyrillic д/d) and got alarm bells going off in my head again. "Ha!" I thought. "Did they really write 'gomra'?!?"
This is interesting because it means that I noticed that the first letter of the word was "wrong" while failing to notice the Cyrillic r in the middle of the word that should have either tipped me off that this is a Russian word or made me think that they wrote "gompa," not "gomra." I guess this goes along with that trick where you can read a scrambled text as long as the first and last letters of each word are in the right place.
(By the way, I don't think putting half the Russian and half the English in each cluster of text is a good graphic design move.)
Relatedly, there have been a couple of interesting posts lately on Language Log about an emerging kind of slang in Russian – words typed in Cyrillic on a Latin keyboard. This amounts to something other than transliteration because, as any Russian student who's had to type an essay in Russian knows, the letters aren't in the same places on Cyrillic and Latin keyboards. Cyrillic f is on Latin a, Cyrillic t is on Latin n, etc. I found this especially interesting because my non-Russian-speaking father recently did the opposite – for Valentine's Day, he typed out "Roses are red / Violets are blue..." with his keyboard in Cyrillic mode and sent me the resulting nonsense. The next Pushkin? No, but an unwitting member of a group of linguistic innovators!
Finally, Happy International Women's Day to my female readers! I hope the day brings you lots of chocolate and flowers and no annoying holiday greetings like, "May you always love and be beloved by men."
In normal situations this doesn't pose a problem, as what language I'm reading is clear to both me and the reading processors in my brain. However, occasionally you come across a stand-alone word that unexpectedly throws you off.
Let's start with an example of an intersection between the two alphabets: the brand name "Puma." Many Russians think (or joke that) it's pronounced "Rita," because Latin p looks like Cyrillic r, and Latin u and m resemble stylized or cursive versions of Cyrillic i and t. (So Рита in print becomes Рита in cursive. Looks just like English puma, right?)
But that's not really a processing error as much as an error in alphabet choice. For an example of my brain's processing problems, let's look at this tape measure:
My brain knows it's American, because I remember getting it in a box from my parents and because there's clear, understandable English written right on it. "Ok," my brain says, breezing past the white and gray text with no problem and getting to the yellow brand name, "we're reading in English!"
I do fine – K-O-M-E-L-O – until we get to that last letter. We're supposed to be reading in English, but that letter looks so much more like a Cyrillic p (п) than any Latin letter that the train derails. I get alarm bells and flashing red error messages, and the word basically refuses to be processed. If you've ever tried to remember what it was like to be really little and able to look at something without reading it, that's what this feels like to me. I can force myself to "sound it out," but I come up with "komelop." I can tell myself it says "komelon," even though I can't read it that way per se. I'm sure if this were a familiar English word – or even if it had a –g on the end to make it look like "come along" – that pesky п/n wouldn't pose a problem. But the way it actually is, I can't look at the word and automatically process it, which feels pretty trippy.
Edited to add: I just noticed that if you cover up the KO, you get 'melon.' Sure enough, if I block out those first two letters, I have no trouble reading the whole thing in English with no alarm bells or error messages or anything.
Today I had another interesting processing experience. I was listening to a domra album on my computer, and I clicked on the picture of the album cover in iTunes.
I glanced at this part of the cover:
I somehow noticed the English text in black before I noticed that Vladimir Yakovlev's name is written in Russian. My eyes traveling upwards from there, I caught the word домра (domra - the g on the album cover is an alternate form of cursive Cyrillic д/d) and got alarm bells going off in my head again. "Ha!" I thought. "Did they really write 'gomra'?!?"
This is interesting because it means that I noticed that the first letter of the word was "wrong" while failing to notice the Cyrillic r in the middle of the word that should have either tipped me off that this is a Russian word or made me think that they wrote "gompa," not "gomra." I guess this goes along with that trick where you can read a scrambled text as long as the first and last letters of each word are in the right place.
(By the way, I don't think putting half the Russian and half the English in each cluster of text is a good graphic design move.)
Relatedly, there have been a couple of interesting posts lately on Language Log about an emerging kind of slang in Russian – words typed in Cyrillic on a Latin keyboard. This amounts to something other than transliteration because, as any Russian student who's had to type an essay in Russian knows, the letters aren't in the same places on Cyrillic and Latin keyboards. Cyrillic f is on Latin a, Cyrillic t is on Latin n, etc. I found this especially interesting because my non-Russian-speaking father recently did the opposite – for Valentine's Day, he typed out "Roses are red / Violets are blue..." with his keyboard in Cyrillic mode and sent me the resulting nonsense. The next Pushkin? No, but an unwitting member of a group of linguistic innovators!
Finally, Happy International Women's Day to my female readers! I hope the day brings you lots of chocolate and flowers and no annoying holiday greetings like, "May you always love and be beloved by men."
03 March 2008
Kind of Useless, but Cool
If you've ever thought, "Gosh, I wish I could send Leslie a free text message!", today is your lucky day. Thanks to my ever-alert neighbor and bandmate Seth, I just found out that you can send me free text messages from your computer! Go here, and if you read Russian, ignore the fact that it says "Moscow/Moscow Region" – it works in the provinces, too.
You can get my number from my facebook profile or by emailing me for it.
In other news, the adorable Dmitri Medvedev (aptly, his last name means something like "Of the Bear," while Putin, I think, has to do with путь/put', 'way/path', a root you can also see in the word спутник/sputnik, 'satellite') was shockingly elected president yesterday. I took the news lying down, as I've been bowled over by some sort of head flu/stomach flu combo bug for the past few days. I'm interested to see what kind of president he'll be, and I hope he'll prove to be not just more adorable, but also a little less aggressive than Putin.
You can get my number from my facebook profile or by emailing me for it.
In other news, the adorable Dmitri Medvedev (aptly, his last name means something like "Of the Bear," while Putin, I think, has to do with путь/put', 'way/path', a root you can also see in the word спутник/sputnik, 'satellite') was shockingly elected president yesterday. I took the news lying down, as I've been bowled over by some sort of head flu/stomach flu combo bug for the past few days. I'm interested to see what kind of president he'll be, and I hope he'll prove to be not just more adorable, but also a little less aggressive than Putin.
01 March 2008
Sweet Billy Baroo
In class this week we listened to a dialogue in which a character mentions his children, Jasmine and Billy. My students were completely stumped when I asked them what name Billy is short for. I finally gave them the answer, and they were quite incredulous that the name William (which they were all familiar with) could get turned into Billy.
That surprised me; almost every Russian name has a casual form like Billy, and some are just as far away phonetically from their original. As an example, let's look at the class of nicknames formed by (Consonant + Vowel) (CV) + sha:
Masha for Maria,
Dasha for Daria,
Pasha for Pavel,
Misha for Mikhail,
Gosha for Georgii,
Grisha for Grigorii,
Sasha for Aleksandr or Aleksandra,
Alyosha/Lyosha for Aleksei,
etc.
Usually – as in the case of Daria/Dasha – the (CV) in the nickname is taken from the stressed syllable in the original name. But sometimes – in the case of Grisha for GriGORii or Lyosha for AlekSEI, for example – the (CV) is not from the stressed syllable, making the nicknames a little harder to connect to their formal forms. A name like Lyosha/Aleksei is further complicated by the fact that the vowel changes, too. Unstressed ye becoming yo under stress is a common alternation in Russian, but not necessarily intuitive to a non-native speaker. So I could imagine that English speakers learning Russian would have trouble deciphering nicknames like Lyosha or Alyona (a form of Yelena), or other vowel changes in names like Ksyusha for Ksenia, Vova for Vladimir, or Toma for Tamara.
But I don't remember ever feeling quite as puzzled about those peculiarities as my students were about William/Billy. Why should that be so? I pondered some more, and eventually noticed that these Russian name quirks are all vowel alterations. Just like we have in Katherine/Kate or James/Jim. Aha! I tried to come up with a Russian 'Billy' – an example wherein the nickname begins with a consonant not found in the original name. I eventually did recall the completely bizarre Shura/Shurik for Aleksandra/Aleksandr, but that was all.
That, I think, must be why my students thought Billy was so weird. I don't have any information on whether vowel alterations are less marked on the whole than consonant alterations, but I suppose not really having one or the other in one's own language's naming traditions would make them seem more unexpected in another language's. Maybe next lesson I'll teach them Peggy for Margaret and Dick for Richard. Those seem weird even to me!
Speaking of names, the subject of middle names has come up several times recently. Russians don't have them, and I've been completely unable to explain why I have a name (or two names, actually) that no one ever calls me by. It's made me stop and think – why do most English speakers have middle names? Does it come from the tradition of giving a saint's name at baptism or confirmation? If so, when did the two practices diverge?
(Ok, I just finished writing this entry, only to have the nickname Zhenya, from Yevgenii or Yevgenia, fly unbidden into my head. (Zh here represents the sound in the middle of the word 'leisure,' a sound that is absent from the original names.) It weakens my argument, but I'll still maintain that consonant alternation happens a lot less in Russian names than in English ones.)
That surprised me; almost every Russian name has a casual form like Billy, and some are just as far away phonetically from their original. As an example, let's look at the class of nicknames formed by (Consonant + Vowel) (CV) + sha:
Masha for Maria,
Dasha for Daria,
Pasha for Pavel,
Misha for Mikhail,
Gosha for Georgii,
Grisha for Grigorii,
Sasha for Aleksandr or Aleksandra,
Alyosha/Lyosha for Aleksei,
etc.
Usually – as in the case of Daria/Dasha – the (CV) in the nickname is taken from the stressed syllable in the original name. But sometimes – in the case of Grisha for GriGORii or Lyosha for AlekSEI, for example – the (CV) is not from the stressed syllable, making the nicknames a little harder to connect to their formal forms. A name like Lyosha/Aleksei is further complicated by the fact that the vowel changes, too. Unstressed ye becoming yo under stress is a common alternation in Russian, but not necessarily intuitive to a non-native speaker. So I could imagine that English speakers learning Russian would have trouble deciphering nicknames like Lyosha or Alyona (a form of Yelena), or other vowel changes in names like Ksyusha for Ksenia, Vova for Vladimir, or Toma for Tamara.
But I don't remember ever feeling quite as puzzled about those peculiarities as my students were about William/Billy. Why should that be so? I pondered some more, and eventually noticed that these Russian name quirks are all vowel alterations. Just like we have in Katherine/Kate or James/Jim. Aha! I tried to come up with a Russian 'Billy' – an example wherein the nickname begins with a consonant not found in the original name. I eventually did recall the completely bizarre Shura/Shurik for Aleksandra/Aleksandr, but that was all.
That, I think, must be why my students thought Billy was so weird. I don't have any information on whether vowel alterations are less marked on the whole than consonant alterations, but I suppose not really having one or the other in one's own language's naming traditions would make them seem more unexpected in another language's. Maybe next lesson I'll teach them Peggy for Margaret and Dick for Richard. Those seem weird even to me!
Speaking of names, the subject of middle names has come up several times recently. Russians don't have them, and I've been completely unable to explain why I have a name (or two names, actually) that no one ever calls me by. It's made me stop and think – why do most English speakers have middle names? Does it come from the tradition of giving a saint's name at baptism or confirmation? If so, when did the two practices diverge?
(Ok, I just finished writing this entry, only to have the nickname Zhenya, from Yevgenii or Yevgenia, fly unbidden into my head. (Zh here represents the sound in the middle of the word 'leisure,' a sound that is absent from the original names.) It weakens my argument, but I'll still maintain that consonant alternation happens a lot less in Russian names than in English ones.)
27 February 2008
The Orthodox Palestinian Society: probably not what you think it is.
I went to the library today to do a little research into something I'll blog about shortly (or eventually), and stumbled upon something else - a reference to Taganrog's past as a pilgrimage destination:
"And specially from every shire's ende of Russia to Taganrog they wende."
Just kidding. What it really said was:
"Just as streams flow to the sea, so too did pilgrims from different areas of Russia wishing to get to Palestine set out for our city."
...Yup. And apparently there was actually a group called the Православное палестинское общество/Orthodox Palestinian Society, which was dedicated to serving the pilgrims who came through Taganrog on their way to the Holy Land. No dates were given in the source I was reading, but it appears that this was fashionable (among a certain set, anyway) in the second half of the 19th century. Pilgrims would come down to Taganrog to catch a ship bound for Constantinople, and from there they'd head to Jerusalem to "bow at the grave of the Lord." Unfortunately, the ship for Constantinople was either not that good about posting its schedule or not that frequent, because said pilgrims often found themselves spending several days camped out here, sometimes without shelter. Orthodox Palestinian Society to the rescue! A noblewoman donated her house, and under the direction of a local shipping merchant, it was turned into a hostel for pilgrims, with ten spaces for men and ten for women, a small chapel, and a well-kept garden. Unfortunately, the house is no longer there, having been replaced by a five-story apartment building.
Beyond its face value as a quirky part of the city's past, this is interesting because passenger ships to Constantinople (or Istanbul, for that matter) no longer leave from Taganrog, but from Novorossiysk, down on the Black Sea coast. It's probably just as well for Taganrog; it's notoriously difficult to develop a booming tourism industry around pilgrims.
"And specially from every shire's ende of Russia to Taganrog they wende."
Just kidding. What it really said was:
"Just as streams flow to the sea, so too did pilgrims from different areas of Russia wishing to get to Palestine set out for our city."
...Yup. And apparently there was actually a group called the Православное палестинское общество/Orthodox Palestinian Society, which was dedicated to serving the pilgrims who came through Taganrog on their way to the Holy Land. No dates were given in the source I was reading, but it appears that this was fashionable (among a certain set, anyway) in the second half of the 19th century. Pilgrims would come down to Taganrog to catch a ship bound for Constantinople, and from there they'd head to Jerusalem to "bow at the grave of the Lord." Unfortunately, the ship for Constantinople was either not that good about posting its schedule or not that frequent, because said pilgrims often found themselves spending several days camped out here, sometimes without shelter. Orthodox Palestinian Society to the rescue! A noblewoman donated her house, and under the direction of a local shipping merchant, it was turned into a hostel for pilgrims, with ten spaces for men and ten for women, a small chapel, and a well-kept garden. Unfortunately, the house is no longer there, having been replaced by a five-story apartment building.
Beyond its face value as a quirky part of the city's past, this is interesting because passenger ships to Constantinople (or Istanbul, for that matter) no longer leave from Taganrog, but from Novorossiysk, down on the Black Sea coast. It's probably just as well for Taganrog; it's notoriously difficult to develop a booming tourism industry around pilgrims.
23 February 2008
Happy Men's Day!
Today, February 23rd, is Protectors of the Homeland Day. As you can tell from the name, this was originally a military holiday. Like a Russian Veterans’ Day, but inclusive of anyone who’s served in the military in either wartime or peacetime.
The day still has a military flavor; most of the cards you can buy for it are decorated with tanks, airplanes, or the orange-and-black striped ribbon of the Order of St. George. But because the Russian military has mandatory service, every man is technically either a past or a future Protector of the Homeland, so the holiday has become a celebration of all men.
However, for the past few decades, there’s been a dark shadow of corruption, disorder, hazing scandals, and widespread suicide among recruits looming over the Russian military. Many guys who can get out of service do so, either by staying in college and grad school until they're too old to serve or by bribing a doctor to give them a medical excuse. So there are a lot of men for whom the holiday’s rhetoric of military glory is completely inapplicable. These men aren’t excluded from the holiday, though; partly, I think, based on the assumption that Russia’s men will unite to protect her when need be. Nonetheless, it has reduced the holiday to a day of saying, "Thank you for being male!" to all the men in your life.
(Note: I have no idea whether women who serve are included in the celebration, or whether it’s truly become the masculine counterpart to International Women’s Day, a major Russian holiday, in the popular consciousness.) (Another note: that link is to a mail-order bride site, but it's still work-safe, and the Women's Day explanation is quite funny/Russian.)
The whole idea of this holiday as a "Men’s Day" kind of offends me. I’m not in the camp that believes that men have it markedly easier than women, but I do think that it’s silly to have holidays celebrating gender norms for either men or women. (So Women’s Day offends me, too, but less so, because there’s chocolate involved. Never underestimate the placating power of chocolate.) Really, "thank you for being (fe)male" largely means, "thank you for the ways in which you conform to society’s expectations for your gender." Especially after spending time in Russia, where I’m a foreigner and therefore very conscious of society’s expectations for gender performance, I don’t find that to be a good thing to thank someone for. Serving in the military? Yes. Being a mother or a father? Yes. Being "masculine" or "feminine"? Not so much.
There’s probably nothing I can say about Russian femininity that hasn’t already been said; it’s easy to think that men have it easier, but I’ve been surprised to hear several male American acquaintances express the same kind of frustration and alienation from Russian men that I, with my unpomaded lips, flat shoes, and unmarried-and-happy attitude, often feel from Russian women. Young Russian men are supposed to be "muzhiki", a word that sort of translates as "dude" or "tough guy", and that usually means a lot of drinking, no real show of feelings, indifference toward academic pursuits, objectification of women (a fellow Fulbrighter's students confronted him to ask if he was gay, partly because he doesn't flirt with his female students in class; he isn't gay, just American), and reckless disregard for both the law and safety.
Besides making it hard for American guys to make friends here, I'm sure this is a contributing factor to alarmingly high male unemployment, alcoholism, and suicide rates in Russia. Why celebrate the social forces that lead to such terrible problems? Why celebrate the ones that make women feel that beauty is their most important attribute, or that staying with a husband who beats them is better than having no husband?
(I'm sure there are readers who are saying, "But gender isn't entirely socially constructed! There are important innate behavioral differences between men and women!" I acknowledge that, but I don't think that's really what's being glorified on these holidays, and even if it were, I can't think of a convincing reason to do so.)
I'm not about to lead a crusade against the holiday – in the end, it's just a holiday – but I am saying I think this is all worth thinking about. To avoid ending on a sad note, I'd like to raise a toast to all the men in my life – my dad and brothers and grandfathers and uncles, my friends and students and coworkers, and you, dear (male) reader: not for being macho tough guys, but for being your wonderful selves.
(And for protecting the homeland, naturally.)
The day still has a military flavor; most of the cards you can buy for it are decorated with tanks, airplanes, or the orange-and-black striped ribbon of the Order of St. George. But because the Russian military has mandatory service, every man is technically either a past or a future Protector of the Homeland, so the holiday has become a celebration of all men.
However, for the past few decades, there’s been a dark shadow of corruption, disorder, hazing scandals, and widespread suicide among recruits looming over the Russian military. Many guys who can get out of service do so, either by staying in college and grad school until they're too old to serve or by bribing a doctor to give them a medical excuse. So there are a lot of men for whom the holiday’s rhetoric of military glory is completely inapplicable. These men aren’t excluded from the holiday, though; partly, I think, based on the assumption that Russia’s men will unite to protect her when need be. Nonetheless, it has reduced the holiday to a day of saying, "Thank you for being male!" to all the men in your life.
(Note: I have no idea whether women who serve are included in the celebration, or whether it’s truly become the masculine counterpart to International Women’s Day, a major Russian holiday, in the popular consciousness.) (Another note: that link is to a mail-order bride site, but it's still work-safe, and the Women's Day explanation is quite funny/Russian.)
The whole idea of this holiday as a "Men’s Day" kind of offends me. I’m not in the camp that believes that men have it markedly easier than women, but I do think that it’s silly to have holidays celebrating gender norms for either men or women. (So Women’s Day offends me, too, but less so, because there’s chocolate involved. Never underestimate the placating power of chocolate.) Really, "thank you for being (fe)male" largely means, "thank you for the ways in which you conform to society’s expectations for your gender." Especially after spending time in Russia, where I’m a foreigner and therefore very conscious of society’s expectations for gender performance, I don’t find that to be a good thing to thank someone for. Serving in the military? Yes. Being a mother or a father? Yes. Being "masculine" or "feminine"? Not so much.
There’s probably nothing I can say about Russian femininity that hasn’t already been said; it’s easy to think that men have it easier, but I’ve been surprised to hear several male American acquaintances express the same kind of frustration and alienation from Russian men that I, with my unpomaded lips, flat shoes, and unmarried-and-happy attitude, often feel from Russian women. Young Russian men are supposed to be "muzhiki", a word that sort of translates as "dude" or "tough guy", and that usually means a lot of drinking, no real show of feelings, indifference toward academic pursuits, objectification of women (a fellow Fulbrighter's students confronted him to ask if he was gay, partly because he doesn't flirt with his female students in class; he isn't gay, just American), and reckless disregard for both the law and safety.
Besides making it hard for American guys to make friends here, I'm sure this is a contributing factor to alarmingly high male unemployment, alcoholism, and suicide rates in Russia. Why celebrate the social forces that lead to such terrible problems? Why celebrate the ones that make women feel that beauty is their most important attribute, or that staying with a husband who beats them is better than having no husband?
(I'm sure there are readers who are saying, "But gender isn't entirely socially constructed! There are important innate behavioral differences between men and women!" I acknowledge that, but I don't think that's really what's being glorified on these holidays, and even if it were, I can't think of a convincing reason to do so.)
I'm not about to lead a crusade against the holiday – in the end, it's just a holiday – but I am saying I think this is all worth thinking about. To avoid ending on a sad note, I'd like to raise a toast to all the men in my life – my dad and brothers and grandfathers and uncles, my friends and students and coworkers, and you, dear (male) reader: not for being macho tough guys, but for being your wonderful selves.
(And for protecting the homeland, naturally.)
21 February 2008
Random.
Happy International Mother Language Day, everyone!
I almost missed it, but thanks to Language Log, I was informed of it with one point five hours to spare! I’m celebrating by writing this post in my own mother tongue, English.
...Yeah, English seems like a kind of lame language to celebrate. The UN says, “All moves to promote the dissemination of mother tongues will serve not only to encourage linguistic diversity and multilingual education...” I’m not sure I agree with that, unless either their idea of dissemination or their definition of a mother tongue is different from mine (under which every living natural language is someone’s mother tongue).
Anyhow, sorry I haven’t been posting very often. February has actually – despite its worldwide (or northern hemisphere-wide) crappy reputation – been fabulous here: above freezing, with clear, sunny skies and breezes that aren’t exactly warm yet, but nonetheless carry the promise of spring. But in spite of the great weather, I’ve still been in a February mood (that is to say, cranky and anxious for it to not be February, or for that matter March) and haven’t really felt like writing. I think it has to do with the beginning of the new semester, because my mood has been steadily improving throughout the month as I’ve gotten into the swing of things. But now I’m on an internet “diet,” trying to make the last 30 rubles on my internet card last ‘til the end of the month (curse you, leap year! and you, too, ever-falling value of the dollar!). So I can’t promise a glut of posts just yet.
On the bright side, the great weather has allowed me to move my exercise routine (if one can really call it that) outside, and I’ve been taking long daily walks in parts of central Taganrog that I’ve never seen before. I’ve discovered that the city beach is a mere 20 minutes from my apartment on foot; that there’s a museum I didn’t know existed 1.5 blocks from my apartment; and that there’s a whole network of mud roads with quaint little brick houses and stray dogs in all the yards just a few blocks from the town’s main streets! Charming. (Except the stray dogs. Not a fan of stray dogs.) Another way in which a Russian city of 275,000 people is not at all like an American city of 275,000 people. I’ll try taking some pictures so I can show you all soon!
Other good things have been happening, too – my students are doing well, I got into grad school, and I recently had my most successful semi-scripted American holiday party yet (for Valentine’s Day, naturally). This weekend is my half-birthday, which I’m really too old to get very excited about (maybe there’s something to be said for being halfway to age 47, but I’m not sure what it might be), but it’s also a three-day weekend, which you’re never too old to get excited about! Hooray!
I almost missed it, but thanks to Language Log, I was informed of it with one point five hours to spare! I’m celebrating by writing this post in my own mother tongue, English.
...Yeah, English seems like a kind of lame language to celebrate. The UN says, “All moves to promote the dissemination of mother tongues will serve not only to encourage linguistic diversity and multilingual education...” I’m not sure I agree with that, unless either their idea of dissemination or their definition of a mother tongue is different from mine (under which every living natural language is someone’s mother tongue).
Anyhow, sorry I haven’t been posting very often. February has actually – despite its worldwide (or northern hemisphere-wide) crappy reputation – been fabulous here: above freezing, with clear, sunny skies and breezes that aren’t exactly warm yet, but nonetheless carry the promise of spring. But in spite of the great weather, I’ve still been in a February mood (that is to say, cranky and anxious for it to not be February, or for that matter March) and haven’t really felt like writing. I think it has to do with the beginning of the new semester, because my mood has been steadily improving throughout the month as I’ve gotten into the swing of things. But now I’m on an internet “diet,” trying to make the last 30 rubles on my internet card last ‘til the end of the month (curse you, leap year! and you, too, ever-falling value of the dollar!). So I can’t promise a glut of posts just yet.
On the bright side, the great weather has allowed me to move my exercise routine (if one can really call it that) outside, and I’ve been taking long daily walks in parts of central Taganrog that I’ve never seen before. I’ve discovered that the city beach is a mere 20 minutes from my apartment on foot; that there’s a museum I didn’t know existed 1.5 blocks from my apartment; and that there’s a whole network of mud roads with quaint little brick houses and stray dogs in all the yards just a few blocks from the town’s main streets! Charming. (Except the stray dogs. Not a fan of stray dogs.) Another way in which a Russian city of 275,000 people is not at all like an American city of 275,000 people. I’ll try taking some pictures so I can show you all soon!
Other good things have been happening, too – my students are doing well, I got into grad school, and I recently had my most successful semi-scripted American holiday party yet (for Valentine’s Day, naturally). This weekend is my half-birthday, which I’m really too old to get very excited about (maybe there’s something to be said for being halfway to age 47, but I’m not sure what it might be), but it’s also a three-day weekend, which you’re never too old to get excited about! Hooray!
19 February 2008
Still haven't found what I'm looking for...
I’ve noticed recently that people have started finding my blog by googling all sorts of different search strings; some appear to be looking for information about Taganrog, and the search for “balalaika lessons” has come up a lot as well. I suppose that’s inevitable as I add more and more posts, and more posts about things, like Taganrog and balalaikas, that not many people write about in English on the internet. I like helping people, and I realize that just from my entries, these googlers probably can’t find what they’re looking for. So I’ve created an email address for myself (see the info section) that you can use to contact me if you have a question you think I can answer.
However, please note that I cannot answer any questions about the азовская русалка, the alleged mermaid in the Sea of Azov (still one of the most popular referring strings), except to reiterate that she is not me. And I’m not her.
However, please note that I cannot answer any questions about the азовская русалка, the alleged mermaid in the Sea of Azov (still one of the most popular referring strings), except to reiterate that she is not me. And I’m not her.
15 February 2008
Good people
It happens about once a week or so that someone asks me whether life in America is better than life in Russia. For diplomacy’s sake, I have a set answer for that. It’s easier to make a good living in America, I say; for example, we have fewer eighty-year-old women getting down on their hands and knees to scrub floors so they’ll have enough money to buy bread. But on the other hand, I say, “the people are kinder” in Russia.
In the Russian value system, this is a pretty high compliment, so it tends to assuage any ill feelings they have about Americans’ relative wealth. Unfortunately, it’s not strictly true.
The real situation is more interesting, but also a lot harder to explain to anyone who hasn’t experienced both cultures, and therefore less useful in terms of diplomacy. Contrary to the general Russian image of us, I happen to think that we Americans are very kind – not because we’re a special breed of people (although Russians subscribe to the notion of “national character” shaping individuals’ personalities), but because American society values certain types of kindness and encourages it in its citizens. Russians, for the same reason, are also kind, and it’s really not the *quantity* of goodwill that’s so refreshing to me, but the ways in which it’s expressed.
I’ll make the generalization that in Russia, it’s a lot more acceptable than in the U.S. to express unsolicited concern for others. Americans tend to find it insulting if you tell them that their winter coat isn’t warm enough, give them handouts of food or clothes, or really offer to help them do anything that they could reasonably be expected to do themselves. In Russia, though, these are the kind of actions you perform to show that you care about someone, even on the level of, say, coworker. Coming from a culture where these things aren’t done, I’m left feeling almost overwhelmingly cared for and valued. (Of course, it’s occasionally annoying; I am, after all, American, and therefore prone to feeling like I should just be allowed to do it myself once in a while.)
Anyway, I’m thinking about this because I’ve been around a lot of really good, kind people this week. Every time I leave the university I think, “I should write a blog post about how nice the doormen are.” It’s probably not worthy of a whole blog post, but the six or eight doormen who stand guard at the university in 24-hour shifts are almost all a) fascinated by me and b) really, really friendly. Their faces light up when they see me come in. They all know all about my family and ask about them on a regular basis. I had a mood-lifting conversation with a different doorman every day this week.
Last night some students (most of whom aren’t in my courses) invited me to their Valentine’s Day/birthday party. It always makes me feel good to be included in their activities because, to be honest, I’m a little boring when I speak Russian. I’m never entirely sure why someone who only speaks Russian would really want to be friends with me. When I try to express complicated thoughts, I tend to trip over my words, and my sense of humor often gets lost in translation. It seems like it should take a lot of patience to like me. And yet, these students, who seemingly have no desire to practice their English with me (a refreshing change), continue to welcome me into their circle.
And finally, today I had a Valentine’s Day party at a local high school. I’ve never met a group of people who seemed so eager to find things to like about me. They were really responsive to all the activities I had planned, they asked tons of questions, made sure I was well-fed on Russian cafeteria food (um, yum?), and gave me a tour of the school, introducing me to basically every teacher in the place. A little egoistic, I guess, but it’s a very nice feeling to be that popular.
Most of the other people I interact with on a regular basis are also really nice to me, from my coworkers and students to my landlady and balalaika teacher and the women at the place where I do my photocopying. So I guess I’m just feeling grateful that I landed in a town that has so many kind, well-meaning people. I definitely don’t feel like I’m lying when I tell people that I love Taganrog because it’s the “warmest” city I’ve ever lived in.
In the Russian value system, this is a pretty high compliment, so it tends to assuage any ill feelings they have about Americans’ relative wealth. Unfortunately, it’s not strictly true.
The real situation is more interesting, but also a lot harder to explain to anyone who hasn’t experienced both cultures, and therefore less useful in terms of diplomacy. Contrary to the general Russian image of us, I happen to think that we Americans are very kind – not because we’re a special breed of people (although Russians subscribe to the notion of “national character” shaping individuals’ personalities), but because American society values certain types of kindness and encourages it in its citizens. Russians, for the same reason, are also kind, and it’s really not the *quantity* of goodwill that’s so refreshing to me, but the ways in which it’s expressed.
I’ll make the generalization that in Russia, it’s a lot more acceptable than in the U.S. to express unsolicited concern for others. Americans tend to find it insulting if you tell them that their winter coat isn’t warm enough, give them handouts of food or clothes, or really offer to help them do anything that they could reasonably be expected to do themselves. In Russia, though, these are the kind of actions you perform to show that you care about someone, even on the level of, say, coworker. Coming from a culture where these things aren’t done, I’m left feeling almost overwhelmingly cared for and valued. (Of course, it’s occasionally annoying; I am, after all, American, and therefore prone to feeling like I should just be allowed to do it myself once in a while.)
Anyway, I’m thinking about this because I’ve been around a lot of really good, kind people this week. Every time I leave the university I think, “I should write a blog post about how nice the doormen are.” It’s probably not worthy of a whole blog post, but the six or eight doormen who stand guard at the university in 24-hour shifts are almost all a) fascinated by me and b) really, really friendly. Their faces light up when they see me come in. They all know all about my family and ask about them on a regular basis. I had a mood-lifting conversation with a different doorman every day this week.
Last night some students (most of whom aren’t in my courses) invited me to their Valentine’s Day/birthday party. It always makes me feel good to be included in their activities because, to be honest, I’m a little boring when I speak Russian. I’m never entirely sure why someone who only speaks Russian would really want to be friends with me. When I try to express complicated thoughts, I tend to trip over my words, and my sense of humor often gets lost in translation. It seems like it should take a lot of patience to like me. And yet, these students, who seemingly have no desire to practice their English with me (a refreshing change), continue to welcome me into their circle.
And finally, today I had a Valentine’s Day party at a local high school. I’ve never met a group of people who seemed so eager to find things to like about me. They were really responsive to all the activities I had planned, they asked tons of questions, made sure I was well-fed on Russian cafeteria food (um, yum?), and gave me a tour of the school, introducing me to basically every teacher in the place. A little egoistic, I guess, but it’s a very nice feeling to be that popular.
Most of the other people I interact with on a regular basis are also really nice to me, from my coworkers and students to my landlady and balalaika teacher and the women at the place where I do my photocopying. So I guess I’m just feeling grateful that I landed in a town that has so many kind, well-meaning people. I definitely don’t feel like I’m lying when I tell people that I love Taganrog because it’s the “warmest” city I’ve ever lived in.
11 February 2008
Russians Will Be Russians
You're probably here because you were hoping for a new post. Well, be careful what you wish for! Don't worry, though, I'll be back to the usual picture-laden goodness soon.
I started thinking about collective memory and cultural consciousness when Amara and I went to the Museum of the Blockade in Petersburg and got into a discussion of whether Russia's lingering obsession with World War II is unhealthy. The topic came to mind again this weekend when I attended the annual celebration of the Taganrog Pushkin Society. I was invited to recite a Pushkin poem in English. If you're unfamiliar with Pushkin, don't feel bad; there's a reason. In Russian, Pushkin's poetry may be truly great, but like most poetry, it loses a lot in translation.
So to review, Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin is a poet from the early 19th century, a genius credited with being the first to use ordinary vernacular Russian to write great literature; a dissident and friend of the Decembrists who was exiled two or three times for his anti-tsarist writings and remarks; a true romantic, constantly bankrupt, in love, and getting huffy over questions of honor; and a dashingly tragic figure, having died young in a mysterious duel that's widely perceived to have been orchestrated by the authorities. To top it all off, he had great sideburns.
In a roundabout way, Pushkin got me thinking about cultural consciousness, a term I sort of made up and that I'm using to mean a person's conceptualization of what the culture they "belong to" or identify with actually is,, or is made up of. For me, that culture is primarily "American;" in certain instances, I may also be conscious of (and fashion myself to be a member of), say, Midwestern, semi-rural, and Ivy League subcultures. For you, my American reader (although I recognize I've got some non-American readers – hi, Celine!), it's probably American and some other things along racial/ethnic/gender/political/geographic lines. American society is delightfully fragmented like that.
Russian society, I'm becoming increasingly aware, is not. Although I might be making a risky generalization by saying this, the emphasis is placed to a much greater extent, both officially and popularly, on a homogeneous "Russianness," which is in turn much better-defined than our "Americanness."
Communist ideology clearly has a good deal to do with this, but I think the general idea of the Russian state as an entity of fundamentally ethnic origin plays a role, too. But that's interesting, because Russians certainly talk a good game about being a multi-ethnic country. I know this because they like to compare Russia and the U.S. as the two great melting pots, and it is true that Russia, as a state born out of an empire, is multi-ethnic. But there's no real public dialogue about that – nothing comparable to the ubiquitous multi-culturalism of the U.S. that has white Germanic schoolchildren in Ohio making paper dragon masks for Lunar New Year. The history and cultural memory all seems to be fairly monolithic, with its roots firmly in the Russians and their language. That comes back in part to history – Russia is actually a state born out of an empire born out of an ethnic group – and in part to Communist ideology, because after a brief multiethnic lovefest in the '20's and early '30's, Stalin decided that Russification was the safer route. Either way, it creates an interesting creature: a country that clearly claims its multiethnicity (in vogue nowadays; historically, the theory of communism as an ideology transcending national boundaries was probably a major motivator) while simultaneously claiming its Slavic past as its one true heritage.
This push for a defined Russian heritage has led, among many other things, to a sort of deification of the main figures associated with that heritage. Combine Pushkin's use of Russian at a time when many in Russian society were speaking French, his popular appeal as a writer whose poetry is both good and accessible, and the characteristics that made him a great figure for the Soviets to claim as a legitimizing predecessor to their cause – anti-tsarist, repressed by the regime – and you get a perfect Russian hero, who has been packaged and sold as such by the educational establishment for at least the last eighty years or so.
Because of that, the love and reverence for him even today is absolutely incredible, and of a magnitude totally foreign to English speakers. Our reverence for Shakespeare? Not. Even. Close. I was at least peripherally aware of that, but it was really interesting to go to this Pushkin celebration and see all the various ways he was invoked. One woman gave a tirade about the decline of culture in which she castigated a popular cultural TV show for not including enough Pushkin. She blamed the authorities' tight controls on the media for that; her implication was clearly that by rights, Pushkin ought to be included in every cultural program. She finished by thanking Pushkin for "gifting us with our velikii moguchii russki yazyk," (a common collocation that translates as great, powerful Russian language). The idea of a national literature being needed to legitimize a language is familiar to me – the Estonian language, for example, came to be seen as more than a "peasant dialect" only when people began writing literature in it – but the idea that Pushkin "gifted us" with Russian (and the assumption that follows from that, that there was no Russian literary tradition before him) strikes me as absurd.
A man then got up and said, "It's all very well that we remember all his love poems, but let's not forget that he was also a dissident. And if he were around today, the powers [i.e. the government] would not be pushing us around the way it is!" He then read a poem written in honor of the dedication of some Pushkin monument or other to prove his point. I was thrilled, as I always am, to hear real Russians – supposed by the Western media to be politically comatose – complaining about politics, but still, the idea that Pushkin himself would single-handedly change the political situation in Russia today seems even odder than the language claim. I feel that these kinds of assertions must have some kind of value outside their absolute truth value, but I can't really articulate what it is.
Also interestingly, the mysterious figure who lured Pushkin into his fatal duel by sending him an anonymous note labeling him a cuckold was overtly cast as an eternal, evil archetype – not a person per se, but a constantly-threatening force for destruction that represents the fundamental opposition between civilization and culture. (I didn't know they were fundamentally opposed...) But also as a person, and the embodiment of the Romantic hero: on a hunting expedition, he allegedly shot down every pigeon in a flock. I admit, there might have been some sort of language barrier there, because that part doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Anyway, the only real point of this essay is that Russians' concept of their cultural heritage, their interaction with it and the role it plays in their lives are totally different from Americans'. I feel like I've only scratched the surface – for example, the way this shapes language policy/teaching/self-policing is another big can of worms - but this is already really long. So I guess I'll just let it peter out by saying that I was pretty surprised to find that after all my time here, there are still parts of Russian culture that really baffle me. It certainly made for a fun evening, though! (Although to be honest, that was helped by the fact that they put way too much rum in the flaming punch.)
I started thinking about collective memory and cultural consciousness when Amara and I went to the Museum of the Blockade in Petersburg and got into a discussion of whether Russia's lingering obsession with World War II is unhealthy. The topic came to mind again this weekend when I attended the annual celebration of the Taganrog Pushkin Society. I was invited to recite a Pushkin poem in English. If you're unfamiliar with Pushkin, don't feel bad; there's a reason. In Russian, Pushkin's poetry may be truly great, but like most poetry, it loses a lot in translation.
So to review, Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin is a poet from the early 19th century, a genius credited with being the first to use ordinary vernacular Russian to write great literature; a dissident and friend of the Decembrists who was exiled two or three times for his anti-tsarist writings and remarks; a true romantic, constantly bankrupt, in love, and getting huffy over questions of honor; and a dashingly tragic figure, having died young in a mysterious duel that's widely perceived to have been orchestrated by the authorities. To top it all off, he had great sideburns.
In a roundabout way, Pushkin got me thinking about cultural consciousness, a term I sort of made up and that I'm using to mean a person's conceptualization of what the culture they "belong to" or identify with actually is,, or is made up of. For me, that culture is primarily "American;" in certain instances, I may also be conscious of (and fashion myself to be a member of), say, Midwestern, semi-rural, and Ivy League subcultures. For you, my American reader (although I recognize I've got some non-American readers – hi, Celine!), it's probably American and some other things along racial/ethnic/gender/political/geographic lines. American society is delightfully fragmented like that.
Russian society, I'm becoming increasingly aware, is not. Although I might be making a risky generalization by saying this, the emphasis is placed to a much greater extent, both officially and popularly, on a homogeneous "Russianness," which is in turn much better-defined than our "Americanness."
Communist ideology clearly has a good deal to do with this, but I think the general idea of the Russian state as an entity of fundamentally ethnic origin plays a role, too. But that's interesting, because Russians certainly talk a good game about being a multi-ethnic country. I know this because they like to compare Russia and the U.S. as the two great melting pots, and it is true that Russia, as a state born out of an empire, is multi-ethnic. But there's no real public dialogue about that – nothing comparable to the ubiquitous multi-culturalism of the U.S. that has white Germanic schoolchildren in Ohio making paper dragon masks for Lunar New Year. The history and cultural memory all seems to be fairly monolithic, with its roots firmly in the Russians and their language. That comes back in part to history – Russia is actually a state born out of an empire born out of an ethnic group – and in part to Communist ideology, because after a brief multiethnic lovefest in the '20's and early '30's, Stalin decided that Russification was the safer route. Either way, it creates an interesting creature: a country that clearly claims its multiethnicity (in vogue nowadays; historically, the theory of communism as an ideology transcending national boundaries was probably a major motivator) while simultaneously claiming its Slavic past as its one true heritage.
This push for a defined Russian heritage has led, among many other things, to a sort of deification of the main figures associated with that heritage. Combine Pushkin's use of Russian at a time when many in Russian society were speaking French, his popular appeal as a writer whose poetry is both good and accessible, and the characteristics that made him a great figure for the Soviets to claim as a legitimizing predecessor to their cause – anti-tsarist, repressed by the regime – and you get a perfect Russian hero, who has been packaged and sold as such by the educational establishment for at least the last eighty years or so.
Because of that, the love and reverence for him even today is absolutely incredible, and of a magnitude totally foreign to English speakers. Our reverence for Shakespeare? Not. Even. Close. I was at least peripherally aware of that, but it was really interesting to go to this Pushkin celebration and see all the various ways he was invoked. One woman gave a tirade about the decline of culture in which she castigated a popular cultural TV show for not including enough Pushkin. She blamed the authorities' tight controls on the media for that; her implication was clearly that by rights, Pushkin ought to be included in every cultural program. She finished by thanking Pushkin for "gifting us with our velikii moguchii russki yazyk," (a common collocation that translates as great, powerful Russian language). The idea of a national literature being needed to legitimize a language is familiar to me – the Estonian language, for example, came to be seen as more than a "peasant dialect" only when people began writing literature in it – but the idea that Pushkin "gifted us" with Russian (and the assumption that follows from that, that there was no Russian literary tradition before him) strikes me as absurd.
A man then got up and said, "It's all very well that we remember all his love poems, but let's not forget that he was also a dissident. And if he were around today, the powers [i.e. the government] would not be pushing us around the way it is!" He then read a poem written in honor of the dedication of some Pushkin monument or other to prove his point. I was thrilled, as I always am, to hear real Russians – supposed by the Western media to be politically comatose – complaining about politics, but still, the idea that Pushkin himself would single-handedly change the political situation in Russia today seems even odder than the language claim. I feel that these kinds of assertions must have some kind of value outside their absolute truth value, but I can't really articulate what it is.
Also interestingly, the mysterious figure who lured Pushkin into his fatal duel by sending him an anonymous note labeling him a cuckold was overtly cast as an eternal, evil archetype – not a person per se, but a constantly-threatening force for destruction that represents the fundamental opposition between civilization and culture. (I didn't know they were fundamentally opposed...) But also as a person, and the embodiment of the Romantic hero: on a hunting expedition, he allegedly shot down every pigeon in a flock. I admit, there might have been some sort of language barrier there, because that part doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Anyway, the only real point of this essay is that Russians' concept of their cultural heritage, their interaction with it and the role it plays in their lives are totally different from Americans'. I feel like I've only scratched the surface – for example, the way this shapes language policy/teaching/self-policing is another big can of worms - but this is already really long. So I guess I'll just let it peter out by saying that I was pretty surprised to find that after all my time here, there are still parts of Russian culture that really baffle me. It certainly made for a fun evening, though! (Although to be honest, that was helped by the fact that they put way too much rum in the flaming punch.)
06 February 2008
Petrozavodsk, a Little Slice of Scandinavia in Russia (Travelogue)
I am a huge fan of Karelia, the region northeast of St. Petersburg of which Petrozavodsk (called Petroskoi in Karelian) is the capital. Or a huge fan in theory, anyway – since we were there in January, we didn't get to see too much of the region's famed beautiful nature, or Kizhi Island. But it's home to the Karelians, a Finno-Ugric people (though there aren't too many of them around anymore – the Finns sided with the Nazis in World War II, so there was a lot of fleeing/deportation to Siberia), and I love random minority cultures/languages. Plus, we got to see at least a little nature in Petrozavodsk, in the form of Lake Onega, one of the world's largest lakes (though by no means as large as, say, Baikal or the Great Lakes). And Petrozavodsk itself was a pretty, cozy little capital that really did give me a weird Twilight Zone feeling that I was half in Russia, half in Scandinavia.
Shout-out to geology folks – Petrozavodsk boasts a lovely, if well-hidden, Pre-Cambrian Geology Museum, the surprise highlight of our two-day stay. It's in the Academy of Sciences, and you have to ask for someone to take you up to the fifth floor and let you in. They did so for us, and then some: a geologist from the Academy (Russian scientific research is conducted not at universities, but by the government-backed, nationwide Academy of Sciences) gave us an almost-two-hour tour! He was very careful to explain things thoroughly, since neither Amara nor I is a geologist. I did have one semester of geology, and some stuff came back to me during the tour, but I was still glad he kept it simple, since I was having to deal with Russian geology terms like месторождение, which looks like it should mean "birthplace" (место = place, рождение = birth) but actually means "mineral deposit." He never figured out - or never let on to figuring out - that we weren't Russian. Besides being oh-so-kind and accommodating, he was also adorable – probably 65 or 70, and no taller than I am. All in all, we were really glad we went, considering we did so kind of as a joke.
Me posing awkwardly with the particular type of quartz sandstone that's native to the area. It was used in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow and St. Isaac's Cathedral in Petersburg.
I don't have pictures from these, but Petrozavodsk also has an ok art museum and a very good regional history museum. The regional history museum has an exhibit on the Finno-Karelian saga, the Kalevala, that appears to be best viewed while on psychedelic drugs. At least I assume that would improve it. It was way trippy. According to the exhibit notes, it was supposed to "affect not visitors' minds, but their senses." Right. There were also less-trippy exhibits of Karelia's abundant prehistoric cave drawings, and a huge collection of stuffed animals (taxidermy, not teddy bears), where we learned all sort of new words for animals, from loons and auks to otters and wolverines.
Let's see, what else does Petrozavodsk have? Well, being on the shore of Lake Onega (whence the name of Pushkin's character Eugene Onegin), it has a long shoreline park with a bunch of sculptures, many donated by sculptors from PZ's sister cities around the world. The weather was nice and the park interesting, so we spent a lot of time there. The lake was frozen, but a friendly local warned us that going out on it like all the ice fishermen were doing was probably at least a little dangerous, so we didn't.
The view down the lakeshore path.
"Whisper a wish" - a wishing-tree sculpture. Hopefully it understood the wish I whispered in English!
"The Fishermen," by a sculptor from somewhere in Minnesota.
Amara looked like a lion when she posed with this sculpture. I'm a little too short to look like a lion.
It also has a street named for and monument to Yuri Andropov, the last [edit: second-last] Soviet leader before perestroika. Apparently there were protests when the monument was unveiled in 2005, so Amara and I decided to show Andropov a little love (to the amusement of a passing elderly gentleman).
All in all, it was a very nice town. The café and restaurant scene was surprisingly good for such a small city – we even ate at a slightly touristy, overpriced but delicious Karelian restaurant, which had many reindeer meat offerings which we did not try, plus traditional Karelian savory pastries filled with millet which we did. (They were delicious, even though pastries filled with grain does seem a little odd.) With lots of trees and the lake right near the center of town, I can see how it'd be great in summer. I'd really like to go back and see more of the surrounding area; hopefully I'll somehow get a chance.
[Edit: Thanks to Seth for pointing out my mistake about Andropov, nit-picky though it may have been!]
03 February 2008
Letting the pictures do the talking.
1. Petrozavodsk:
Kite skier on Lake Onega.
2. Murmansk:
Polar noon.
I am so happy I took that trip. More to come when I don't feel sick/blah.
Kite skier on Lake Onega.
2. Murmansk:
Polar noon.
I am so happy I took that trip. More to come when I don't feel sick/blah.
25 January 2008
Murmaaaaaansk!
Hello from Murmansk, everyone!
I can't write much since I'm a) paying for internet and b) more interested in getting out and on with my day than composing a blog entry, but I thought I'd say hi. Being above the Arctic Circle is pretty amazing. No Northern Lights (Murmansk is, perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the best-lit Russian cities I've ever seen, so there's a lot of light pollution at night), but we've witnessed the entire 4-hour course of the sun (this time of year, it rises at 11am and sets at 3pm), gone on what I consider a legitimate polar expedition, complete with whipping wind, drifting snow, and sub-zero temperatures - never mind that we were still technically within the city limits - and just generally had a great time. Add in that thrilling sensation of being in a place that's truly off the beaten track (one of my favorites - no surprise that I came to Russia, I guess), and you have an amazing winter break trip. I can't wait to show you the pictures when I get back to Taganrog!
But first: Moscow - ho! We leave this evening for a (YUCK) 40-hour train ride and then a few days of conferencing. I'll be home next weekend.
I can't write much since I'm a) paying for internet and b) more interested in getting out and on with my day than composing a blog entry, but I thought I'd say hi. Being above the Arctic Circle is pretty amazing. No Northern Lights (Murmansk is, perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the best-lit Russian cities I've ever seen, so there's a lot of light pollution at night), but we've witnessed the entire 4-hour course of the sun (this time of year, it rises at 11am and sets at 3pm), gone on what I consider a legitimate polar expedition, complete with whipping wind, drifting snow, and sub-zero temperatures - never mind that we were still technically within the city limits - and just generally had a great time. Add in that thrilling sensation of being in a place that's truly off the beaten track (one of my favorites - no surprise that I came to Russia, I guess), and you have an amazing winter break trip. I can't wait to show you the pictures when I get back to Taganrog!
But first: Moscow - ho! We leave this evening for a (YUCK) 40-hour train ride and then a few days of conferencing. I'll be home next weekend.
15 January 2008
Time
One thing I've really noticed in the past few years is the way time seems to dilate and contract as it goes by. This is true of life in general, not just life in Russia, but it seems especially noticeable when, like I am now, you're in a situation that you know will last for a limited time. At first, the entire duration stretches ahead of you, its vastness and possibilities apparently limited only by your own expectations of what's going to happen. Then the year begins to pass, and that vast, amorphous chunk of time contracts into a series of discrete moments and a list, surprisingly short, of the things you managed to get done and the things you didn't. What's in front of you still has that widened, unfocused perspective, as long as it's far enough away, but time seems to be flowing faster and you start to get the uneasy feeling that nothing is going to last quite as long as you were led to believe. Before long, the little bubble of contracted time you float along in will bump right up against the end of your stay and you won't have any vast, fuzzy future time in Russia left to savor – just a lot of packing and a ten-hour plane ride home.
Lucky for you, though, the human capacity for memory is limited, and because of that, autumn will already have re-expanded to almost its former proportions before the last snows of winter have melted. The discrete moments become less discrete, with the best and most memorable ones swelling to fill much more time than they first seemed to, bleeding together at the edges. It becomes harder to tell whether drinking beers with your friends on the beach, watching Chekhov at the theater, or finally managing to make a really good joke in Russian were things that happened once or over and over, for a few minutes or hours or days on end. In grammatical terms, it's a shift from the rigidity of the preterite – "It happened." – to the more forgiving past imperfect – "It was happening." And in your memory, it all keeps happening and happening.
Sorry, I know that's not at all the kind of thing I usually write here. I guess I'm feeling a bit sloppy and sentimental; we're halfway through the academic year now, I've submitted all my applications for things to do for next year, and I can see the future hurtling toward me (and contracting) at an alarming rate. On the bright side, a confluence of factors made this past weekend one of those ones that will definitely expand in memory, and maybe end up defining the whole of January 2008 or even the whole winter for me. Mostly in good ways.
The best, I think, was the New Year's party I played unsuspecting host to on Sunday. I was under the impression that a few of my students were coming over to watch a movie and eat some peanut butter cookies. But a lot more people came than I thought I had invited (sort of my mistake, sort of not), the person who was supposed to bring the movie forgot it, and it turned out to be Old New Year's Eve. (That is, New Year's Eve according to the old Julian calendar.) So I had a party without stressing out about planning a party, and it was great. We sang, we toasted the new year with champagne, we made noises about playing charades but never actually did it, we roamed the streets in search of New Year's trees and then danced around them in the traditional way, we took up a collection to buy new year's party food and drink, and we came back to my apartment to toast the new year again, this time with vodka. I think from now on I'll try to keep myself in the dark about all my parties.
And now I'm headed off for (another!) vacation – my much-anticipated trip to Petrozavodsk and Murmansk followed by the midyear conference in Moscow – so hopefully there are more great memories to come! There probably won't be any new posts for a couple of weeks, though – sorry!
Lucky for you, though, the human capacity for memory is limited, and because of that, autumn will already have re-expanded to almost its former proportions before the last snows of winter have melted. The discrete moments become less discrete, with the best and most memorable ones swelling to fill much more time than they first seemed to, bleeding together at the edges. It becomes harder to tell whether drinking beers with your friends on the beach, watching Chekhov at the theater, or finally managing to make a really good joke in Russian were things that happened once or over and over, for a few minutes or hours or days on end. In grammatical terms, it's a shift from the rigidity of the preterite – "It happened." – to the more forgiving past imperfect – "It was happening." And in your memory, it all keeps happening and happening.
Sorry, I know that's not at all the kind of thing I usually write here. I guess I'm feeling a bit sloppy and sentimental; we're halfway through the academic year now, I've submitted all my applications for things to do for next year, and I can see the future hurtling toward me (and contracting) at an alarming rate. On the bright side, a confluence of factors made this past weekend one of those ones that will definitely expand in memory, and maybe end up defining the whole of January 2008 or even the whole winter for me. Mostly in good ways.
The best, I think, was the New Year's party I played unsuspecting host to on Sunday. I was under the impression that a few of my students were coming over to watch a movie and eat some peanut butter cookies. But a lot more people came than I thought I had invited (sort of my mistake, sort of not), the person who was supposed to bring the movie forgot it, and it turned out to be Old New Year's Eve. (That is, New Year's Eve according to the old Julian calendar.) So I had a party without stressing out about planning a party, and it was great. We sang, we toasted the new year with champagne, we made noises about playing charades but never actually did it, we roamed the streets in search of New Year's trees and then danced around them in the traditional way, we took up a collection to buy new year's party food and drink, and we came back to my apartment to toast the new year again, this time with vodka. I think from now on I'll try to keep myself in the dark about all my parties.
And now I'm headed off for (another!) vacation – my much-anticipated trip to Petrozavodsk and Murmansk followed by the midyear conference in Moscow – so hopefully there are more great memories to come! There probably won't be any new posts for a couple of weeks, though – sorry!
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