Proper Russian

While politicians are deep into discussion on global warming, many countries are facing unusually cold weather. My friends from Asia, Europe and America have complained about chilling wind, cold and snow. Here in Siberia, this winter is cold too. During the first decade of the January, we had temperatures below -30C/-22F. This is quite normal for Western Siberia, but this winter, the cold period has lasted unusually long. However, people here have developed efficient survival strategies to cope with cold. Most Siberians stay active and live their normal lives when the temperatures are abnormally low. The rules on how to dress up are simple, but they work pretty well. Here you go:

More doesn’t always mean better. You do not have to dress up in onion-like manner to keep warm, but you have to select your cold weather clothes carefully. Speaking physics-wise, your clothes should help you to keep an air layer between you and the outside, and absorb sweat. Air does not conduct heat, while liquid (sweat) does. First, select natural fabric only – cotton and wool are the best. Synthetic fibers do not keep the warmth of your body and got stunning cold when contact with the outer air. Select natural fabrics for your underwear too. Nylon/Lycra pantyhose looks great, but girls are at high risk of exposure to their legs while wearing it when the temperature is below zero (btw, scientists say that the risk of cellulite increases when legs are permanently being over-cooled). Your hands would thank you if you buy wool gloves/mittens for them. Do not forget to protect the throat with the scarf and/or high fur collar.

The slogan “I’d rather go naked than wear fur” doesn’t work in -40C. Nothing will protect your better from cold than long fur coat. Well, the second option is a parka. The longer your coat is the better. A fur hat is perfect for cold and windy weather. You may use a knitted wool hat too, but you should select a thick one. Fur boots keep warm very good, but genuine Russian winter footwear is valenki (in Siberia, we call them “pee´myh”). Nowadays, People in cities do not wear valenki, because this is a “peasant fashion”, however, I wore valenki throughout my childhood and was very happy.

Do not wear tight clothes or shoes. Blood should circulate loosely, otherwise, you will get cold very quickly. Winter shoes should be one size bigger than your regular shoes.

Merino wool is known and popular all across the world. In Siberia, however, dog wool is number one choice because it is warmer and softer than merino. Please, don’t think that there are thousands of shaved dogs in Siberia. We comb dog hair to get the thinnest underfur. It is widely believed that dog wool may heal rheumatism, arthritis and many other diseases.

A regular Siberian winter suit is: polo-neck sweater, jacket and skirt/trousers made of felt/wool, wool pantyhose for ladies and long underwear made of cotton for men, warm but thin socks, high boots, long fur coat/parka, fur hat, scarf, mittens. This is enough to feel fine even when it is so cold that your breathing turns into ice dust at the moment you breath out.

Photo by carlfbagge

Winter holidays in Russia officially last 10 days, from December 31st to January 10th. In the Soviet Union, it was an exclusive privilege of children to have a 10 day long winter break. In the early 1990s, Orthodox Christmas (January 7th) became an official holiday in Russia (the Russian Church uses the traditional Julian Calendar, under which December 25th falls on January 7th as measured by the standard Gregorian Calendar). This caused some inconveniences: people celebrated New Year’s eve on December 31st, had some break (normally, two days), got back to work on January 3rd and then had another break from January 6th to January 7th. Add Saturdays and Sundays that may fall on the first 7 days of the year, and you’ll see how few working days are left. So for the last few years, Russians have enjoyed uninterrupted holidays that end when children get back to their classes.

In fact, the festive mood spreads around offices and enterprises about one week before the New Year. When the West celebrates Christmas, Russian companies organize New Year’s parties, so you can hardly catch managers at the office and in the right mood to discuss your business during the last week of the year. I try to have all my projects completed, phone calls done and problems solved before December 24th.

The last informal holiday in the New Year’s set of feasts is the Old New Year on January 14th. Russians have two New Years within two weeks for the same reason the Orthodox Christmas lags behind for 14 days.The Gregorian calendar (the one you most likely use) was adopted in Russia quite late, in 1918. For a long time, many important dates and holidays had two notices – “old style” and “new style”. So the Old New Year is just a start of the year by the Julian calendar.

The Old New Year is a working day, but many people in Russia have kind of a New Year’s eve on January 14th. This is a less formal and more private event and the Old New Year’s parties are more relaxing. As Wikipedia notes, “for many this is a nostalgic family holiday ending the New Year holiday cycle with traditional large meals, singing and celebratory drinking”. TV channels often repeat their New Year programming this day, so people may watch their favorite shows and movies one more time.

New Year is one of the most important holidays in Russia. I bet every family in Russia stays awake at least until 1 am at night on New Year’s Eve, watching TV, eating delicious things and drinking champagne (and/or something else, but champagne is a must).

New Year vs Christmas

The Soviet Union was officially an atheistic country, where religious holidays were prohibited. In many families the tradition of celebrating Christmas was lost after the Revolution of 1917. However, the need for bright, magical winter holiday remained, and soon Christmas was replaced by New Year. Most Christmas attributes were transferred to the New Year holiday, like the decorated coniferous tree, gifts, heavy dinner, lights, garlands, and firecrackers. Until now the New Year’s holiday is more popular and widely celebrated than Christmas in Russia.

The New Year Tree

Families with kids normally decorate a New Year’s tree. Artificial trees are still not so popular in Russia (well, at least, in Siberia) because, first, many fir farms in Russia plant trees specially for the New Year, and second, artificial trees have no scent. The smell of fir for me is a symbol of the holiday since my early childhood, and without this magical scent the New Year is sort of defective. The most popular tree trimming decorations are baubles of various colors, tinsel, electric light garlands and a star on the top. When I was a kid, little toy bears, birds, glass icicles and snow-men toys were also widely used, but during last ten years, I cannot find such toys in supermarkets and stores. Maybe, this is because Russian industry stopped producing native glass New Year toys, and most toys are imported ones. By the way, we do not use ribbons in Russia for decoration.

Many cities and towns manage to decorate an open-air New Year’s Tree. In places like Siberia, where winters are cold enough, the entire snow towns rise at the main squares with the New Year’s tree in the center. Places that are not so lucky, put large inflatable dolls of Ded Moroz, Snegurochka and snowmen.

New Year’s Characters

The central character of the New Year holiday is Ded Moroz. His name could be literally translated as Grandfather Frost. He plays a role similar to that of Santa, i.e. brings presents to children, but he does it in person, during the new year’s parties for kids that are organized in every day-care center and school. However, these presents (mostly sweets) are not so important. A child finds his or her main present laying under the New Year’s tree early in the morning on January 1st. Ded Moroz wears a heel-long fur coat and a semi-round fur hat. Unlike Santa Claus, he walks with a long magical staff, does not say “Ho, ho, ho,” and drives troika. or just walks. Snegurochka or ‘Snow Maiden,’ is a granddaughter of Ded Moroz. She is kind and beautiful, with long blond hair. Often the New Year’s fairy-tales and shows have a plot developed around the same situation: naive Snegurochka has got into troubles and a protagonist rescue her with the help of spectators.

The Dinner

There are no traditional New Year dishes in modern Russia, however, since the Soviet times, the Russian salad is somewhat mandatory. In Russia and the CIS it is called Olivier in honor of Lucien Olivie, a chef who invented the recipe. However, the modern Olivier has nothing in common with the dish that was so popular in Moscow of the 1860s. Butterbrots with caviar, salmon fish, sausages are very common, I believe, for all Russia’s provinces. The main dish can be fried chicken (the whole chicken or parts), pork, beef – actually, everything. In the Soviet Unions the smell of tangerines was one of the things associated with New Year. The reason is that there were standard New Year gifts for kids that included chocolate (natural dark chocolate only, no substitutes), candies, one big apple and tangerines and/or oranges. Those gifts smelled like heaven and the dominant note was, of course, the tangerine.

As I said above, champagne is a special New Year’s beverage. That doesn’t mean that this is the only popular alcohol for the New Year party. Actually, people drink everything during the party, but right at midnight, families and friends gather around the table, stand up and clink glasses of champagne wishing each other a healthy, happy and prosperous new year.

Happy New Year!

I was born and grew up in Siberia. More precisely, in the Altai region, in the South of Western Siberia. Why be so precise? Because there are many different climates, landscapes, cities and ethnic groups united under the common name “Siberia”. The large territory between the Ural mountains (known as a border between Europe and Asia) and Russia’s Far East varies much from the cold North to the sunny and fertile soiled South, and from the woody East to the industrial West.

There are some popular stereotypes about Siberia, and the first one is that Siberia is a Territory of Frost. Well, winters are really cold in Siberia, even in its Southern regions. In my hometown, in January, temperatures below -30C (-20F) may stay for 2-3 weeks, and on some days it may be as cold as -45 C (-53F). The first snow normally occurs in mid October, but melts away. Usually, the snow extends from November to April. However, summers in Altai are hot and dry. Thus, +30C (90F) is a normal temperature for July. Altai has enough sunny days in Summer to plant watermelons and grapes (the watermelon in the picture was planted by my dad).

Summer follows Winter so fast that there is almost no Spring. The short period of time when all the snow (of about 1.5-2 meters deep) melts away lasts about two weeks and ends with a wild and rapid boom of blooming. Autumns are also short, just a few weeks between the Summer heat and snow.

Like almost all inhabitants of my hometown, Barnaul, I was pretty sure that I lived in a small town. It had a population of 650 000. When my English improved so that I could communicate with people from other countries, my international friends didn’t understand why I considered the Barnaul city a small town. The reason was that near Barnaul, there was Novosibirsk city with a population of over 1 million. To the West, there was another city — Omsk with a population of over 1 million. To the East, there was Krasnoyarsk city, that has a population of about 1 million. Indeed, Barnaul was like a suburban village compared to other Siberian cities. To my surprise, in Europe and North America the scale of what is a large city and what is not, differs much from mine. Now I realize that Barnaul, though not being the largest city in Siberia, is quite a big industrial center with well-developed infrastructure.

Wooden houses are not common in Siberian cities. Normally, private houses are built from bricks, we call them cottages.Often, cottage communities are separated from the rest of the city and located in the suburban areas. The vast majority of people in Siberia live in condos. During the 1960s, the Soviet government deployed a country-wide construction program in order to solve the shortage of residential real estate in cities. Since then typical, rather ugly condos were built all across the country. Siberia was not an exception. According to the Soviet government, it was a temporary solution, but, like Russians used to say, there’s nothing more permanent than temporary solutions. These condos still serve people, and more new condos were built during last 20 years.

During World War II, many industrial enterprises and factories were moved from the European part of Russia to Siberia by the rail way. While Western Russia was at high risk of being occupied, Siberia seemed to be a pretty safe place. Most factories in Barnaul and Novosibirsk are ones that were moved there during WWII. Since then Western Siberia has been an important industrial region with a predominantly urban population.

Russian market analyst Eldar Murtazin wrote in his blog a history of a conflict between Sony Ericsson and Euroset, the largest handset retail chain in Russia. According to Murtazin, one year ago, Sony Ericsson pushed their handsets to Euroset really hard, being very happy to supply to Euroset with as many phones as possible at any conditions. Euroset set a very important condition: to pay to SE no sooner than when the handsets are sold. It was a verbal arrangement, that was always a preferred way of doing business for Euroset. The SE guys believed that verbal arrangements meant nothing, only printed contracts were important. SE sent some handsets to Euroset, but sales were pretty weak. After a few months, SE started asking for money for their handsets from Euroset, but Euroset reminded SE about the agreement and refused to pay. That is how the conflict began. During next few months, SE and Euroset were blaming each other for unfair practices, that was not good for anyone — the vendor, retailer and consumers. Recently, SE announced that the company has no claims against Euroset and agreed to renew supplies to the retailer in 2010 (I should say, SE market share decreased dramatically and takes only 3% in Russia).

Putting aside all the boring business issues, I see clearly cross-cultural nature of this conflict. Sony Ericsson, being a western company, pays attention to papers, contracts and fine print, while Russian business tends to trust verbal agreements considering papers nothing but a mere formality. In Russia’s business (and criminal) culture, a person is absolutely responsible for his words, it is a virtue to be responsible for your words. Papers are treated with less (or no) respect. Both sides of the conflict developed their expectations regarding the deal on the base of their own business culture and experience. No surprise that neither Euroset’s nor SE’s expectations were met.

“State your first name, second name, last name, surname, given name, family name…” When I fulfill visa applications for German, Polish, US embassies, each time I need a second or two to understand what exactly I’m asked for. Each country uses its own “names” for names. I found, that Russian personal names are not easy for non-native speakers too and sometimes, Russian long names spoil the joy of reading classic Russian literature. Russian first names sound strange to the foreign ear, Russian family names may vary depending on if the person is male or female, but many surnames do not have gender variants. Russians rarely have second names, and all, with no exceptions, have patronymics. Patronymics are based on the father’s name and follow after the first name. For example, my father’s name is Anatoliy. I am Evgeniya Anatoliyevna, where Eugenia (let me spell it this way) is the first name and Anatoliyevna is the patronymic. Actually, nobody calls me like that because patronymics are used only in very formal conversations and official documents.

Patronymics formation

For men, Russian patronymics have the endings:

• -ovich when father’s name ends with a non-palatal consonant (Russian consonants may be palatal and non-palatal): Oleg → Olegovich
• -evich when father’s name ends with a palatal consonant: Dmitriy → Dmitriyevich
• -ich when father’s name ends with a vowel: Foma → Fomich

For women, patronymics have the endings:

• -ovna when father’s name ends with a non-palatal consonant: Gleb → Glebovna
• -evna when father’s name ends with a palatal consonant: Aleksey → Alekseyevna
• -ichna when father’s name ends with a vowel: Nikita → Nikitichna.

Patronymic Usage

As I said above, patronymics normally are used in official communication. Kids are never called by the combination first name + patronymic, but their teachers have to be addressed by their first names with patronymics always, doesn’t matter how old they are. You demonstrate respect, social distance and subordination by adding a patronymic to person’s name in Russia.

My scientific advisor at the university used to call all his students by name and patronymic. He was quite old and a very respected person, with many long titles, while we were just 18 year old students. But he addressed us as if we were equal. We were pleased and shocked at the same time. Now my good friend works at the university as a tutor and lecturer, and I jokingly call her Eugenia Alekseevna. I myself hate to be called by patronymic because it make me feel old and too official.

Sometimes good friends or colleagues may call each other by patronymics only. Often, a diminutive (shortened) form is used for this cases. Say, there is someone called Ivan Mikhailovich. “Do you know where Mikhalych is?” means “Do you know where Ivan Mikhailovich is?” Stylistically, this is not neutral. First, only very close people may call each other this way in unofficial circumstances. Second, this may be considered as “low style”, very simple speech of poorly educated person.

At schools, students often use diminutive forms of patronymics just to make life a bit easier. Imagine, you should call your teacher by this long combination every time. That’s why Maria Ivanovna (a classic name for a teacher, often used in anecdotes) turns to Mar’Ivanna, Pavel Aleksandorvich turns to Pavel Sanych and so on. Usually, teachers do not mind this. Same happens in companies where official communications are preferable. When everyone has to call a boss “Aleksandr Aleksandrovich”, very soon people start calling him “San Sanych”, both in person and not.

Russian science doesn’t see any distinctions between dystopia and anti-utopia. A utopia is a perfect place where an ideal society lives, while an anti-utopia is just the opposite. Wikipedia surprised me a lot with the term “dystopia”, which seems to be more commonly used for all kinds of not-so-perfect imaginary societies. Wikipedia says, “…dystopia does not pretend to be utopian, whereas an anti-utopia appears to strive intentionally to be utopian—to be intended by its creators to be utopian—but a fatal flaw or another unanticipated factor has destroyed or twisted the intended utopian world or conception, resulting in its antithesis.” I doubt that we can always determine if imaginary world was intended to be utopian or if this world pretends to be the ideal. I found another criterion to distinguish an anti-utopia from a dystopia. Utopias as well as anti-utopias belong to the realm of the ideal and can never come true. Dystopias can come true with ease. A dystopia is a scenario of how things might be at their worst. A brilliant example of a dystopia that comes true is Moscow 2042 by Vladimir Voinovich.

Here is a brief plot summary (sorry, there are some spoilers, but not too many): The Russian author Kartsev, living in Western Germany (just like Voinovich himself), travels through time to the Moscow of 2042. He sees no Soviet Union, but the Moscow Republic (Moscvorepa) instead. Someone called Genialissimus has decided to start building “Communism in one city”, namely in Moscow. The rest of the Soviet Union, where people are barely surviving, has been separated by walls (the three rings of animosity) from the paradise of Moscow, where communism has been realized. Communistic ideology has mixed with Russian Orthodoxy, with a patriarch among the communists’ leaders. Society is divided into the poor majority which has “ordinary needs” and a few chosen who may have “extraordinary needs”. For the first-mentioned group, life is dismal even within the privileged “Moscow Republic”. The situation finally gets so desperate that people throw themselves in the arms of the “liberator”, a fellow dissident writer and (kind of) friend of Kartsev, Sim Karnavalov (apparently inspired by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn), who enters Moscow on a white horse and proclaims himself Tsar Serafim the First. Thus, communism is a regression back into feudal autocracy.

A very smart person and talented writer, Voinovich predicted too accurately in which direction post-soviet Russian society tended to drift. His Genialissimus is a former KGB officer and, being in the very top, in fact, he has lost control over the country because of the ubiquitous flattery and lies.(no comments from my side, sapienti sat). Russian Orthodox Church today has political power and is involved into the economic and politic life too much. Russia suffered from the recent recession significantly, but not those few who sell oil and gas to foreign countries. Slavophilia, an intellectual movement that wanted the Russian Empire, is getting stronger and stronger while life is getting harder and harder for miserable majority. A journalist, who almost openly types bitter critical texts about Genialissimus, works at a computer connected to a fake network, his words go to nowhere – this is a great metaphor for the freedom of speech we have today. Voinovich himself said that he is surprised that his satirical dystopia became a book of predictions.

Is this scary? It would be scary, if it were a book by George Orwell. Vladimir Voinovich found a way to conquer fear with laughter. Humor is the best cure ever. Wikipedia said, Moscow 2042 is considered to be a masterpiece of anti-utopian satire, and I agree with this completely.

Harvard University and WGBH Boston have posted online a popular course “Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?” Moral aspects of murder, price tag for human life, can we sacrifice one life in order to rescue thirty people? These and other moral questions are discussed during this course.

The first two episodes are devoted to utilitarianism. Wikipedia defines utilitarianism as “the idea that moral worth of an action is determined solely by its contribution to overall utility: that is, its contribution to happiness or pleasure as summed among all people. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined by its outcome.” The idea is rooted in the philosophy of Epicurus, and in many ways resulted in thousand of years of European cult of rationality.

In Russia, it is literature that does the job of philosophy. Ethical dilemmas and moral choices are widely discussed in Russia’s novels of the 19th century, less so in philosophical works. Case in point, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, with all the power of his artistic gifts, demonstrated in his novels that a single person and a society cannot build happiness upon the suffering of another.Raskolnikov, the protagonist of “Crime and Punishment” killed a disgusting, wicked old woman. She was an evil. Dostoyevsky intentionally portrayed the old woman as a person with a black soul, so to speak. Presumably, the world would not miss this terrifying old lady; however, this presumption does not excuse the crime of murder. The moral bans for murder and violence against other human beings are more important than overall utility. Moreover, happiness can never be achieved by making another suffer. The most noble and bright idea isn’t worth a single tear of a child. This is what Dostoyevsky illustrated in his novels.

Now let’s turn from literature into the real life. Does primacy of human life declared in Russian novels work in reality? To be continued…