Getting to Know Mother Russia, Then and Now

I majored in Russian Language and Literature at the University of Pennsylvania back when Perestroika had paved the way for an economic rebirth and a feeling of friendship. After Mr. Gorbachev had “torn down” tangibly oppressive walls, he also opened the floodgates for idealistic young Americans to master Russian language and culture. I'm not sure how I intended to actually APPLY my degree. At one point, I fantasized about the romantic life of a career diplomat. Working for a profitable American company that needed Russian-speaking employees to forge further economic ties also seemed possible. As it turns out, my degree was good for two things.

Our childhood conception of Russians.

First, I fell in love with Russian literature. Russian poetry is a bit too hand-wringingly dramatic (too much beating of the breast) for my tastes, but Dostoevsky and Tolstoy so perfectly capture the nuances of not just the Russian spirit but the universality of the human condition. The second benefit was my pronunciation was almost “biz aktsenta” (without an accent). Cute Russian guys would tease me that I was a spy; I flirted back; and so on. I may be a good mimic, but I never advanced beyond conversational Russian.

Our Russian textbooks in college had not been updated since Leonid Brezhnev's tenure, preserved in the amber of 1980. Conversational exchanges often centered on the quality of one’s combine harvesters. Vladimir Lenin came up a lot, but Trotsky...who dat? The Little Octobrists wore star-shaped pins, and if they were extra good they advanced to join the Young Pioneers! Of course, some aspects of Russian life had not changed between the pre- and post-Soviet eras: blintzes, farmer cheese, little pickles, and open-faced sandwiches were generously exchanged between good-natured passengers as the Trans-Siberian railway quietly and proudly (тихо и гордо) chugged across Mother Russia.

Feel the warmth! The Cold War melts.

I recently downloaded the Duolingo app on my iPhone. I tested out of the most basic skills, like knowing the Cyrillic alphabet. After that, I tried my hand at common verbs, phrases, and vocabulary. You translate from Russian to English and vice versa and transcribe a spoken phrase using the handy Cyrillic keyboard. The range of emotions conveyed within a single lesson is intriguing.

“I already have a table” is a somewhat annoyed response to a kind offer. “Do you have a horse?” is one unlikely to pass the lips of a Muscovite in 2017. But as a peasant living in Novosibirsk in 1917, this constitutes an acceptably righteous boast.

The mood soon grows ominously defensive. “We have everything!” and “Everything is perfect.” On the other hand, “Our egg” is historically accurate given the scarcity of essentials; have you attempted to divide a single egg to feed a family of ten? The declaration “This is not milk” is strange indeed. If it looks like milk but does not taste like milk, might it be poisoned? Oh, la mystère! Finally, we delve into the dark realm of conspiracy (“Here is our plan”), right before it veers toward the decidedly bizarre: "Our cats eat eggs."

"Here's our plan...But first, where are my apples?"