Russian revival

Just off North Street!

There have been two reasons this week for me to wrap a cold towel round my head and try to brush up some of my fast fading Russian language skills.

First of all there has been the excitement following last week’s Duma elections.  Although demonstrations have been confined largely to Moscow, the message from the much abused Russian ‘little people’  to President Putin is that you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.  Of course it is the case that encouragement has been given by pro-democracy demonstrations in the Arab world.  However the current increase in political activism in Russia should not simply be seen as a copycat response.  Russians through history have, on the whole, been a docile bunch, rather preferring their leaders to be of the dictatorial, strong handed type.  It takes quite a lot to get them out on the streets. However it has become clear that the level of corruption, both political and economic, has reached such unprecedented levels that the conviction is growing that there can be no sort of future for the country while it persists. 

It is a startling fact that capital flight from Russia during 2011 was recently estimated at $80bn.

Coverage in the UK of the situation is understandably limited.  As the news has unfolded it has been great fun reading the Russian websites, although the arrest and imprisonment last week of one of the principal bloggers has shut down one useful source of information.  Unlike the broadcast media however the newspapers have at present at least a little more flexibility.  Most useful in fact has been the old communist rag ‘Pravda’, which, indeed these days appears to be reporting the truth implicit in its title.

The other reason for blowing the dust off the Russian dictionary can be found much closer to home.  On my way to W H Smith the other evening I was shocked to see the words ‘magazin’ written in Cyrillic script on a shop just off North Street.  Magazin in Russian means shop (a word of course imported from French in the eighteenth century).  On investigating further I find that another shop selling delicious Eastern European products has opened in Sudbury.  What is more the proprietor, Valya, comes from Lithuania where a good proportion of the population is Russian speaking.

Delicious and different products from Eastern Europe at a shop near you!

We were able to have a very nice conversation as I bought some delicious Polish sausage, some Russian preserved vegetables, and also some salmon roe from Siberia.  It is lucky that one of the first things you learn when starting a new language is how to go shopping.  Those words at least appear to have stuck!