As far as I know, all Russian schoolchildren are taught English - from what I'm told, it's the only mandatory second language. English is not absent in Vladimir - menus at especially trendy cafes are often in both Russian and English and the radio is full of English-language hits.

But that's about it. Movies and TV shows are always over-dubbed and English-language periodicals are non-existent. The latter is even true in Moscow. Last time I was there, I checked every stall at the train station for anything in English - I would have killed for a copy of Metallurgy Digest - but found nothing.

And as N recently pointed out, a surprising number of people either don't speak English or will balk at using the English they've learned. So I wasn't shocked so much as curious when I saw a girl the other day, maybe 12 years old, wearing a pink t-shirt with glitter and pastels which read "Damn, I'm good in bed."

To an outsider this might seem sad or pitiful, but it has to be considered in the context of how English here is used.

English is a fashion statement. It shows you're modern, cosmopolitan, connected. It's a status symbol. Accordingly, shirts here are stenciled, plastered, splattered with English print. A typical example: today I was in a higher-end clothes store and saw a baby blue t-shirt with white schematics in the background and black lettering on top which read "Airplanes" and below "science and technologies."

Most common are collared shirts with blocks of text across the front, which look like someone left a wet copy of the New York Times on them.

Just like it's cool to get some Asian character tattooed on your neck or pelvis or whatever, it's cool to have a Latinate alphabet on your clothes.

As in the case above, this can lead to some pitiful (or hilarious, depending on your perspective) results.

Usually it's minor spelling and grammar mistakes:

(popular t-shirt around town)
-Because my sins is F5 jeans

(spotted on a bus to Suzdal):
-Montreal: for the diescerning, imdependent and freespirited men

(for sale at our city stadium):
-F.C. Torpedo Vladimir - To be a winners!

(purchased at a bazaar in Bishkek):


In the most extreme example I've heard of, a fellow traveler in Bishkek reported seeing a young lady wearing a t-shirt which declared her preference for well-proportioned, dark-skinned men in only five words.*

In my seventh grade math class there was an off-the-boater from Taiwan. He was the class whiz, but for months he wore white shoes with an unmistakable logo stenciled above the word "Playboy." He or his parents probably came to the understandable conclusion, that these were shoes for a 12 year old boy to run around in, to play in. When other students in the class told him what it stood for he was crushed, started crying and left class.

Sometimes, when I see these t-shirts, I think I should say something - not the fashion police, but a fashion vigilante. On the one hand, my Taiwanese classmate was probably done a favor before he hit high school.

On the other hand, how does a foreigner explain to a Russian 12 year old that her shirt is inappropriately salacious? How do you explain to the man sitting in front of you on the bus that his shirt is full of spelling mistakes? How do you open that conversation?

How do you explain to a 40-something female attendee at a Russian motocross rally that her t-shirt is both poorly written and overtly misogynistic?




*Stop counting on your fingers, perv!

[Textbooks] "You will die like a cur"

Last year the Ministry of Education approved a new textbook for use in grade 11 classes across the country. The book, Istoriya Rossii 1945-2008, met immediate criticism. One critic called it "a highly distorted version of 20th-century history;" another stated "nobody’s going to learn from this garbage of yours, because it’s horribly written and dark ." One of the book's contributors apparently found this irksome since he responded on his blog: "You will die like a cur, but your children will be learning from the textbook that I will write. And by the way, you can’t have any children, ’cause you’re a bleedin’ faggot."

Background on this spat here.

I now have a copy of it in front of me, purchased at a local bookstore for 190 rubles (~$6). I've only just started to look through it. It's not nearly as interesting as the comments above would lead you to believe, but here's a thought-provoker from the introduction:

We make the proviso that we are opponents of the concept of totalitarianism. This doctrine, equating the Soviet Union to Hitler's Germany, was not and is not an instrument of knowledge, but a weapon in an indeological war. Here it must be clearly acknowledged, that the ideology of Nazi Germany and the ideology of Soviet Russia had nothing in common between them.

Contemplate.

Greatest Russian Music Vid Ever in History

Hammer and Pickle

Russians love holidays. In my few weeks in this country, I've gotten to celebrate "Russia Day," "City Day," and the "National Day of Family, Love and Fidelity." In addition, there are all sorts of unofficial holidays like Pushkin's birthday (June 6), the first day of school ("the Day of Knowledge," Sept. 1), and any day when Putin goes hunting and takes off his shirt.

"Why do you [Russians] have so many holidays?" I asked a bus conductor on the way to "City Day." "Because life is hard and the people need to be cheered up," she replied. This struck me as a plausible theory. Then again, it would also answer the question "Why do I see so many people drinking vodka on public transport at 8 in the morning?"

Given the abundance of holidays, I was not entirely surprised to hear about the 9th Annual International Cucumber Festival. It was in Suzdal, about 30km from Vladimir. Other students from my group wanted to get there early, so they left around eight. I was tired and refused to believe it necessary to arrive early to a cucumber festival. I decided to go alone around 11, get there around 12. This was a mistake: Do not underestimate Russian vegetable holidays.

I got to the bus station around 11:30 and it was packed with 30-person "lines" at every teller. Despite years of practice waiting for toilet paper, queueing is not a great talent in this country. After pushing my way to the front I bought a ticket for the next bus out, at 12:30.

A long hour later, the bus arrived and was filled to capacity - all seats were taken and all standing room was filled. Cramped, hot, dusty. Grasping one of the overhead hand-holds, my armpit occasionally nuzzled a blonde woman's hair bun.

Despite this arrangement, I was feeling good. I had decided to break my month-long streak of only listening to Russian music and was instead rocking out to Coheed and Cambria. Around the time I started feeling self satisfied with this decision there was resounding XLOP (Russian for "bang"), the bus wretched and pulled over. And then, slowly, those gaps between peoples' heads (and underarms) began to darken and fill with DYM (Russian for "smoke").

Luckily, my fellow passengers made up for their earlier standing-in-line deficiency with an impressive demonstration of getting-the-hell-out-of-a-burning-bus. We evacuated onto the side of a busy highway.

We waited. A long line of cars passed in our direction. Like all Russians standing outside with nothing to do, my companions started lighting up their cigs. I imagined the puffing men turning to the nearest female and saying, "Dear god, Masha! We could have died of smoke inhalation in there!"

Passing us were hundreds of happy, expectant cucumber-festival goers. Through the windows of their Ladas I could feel their smugness.

I started asking people how far it was, thinking I might walk. "Ten kilometers. Fifteen. Maybe twenty." Idea abandoned. Some of the other passengers had already gotten their money back from the bus driver - who at this point was pouring gallon-jugs of water directly onto the engine - and had started to hitchhike. I saw a group of guys roughly my age and asked if I could join.

After walking for about twenty minutes with no luck, a lone taxi going in the opposite direction saw us and turned around. And finally around three o'clock we arrived to the extravaganza, just in time to see all my friends, leaving.

I wasn't about to leave. I needed to see something. Between the wooden peasant houses were a few cucumber dolls, dwindling barrels of pickles and a cucumber carved into a phallus.

This was around the time I began to think Russians have too many holidays. But look, 20 million dead in World War II, 75 years of Soviet rule, 10 years of stagnation and crime - maybe they do need to be cheered up. But imagine you're that conductor on the bus: You've just spent 70 hours of your week tearing off individual ticket stubs, yelling at drunkards and counting out 10 kopek coins. You may be skeptical of a holiday that involves waking up at 7am on a Saturday and driving 30km to view a giant cucumber schlong. Unless, of course, Putin shows up and takes off his shirt.

Textbook Case #1

I have in front of me a brand new copy of the textbook Russian History, XX - XXI Centuries (Danilov, 2009). It's for 9th graders.

Since it's my second semester here, I had more latitude in designing my weekly schedule. Five hours of grammar and five hours of conversation weren't negotiable (though my grammar instruction this term will be one-on-one). After that, I asked for two hours of literature, two hours of phonetics and six hours of history. Over the summer I only had two hours of history a week; I asked for more because 1) it was the course that required the least amount of preparation, and 2) I would also be able to meet with the history professor one-on-one, which would hopefully mean we would get to explore some interesting topics in-depth.

I thought this plan was even more clever because the director informed me that of my six hours of history I would only need to meet with the professor for two - the rest could be "independent study" in the library. This I understood as tacit consent to leave the institute and ask people about World War Two at a bar (they beat the fascists, by the way, in case you haven't talked to a Russian in EVER).

This plan was not clever. The history professor decided that I should pick a topic and write a 25 page paper over the course of the semester, which I have to assume he meant in Russian since he doesn't speak English. Woe.

Then he asked me for ideas. Luckily I had just read an article from the Moscow Times in which it was written: "President Dmitry Medvedev called for the introduction of a single history textbook to prevent schoolchildren’s minds from being turned into kasha."

So I suggested that I look at different Russian history textbooks to see the differences, particularly at sections describing Russian-American relations. He clearly liked this idea, because he didn't shoot it down like my first 20 ideas which I haven't listed here out of time constraints.

Here's a sample. The aforementioned textbook has a section in the last four pages which describes recent events in American/world history:

The situation in the world sharply changed after the terror acts of September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington. President Putin was the first foreign leader to call George Bush and offer his sympathies. After these events a Russian-American group was formed, the main task of which was the struggle with terrorism. Russia agreed with the actions of the U.S. and the mission against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, charged with supporting international terrorism. Greater understanding in the west began to great the actions of Russia in Chechnya.

And on the next page:

President George Bush repeatedly expressed his concern with "the rolling back of democracy and free press in Russia." V.V. Putin answered that "we will never allow anyone to twist Russia's arm, which with every year year is growing stronger." In 2003 Russia, Germany and France formed the so-called European Trio and objected to the military actions of the U.S. in Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Russia insisted on the involvement of the U.N. in deciding the Iraq problem.