Matters of Life and Death

Regular readers of this column on linguistic survival may wonder what the Russian word for “survival” is and what Russians have to say about life and death more generally. In fact, survival-related vocabulary forms a substantial part of our lexicon, especially after recent market reforms pushed the overwhelming majority of Russians to the brink of poverty.

No sooner had Yegor Gaidar set prices free in 1992 than we Russians all began talking about how to выжить and how our life had become “a fight for survival” – борьба за выживание. Indeed, many often confess their life is not a life but rather an existence: Не жизнь, а существование, and that all they dream of is to live through these troubled times: Пережить это смутное время.

In general, when Russians want to say they lead a tough life, they can say is it a fight не на жизнь, а на смерть (not for life, but to the death). In historical novels on the era of Peter the Great, we read how the Tsar-Reformer called on his soldiers and officers to wage the battle не щадя живота своего. But no, this does not mean “without sparing one’s belly,” but rather “without sparing one’s life.” In old Russian, живот could simply mean “life.”

Actually, Russian soldiers long had a reputation for fighting their enemies with bravery. Hence the popular Russian army proverb: Двум смертям не бывать, а одной не миновать (No one dies twice, but you can’t avoid doing it once). Then there is the popular quote from a war song in which a soldier wishes, Если смерти, то мгновенной, если раны – небольшой (If it is death, let it be swift, if it is a wound, let it be a small one).

But even in peaceful times many issues are considered to be a matter of life or death: вопрос жизни или смерти. This is especially true when one starts to compare the standard of living in Russia with that in other industrialized countries. Because, as the comic Mikhail Zhvanetsky said about the West – “Их уровень смерти, это наш уровень жизни” (“Their level of death is our level of life”). Indeed, the Russian minimal survival level – Прожиточный минимум – is simply nowhere near the minimum survival level in the West.

Such income discrepancies cannot but have an influence on life expectancy (cредняя продолжительность жизни), which in 1994 plummetted to an all time low of 57.6 years for men, making Zhvanetsky’s sardonic phrase all too true. According to the official state report “On the National Health in 1999” issued last fall, Russia’s male life expectancy rose slightly, to 59.8, but is still two months short of the retirement age (пенсионный возраст).

But then not all is so gloomy in the sphere of life and survival in Mother Russia. Our women have a life expectancy of 72 – comparable to European levels, and enough to bring the overall Russian average to 65.5.

Of course, the verb жить does allow plenty of other relevant prefixes besides пере and вы. The wounds inflicted upon the nation in the first years of shock therapy have begun to heal (заживать) and many Russians have learned to live with – уживаться с – the market economy. And each year more and more Russians are moving into new homes – обживать новое жильё.

Worrying too much about the issues of жизни или смерти is bound to send one’s средняя продолжи­тельность жизни plumetting. So why not use a philosophical approach preached by the winner of the last Moscow International Film Festi-val? Krzysztof Zanussi called his winning film: Жизнь как смертельная болезнь передающаяся половым путём (Life as a Lethal, Sexually Transmitted Disease)? That is why it is “vitally essential” (жизненно важно) to be an optimist in life – быть по жизни оптимистом.

Be aware that rampant use of the prefix по – as in the last example (e.g. он по жизни ... он вообще такой по жизни) – can get you in trouble with linguistic purists. Yet it is also true that it is better to use bad Russian and be an optimist than to speak flawlessly yet be a pessimist.

The perennial “Как жизнь?” (“How’s life?”) is usually answered with a simple “нормально” (“fine”), or, if your friend is in a great mood, “лучше не бывает” (“Things couldn’t be better”). But there is also a quite funny (and now cliché) response that starts out: “жизнь бьёт ключом” (“life is spurting up like a spring”). Then at once you can add “...по голове” (“on my head”). The addition is a wordplay based on a different meaning of the word ключ which means not only “spring” but also “wrench” (e.g. гаечный ключ). Of course, such black humor is better than the other cliché response: “Разве это жизнь?!” (“You call this life?!”)