Knees Made for Dancing

A punning headline (“Weak in the Knees”), over a story about tennis star Serena Williams’ withdrawal from a tourney due to a knee injury, got me thinking about this particular body part.

We, too, say слаб в коленках (weak in the knees) about someone who is not daring or bold, whose knees shake (у него колени дрожат) in times of trouble. Meanwhile, for guys like me who work in small companies, we say they are used to делать всё на коленке (doing everything on the knee), evoking the image of a reporter who does not have a proper desk and has to use his knee instead. 

Of course, those who work in large companies are said to spend time on their knees (становиться на колени), genuflecting before their supervisor or boss. In some cases, if you don’t, you run the risk that some day тебе дадут коленом под зад (they will give you a knee in the rear, i.e. kick you out). 

Russians in general only like to be на коленях (on bended knee) if making a marriage proposal or begging their belle’s pardon: “Хочешь, я перед тобой на колени встану?” (“Do you want me to kneel before you?”) 

Knee-groveling is what Napoleon expected of Moscow back in 1812 – but in vain. As Alexander Pushkin penned in Yevgeny Onegin (7: xxxvii):

Напрасно ждал Наполеон,
Последним счастьем упоенный,
Москвы коленопреклоненной
С ключами старого Кремля:
Нет, не пошла Москва моя
К нему с повинной головою.

Napoleon waited vainly,
Intoxicated by his victory,
For Moscow on bended knees
To present the Kremlin’s keys:
But no, would not my Moscow 
Go to him with head bowed.

Napoleon entered Moscow but got stuck there. Come autumn, his troops began to beat a retreat and got stuck по колено в грязи (knee deep in mud), and later in snow. As a result, a couple of years later, the allies поставили Францию на колени (brought France to its knees) and Paris was occupied by Russian cossacks, while Napoleon ended up on St. Helena. 

Napoleon was drunk with power, but of someone who is simply drunk, you can say “пьяному море по колено” (the sea is only knee-deep to a drunk, i.e. he feels bold and daring). 

Of someone like Nikita Khrushchev, one might say “он лысый как коленка” (bald as a knee). Kneebald Nikita was actually known to be a good dancer, and Stalin often forced the young Khrushchev to dance Ukrainian dances in front of other Politburo members. Nikita выписывал такие коленца (showed dancing prowess) to please the boss. Later, when he took over the Kremlin after Stalin’s death, he also выписывал коленца in politics and economics (the dance-related phrase can be used figuratively, meaning to do something in a bold, unpredictable, often scary fashion). But it did not last long. By 1964, he was back on his knees.  

It is worth noting that колено can also mean “generation.” For example, recently Ukrainian Premier Yulia Timoshenko vehemently denied rumors that her father was Armenian, saying: “У меня по линии отца все латыши до десятого колена, а по линии мамы – все украинцы.” (“On my father’s side, we are Latts going back ten generations, and on my mother’s side, all Ukrainians.”) 

I recently discovered that my ancestor в четвёртом колене (four generations back, i.e. my great-grandmother) was named Tugan-Baranovskaya, and came from a famous noble family that led a rather prosperous life. This distantly relates me to the famous economist of business cycles Mikhail Ivanovich Tugan-Baranovsky, who had the dubious honor of being personally criticized by the лысый как коленка Vladimir Lenin for not being sufficiently Marxist and for amending Marx “with excerpts from bourgeois theories.” Unfortunately, Lenin’s economic theories prevailed and for seven decades Россия выписывала такие коленца, so that many of us spent a good deal of time working на коленке. 

Nearly two decades have passed since we дали коммунистам коленом под зад, opting for a normal economy. Our present stability and predictability give me some hope that if not me, then at least my descendants во втором и третьем колене, will enjoy a measure of prosperity not too far off that of my ancestors, the дворяне Туган-Барановские.