Repeat and Ye Shall Learn

Of all the pieces of “invaluable” advice the founder of the Soviet Union had to give to the younger generation, there was one he made a point to repeat thrice – “to learn, learn and learn” (“учиться, учиться и учиться”).

All the subsequent generations of Russian youth – whether communist or not – had no fundamental problem with this bit of Lenin’s wisdom. After all, many years before Lenin said this, another famous Russian, Field Marshal Alexander Suvorov, had this to say: “тяжел­­о в ученье – легко в бою” (“training is tough, battle is easy”).

Most prominent figures in Russian history from Peter the Great onward agreed on the need to learn. For, as the Russian saying goes – ученье свет, а неученье тьма (learning is light and ignorance is darkness). So, don’t be surprised to come across the word “learn” in many Russian idioms and sayings. And, since we all know that students always follow the advice of their ancestors religiously, it follows that students in Russia have developed a keen interest in learning, along with their own student parlance. It is in secondary school that students learn how to списывать – to copy off of somebody (сдувать, содрать), how to skip classes (прогуливать уроки) and how to write a шпаргалка (cheat-sheet).

Once you have a шпаргалка, you need to make sure you sit in Камчатка (reference is made to the distant Kamchatka peninsula), the row of tables farthest from the teacher, so you can copy from it undisturbed by her eagle eye. Kamchatka is also a great place to подсказывать (whisper the answers) to the guy standing at the blackboard.

Secondary school students may call their teachers училка (a pejorative form of учительница). A female teacher of mathematics would be a математичка, of Russian language, a русичка, and so on. The училка gives Russian kids marks on a five-point system, ranging from the dismal двойка or пара (2), тройка (coll. трояк) (3), and четвёрка (4), up to the laudable пятёрка (5). If the teacher were really angry, she would give a kid a единица or кол (1). Someone who has too many dvoykas runs the risk of staying back a year and becoming a второгодник.

At the college level, marks change from numbers to adverbs. Thus, after an exam, a professor would write not a 2, but rather the word неудовлетворительно (unsatisfactory), in a student’s зачётная книжка / зачётка (report card). Note the colloquial поставить/ влепить “неуд” – literally, to stick an unsatisfactory mark on a student. Accordingly, a 3 becomes удовлетворительно (satisfactory), a 4 – хорошо (good), and a 5 – отлично (excellent). Those who receive only dvoykas are called двоечники, troykas – троечники, 4’s – хорошисты, and 5’s – отличники. In order to give students incentive to earn high marks, institutes sometimes give a stipend (стипендия, coll. стипуха) only to those who had just 4’s and 5’s in their зачётка.

However, real life tends to go way beyond textbooks, so many a student would not pay too much attention to marks and grades, figuring that social skills would prove equally, if not more, important in the future. This type of student would hang out a lot at the общежитие (dormitory) or общага (dorm). Take note of a popular student song on the subject: Почему мой друг – да потому, что я жизнь учил не по учебникам, просто я работаю волшебником. (Why, my friend? Well, because I didn’t learn about life from textbooks, I simply work as a magician.) These guys pretend to be savvy and knowledgeable. They usually go to institutes after the army and have in their arsenal such idioms as яйца курицу не учат (eggs don’t teach the hen) or не учи учёного (don’t teach the teacher). However, it is often these same “magicians” who flunk exams (провалиться на экзамене).

Another idiom related to magicians and studying sounds like this: я не волшебник, я ещё только учусь (I’m not a magician, I’m just learning), which means – don’t ask too much from me, I just do what I can. This saying has by now become an idiom, but Russians over 40 will recall that it originated in the old Soviet movie Cinderella, where the fairy godmother had a young apprentice who kept repeating this sentence.

On the other hand, it is possible to keep learning for a century and still remain ignorant. As they say: век живи, век учись (“live a millemium, learn for a thousand years,” the equivalent of live and learn). This is what members of the Russian intelligentsia repeat to themselves and their children. And since repetition is the mother of learning (повторенье – мать ученья), it might pay to take the advice of an old comrade and учиться, учиться и учиться. After all, with learning Russian, as with so much else, hard work tends to pay off.