March 29, 2018

New Zealand, Nuke Names, and New 'dos


New Zealand, Nuke Names, and New 'dos

We have no words. This week’s tragic mall fire in Kemerovo killed over 60 children and adults. We know all Weekly Russia File readers share in our feelings of grief and empathy for their families and loved ones.


Round Two of Election News

1. This man’s as good as his mustache. Or at least, as good as his mustache was. In an update to one of last week’s stories, Communist Party Presidential candidate Pavel Grudinin made good on his word and shaved his mustache. Prior to the election, he had promised blogger Yuri Dud that he would shave his mustache if he got less than 15% of the vote. As the shaving gods would have it, poor Pavel only got 11.7%. Grudinin hemmed and hawed for a while on whether he would carry out the deed (inspiring a mobile game in which you yourself could shave Grudinin’s moustache), but he finally realized he needed to make good on his campaign promise. His upper lip may be shaven, but at least it’s stiff!

 

2. Russia’s most important election of the year has concluded! No, not the presidential election. This week Russia announced the winners of the nuclear missile system naming contest. The winning names were “Burevestnik” for the cruise missile, “Peresvet” for the laser, and “Poseidon” for the underwater drone. Burevestnik is a Russian name for a bird but literally translates to “the announcer of a storm,” Peresvet was a medieval Russian monk warrior, and hopefully Poseidon is self-explanatory.

3. I spy… no spies. New Zealand got itself into a bit of a pickle this week when it tried to expel Russian spies in response to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double agent that was residing in the UK. Unfortunately, they couldn’t find any. The Prime Minister of New Zealand said she wasn’t surprised that New Zealand is not Russia’s top spy destination, given the lack of Russian interests in the island nation. But what with New Zealand’s stunning scenery, that seems like a failure on the part of the FSB.

In Odder News:

Photo: evgeny__volkov

  • Russia (along with much of Eastern Europe) said “hello yellow” as an African dust storm reached its southern regions, imbuing the landscape with a lemony tint

  • If there can be treehuggers, there can be television tower huggers: citizens of Yekaterinburg held a “Hug the Tower” rally in an attempt to stop the demolition of an aging, half-finished TV tower

  • A slam dunk for Yekaterinburg: American point guard and WNBA retiree Jamierra Faulkner just joined their basketball team (she got citizenship, too!)

Quote of the Week:

“We don't have Russian undeclared intelligence officers here. If we did, we would expel them.”

—Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern

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The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar (bilingual)

The fables of Ivan Krylov are rich fonts of Russian cultural wisdom and experience – reading and understanding them is vital to grasping the Russian worldview. This new edition of 62 of Krylov’s tales presents them side-by-side in English and Russian. The wonderfully lyrical translations by Lydia Razran Stone are accompanied by original, whimsical color illustrations by Katya Korobkina.
93 Untranslatable Russian Words

93 Untranslatable Russian Words

Every language has concepts, ideas, words and idioms that are nearly impossible to translate into another language. This book looks at nearly 100 such Russian words and offers paths to their understanding and translation by way of examples from literature and everyday life. Difficult to translate words and concepts are introduced with dictionary definitions, then elucidated with citations from literature, speech and prose, helping the student of Russian comprehend the word/concept in context.
Murder at the Dacha

Murder at the Dacha

Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin has a problem. Several, actually. Not the least of them is the fact that a powerful Soviet boss has been murdered, and Matyushkin's surly commander has given him an unreasonably short time frame to close the case.
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Faith & Humor: Notes from Muscovy

A book that dares to explore the humanity of priests and pilgrims, saints and sinners, Faith & Humor has been both a runaway bestseller in Russia and the focus of heated controversy – as often happens when a thoughtful writer takes on sacred cows. The stories, aphorisms, anecdotes, dialogues and adventures in this volume comprise an encyclopedia of modern Russian Orthodoxy, and thereby of Russian life.
Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

Stargorod is a mid-sized provincial city that exists only in Russian metaphorical space. It has its roots in Gogol, and Ilf and Petrov, and is a place far from Moscow, but close to Russian hearts. It is a place of mystery and normality, of provincial innocence and Black Earth wisdom. Strange, inexplicable things happen in Stargorod. So do good things. And bad things. A lot like life everywhere, one might say. Only with a heavy dose of vodka, longing and mystery.

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