June 01, 2017

Bananas, Ballerinas, and Bubble Bath


Bananas, Ballerinas, and Bubble Bath
From Footballers to Hamster Bloggers

1. Wearing your favorite team’s jersey and booing the other side is one thing. Painting yourself in blackface and juggling bananas when the opposing team hails from Cameroon is another story. In a Sochi parade anticipating next month’s game against Cameroon as part of the Confederations Cup, certain costumes renewed fears of racist acts and perhaps racist violence, unfortunately common occurrences among Russian soccer fans. The Confederations Cup being essentially a dress rehearsal for the big tournament, officials hope such displays aren’t similarly foreshadowing things to come.

2. Some Siberian folks might have very, very distant cousins in the U.S. – at least, linguistic cousins. New research links the Ket language to Navajo, and a genetic study suggests a more recent migration across the Bering Strait than previously believed. Historical linguist Edward Vajda has researched connections between Native American languages and the Yeniseic language family. Ket is the only Yeniseic language still spoken, though it has fewer than 200 speakers and most are over 60. That’s more reason to study the language’s past, as it is likely to disappear in the future.  

3. Russian youth love their video blogs (what else do they love? That was TWERF’s focus last week.) Apparently, there’s an ongoing conversation about just how important this mode of communication is, with a famous YouTube blogger (renowned for her skills with hamsters and bubble bath) addressing the State Duma about building dialogue between youth and government. With United Russia officials discussing ways to nip youth culture’s urge to protest in the bud, hamsters and bubble bath just might be the answer.  

In Odder News
  • A photo gallery worth pointing out: students from one of Russia’s top ballet schools in Novosibirsk dance, study, check their phones, and do things with their bodies you wouldn’t believe.

  • The special tuning, layered notes, and floaty melody of the accordion is unmistakable. All the more when it’s a specialty accordion from Shuya, a town in western Russia.
  • Yandex programmers created a neural network to generate music in the style of composer Alexander Skryabin. Then, a chamber orchestra played it. Weird, but neat.
Quote of the Week

"I sometimes told [them] I was from America," Vajda says. "But some people thought that was maybe just another village somewhere out there."
—Historical linguist Edward Vajda on his many years spent living among the Ket people in an isolated part of Siberia.

Want more where this comes from? Give your inbox the gift of TWERF, our Thursday newsletter on the quirkiest, obscurest, and Russianest of Russian happenings of the week.

Like this post? Get a weekly email digest + member-only deals

Some of Our Books

White Magic

White Magic

The thirteen tales in this volume – all written by Russian émigrés, writers who fled their native country in the early twentieth century – contain a fair dose of magic and mysticism, of terror and the supernatural. There are Petersburg revenants, grief-stricken avengers, Lithuanian vampires, flying skeletons, murders and duels, and even a ghostly Edgar Allen Poe.
Russian Rules

Russian Rules

From the shores of the White Sea to Moscow and the Northern Caucasus, Russian Rules is a high-speed thriller based on actual events, terrifying possibilities, and some really stupid decisions.
Davai! The Russians and Their Vodka

Davai! The Russians and Their Vodka

In this comprehensive, quixotic and addictive book, Edwin Trommelen explores all facets of the Russian obsession with vodka. Peering chiefly through the lenses of history and literature, Trommelen offers up an appropriately complex, rich and bittersweet portrait, based on great respect for Russian culture.
The Little Golden Calf

The Little Golden Calf

Our edition of The Little Golden Calf, one of the greatest Russian satires ever, is the first new translation of this classic novel in nearly fifty years. It is also the first unabridged, uncensored English translation ever, and is 100% true to the original 1931 serial publication in the Russian journal 30 Dnei. Anne O. Fisher’s translation is copiously annotated, and includes an introduction by Alexandra Ilf, the daughter of one of the book’s two co-authors.
Marooned in Moscow

Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.
The Latchkey Murders

The Latchkey Murders

Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin is back on the case in this prequel to the popular mystery Murder at the Dacha, in which a serial killer is on the loose in Khrushchev’s Moscow...
Maria's War: A Soldier's Autobiography

Maria's War: A Soldier's Autobiography

This astonishingly gripping autobiography by the founder of the Russian Women’s Death Battallion in World War I is an eye-opening documentary of life before, during and after the Bolshevik Revolution.
Tolstoy Bilingual

Tolstoy Bilingual

This compact, yet surprisingly broad look at the life and work of Tolstoy spans from one of his earliest stories to one of his last, looking at works that made him famous and others that made him notorious. 
How Russia Got That Way

How Russia Got That Way

A fast-paced crash course in Russian history, from Norsemen to Navalny, that explores the ways the Kremlin uses history to achieve its ends.

About Us

Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.

Latest Posts

Our Contacts

Russian Life
73 Main Street, Suite 402
Montpelier VT 05602

802-223-4955