Who is Mikhail Ivanovich?

Mishka (RIAN.ru)

BBC's investigative Panorama programme on Monday (25 Jan 2016) looked into allegations of corruption against Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Brave or meek, sensationally revealing or we-knew-it-all-along, it left quite a few questons unanswered.

One of them, with which non-Russian friends bombarded me, was about the nickname that is allegedly referring to Putin in coded conversations — 'Mikhail Ivanovich.'

One friend asked, all right, Mikhail Ivanovich, I get it, but what is his surname?
Without thinking, I replied: Toptygin (Топтыгин).

Mikhail Ivanovich Toptygin is one of the many affectionate, or not very affectionate folklore names for the Bear. The bear in Russian imagery is always the biggest of them all; he can be stupid, funny, clumsy, threatening; he can be a secondary character, or the main character, the Big Boss. Russian dictionaries have numerous entries on the bear and his nicknames. And the name, Mikhail-Michael, is quite common. Gorbachev is Mikhail Sergeevich. Kutuzov, the Russian army commander in history and in Tolstoy's 'War and Peace,' was Mikhail Illarionovich.

In 'War and Peace', Pierre, Anatole and Dolokhov get drunk, borrow a bear from the gypsies for fun, and, when a gendarme arrives, they tie them back-to-back and push the two in the river. The Bear appears in Pushkin's 'Eugene Onegin' chasing Tatiana in her dream (see in English here, Chapter 5, XII, Russian text here). Saltykov-Schedrin, the great 19 Century satirist, has a tale of three bears serving as governors of different regions with the rank of Major. One of them, the cleverest, even gets promoted to Colonel. Each of the three have the same name Toptygin: Toptygin I, Toptygin II and Toptygin III. And at least one of them is Mikhail Ivanovich (Ivanovich being the patronymic, or middle name, with the stress on A). Chekhov wrote a one-act comedy sketch 'The Bear' (summary in English and text in Russian) in 1888, in which a burly land-owner challenges a young widow to a duel, after which they fall in love. The play was made into a film by Isidor Annensky in 1938.

The image of Russia as a bear, both in the West and in the East, is so strong that it merited a separate Wikipedia article. President Putin himself described the Bear as the master of the forest in October 2014.

But Mikhail Ivanovich the Bear, is he as strong in the Russian mind as Mikhail Ivanovich the Boss? Yes and no.

On top of Mikhail Ivanovich there is also the cute Mishka, the 1980 Moscow Olympics mascot, and there is also a Mikhail Ivanovich the 'Chef' in the popular 1969 comedy 'The Diamond Arm' by Leonid Gaidai (summary in English on Wikipedia). Thanks to Valery Adzhiev for the reminder! 

In fact, the film is so popular that the actual name of a character in the film, Mikhail Ivanovich the police officer, a Captain later promoted to Major, shifted to the wicked smugglers' ring-leader, the Chef. It must be thanks to the scene, when one of the gangsters disguised as a cab driver, learns that the police are on their trail and rushes off to call the Chef.
'You mean, Mikhail Ivanovich?' asks the main character.
'Yes, yes, him!'

This is how 'Mikhail Ivanovich' travelled from the Bear to the Boss.

'I must call Mikhail Ivanovich' scene from 'The Diamond Arm' -



Vladimir Putin on the Master of the Taiga forest (from RT YouTube channel)  -

Baba Yaga.

Baba Yaga
by Viktor Vasnetsov, o/c, 1917.
One of the better known images in Russia.

The Guardian has a lovely piece about the witch Baba Yaga (Баба Яга, in Russian the stress in the last 'a' - yaGA) in Russian folk tales and a new illustrated edition of folk tales in English.

Here's an excerpt:

"Baba Yaga appears in many other Russian fairy tales. In The Magic Swan Geese, Baba Yaga sends her magic birds to steal a boy away from his sister. The proud sister scoffs at the river and the trees when they offer to help her find him, but when she finds out the evil fate that Baba Yaga plans for her brother, she might just change her mind…

But Baba Yaga is not always the villain in Russian folklore. In Go I Know Not Whither and Fetch I Know Not What, a wonderfully weird tale involving a bird princess, a magic ring, merchants, servants and quick trip to the Underworld, she transforms from Wicked Witch to Wise Woman, lending the hero a helping hand."

Read 'Baba Yaga, and the howlings of Russian pseudo-patriots.' (In Russian, but includes a charming Australian vlogger talking about her fascination with Baba Yaga and Russian folklore.)

Baba Yaga's theme from Mussorgsky's 'Pictures from an Exhibition' suite -

Crimean words in English.

The Thin Red Line.

Ukrainian crisis has brought back place names and events in Crimea that gave English a number of words and phrases some of which are hardly associated now with the war between Russia and a coalition of Britain, France and Turkey (plus the Kingdom of Sardinia) in 1853-1856. 

Here is a short list of Crimean words and phrases in English.

My top three are:

Balaklava (or Balaclava) — a small port to the East of Sevastopol that served as the main British base during the war. It gave name to the type of knitted hat that covers head, neck and most of the face. Patriotic English ladies are said to have produced them en masse for the troops ill-prepared for the harsh Winter campaign. Beloved of terrorists, robbers and spetsnaz in late 20th Century its name became disconnected from its origins. What's interesting is that 'balaclava' wasn't used in the hat sense in Russian until after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It was imported in the English sense only recently. (choose from a selection of Balaclava articles on Wikipedia.)

Raglan — Lord Raglan was the commander of the British army in Crimea (and died there towards the end of the war.) The invention of raglan, a type of clothing that has sleeves without seams on the shoulders, is named after him. Seamless shoulders allowed freer movement and prevented rainwater from getting under coats. Raglan is still popular. (wiki article about him)

Cardigan — Lord Cardigan was the commander of British light cavalry during the Battle of Balaclava. The Charge of the Light Brigade immortalised him. Tennyson wrote the poem based on a report in The Times and when Cardigan returned to England before the end of the war he was mobbed as a national hero. Only later doubts about his role and character began to emerge. The type of knitted jacket, buttoned down the front and with thick turn-down collar is said to have been introduced by Lord Cardigan. (wiki article about him, wiki about cardigans.) 

Other Crimean words:

Crimea, Crimean War

Sevastopol (often Sebastopol) — Russian naval base and city on the Western tip of Crimea. Site of two long land sieges, during the Crimean War and during the second world war. Young Leo Tolstoy was a front-line artillery officer during the siege and wrote Sebastopol Sketches about the war. They were quickly published, were a huge success and secured Tolstoy's reputation as one of the foremost Russian writers. His method, that fully flourished in War and Peace, can already be seen in the Sketches.

Charge of the Light Brigade, see above.

The Thin Red Line — the phrase comes from the Times correspondent W.H.Russel's account the Highlanders action against the Russian cavalry charge. They formed a line only two deep. It was their gallantry that saved the day at the Battle of Balaclava. Later the phrase came to mean an overstretched defensive effort. 

Alma — is a river in Crimea, site of the first major battle between the coalition and the Russians, won by the invading army. Alma became a popular name in Britain after the battle. Crimean Alma is of Turkic origin. In Crimean Tartar it means 'apple.'

Potemkin, the battleship and the fake villages are also linked to Crimea but of an earlier period. Prince Grigory Potemkin was a favourite of Empress Catherine II. In 1780s he directed Russian military and political advances in the south against Turkey and the Tartars. He annexed Crimea for Russia in 1783. The episode with the building of fake prosperous villages, sometimes just the fronts of houses, is disputed by contemporaries and later historians. It refers to the visit of Catherine to Crimea in 1787. A German account of the trip described the massive building of fake villages on the orders of Potemkin to impress Catherine. 

The Battleship Potemkin, made famous by Eisenstein's 1925 film, was built at the end of 1890s and named after Prince Potemkin. The mutiny described in Eisenstein's film happened in 1905, during the first Russian revolution. 

There are many other references to Crimea in English. Chekhov, for example, lived in Crimea towards the end of his life. The Lady and the Dog was written there and describes Yalta, the fashionable resort city on the southern coast of Crimea. 

If you have additions to my list, they are most welcome.

Picture: The Thin Red Line, painting, o/c, by Robert Gibb, 1881, National War Museum of Scotland. Image from here.

Read this story in Russian here.

ZIL. (A Dictionary of Russian Words in English)

A presidential ZIL.

Regular readers of Tetradki know that I am compiling a dictionary of Russian words in English. I have nearly a thousand entries now.

One of them is ZIL, an acronym which stands for Zavod Imeni Likhacheva — Likhachev Works.

ZIL is the brand name for, among other things, the armoured limos reserved for members of the Politbureau (another entry).

The snowstorm that had brought Moscow and its suburbs to a standstill on Friday made some compare Moscow traffic conditions — and conventions — to those in the West.

Here's a quote from the BBC reportage by Daniel Sandford, unrelated to the snowstorm:

"The special Games Lanes for Olympic athletes and officials, which have given rise to jams and infuriated some drivers in London, have been branded "Zil lanes". The nickname comes from the infamous traffic lanes in Moscow reserved for the most senior officials of the Soviet Union travelling in their black Zil limousines."

Photo from Wikimedia, here.

Miss Shelter-From-The-Storm (a Russian name explained)

Zatuliveter reporting for RT, click to watch.

Katia Zatuliveter has been in the news in Britain for months, but presenters and newsreaders still stumble over her seemingly un-Russian looking/sounding surname.

It is indeed uncommon. To the point that one Russian name-deciphering web-site even says it is of Germanic or Jewish origin.

However the name's semantics are perfectly Russian and follow the pattern of many other compound surnames.

It consists of two parts zatuli- and -veter. The second part is clear enough – veter is wind.

The first is formed with the common root -tul- (-тул-, similar words: втулка - insert, притулиться - to huddle, сутулиться - to stoop one's shoulders) and equally common prefix za- (за-). The verb затулить is in many larger Russian dictionaries, including the largest one, the Dahl dictionary. Its general meaning is to cover, to shelter. Dahl gives this folk rhyme: Не велик муженек (хоть плох мужичек), да затулье мое: завалюсь за него - не боюсь никого! – My man may not be big, but he's my shelter/cover (zatulye), I fall behind him – and I'm afraid of noone.

Whatever her morals, at the appeal hearings she produced a wonderful adlib (BBC report here). In response to an allegation that her relationship with Mike Hancock, MP, was based on sex, she said: "I don't know how people usually have relationships but when I have a relationship, it's based on communication."

Examples of similarly constructed Russian names: Volkogon(ov/a) - Wolfbeater, Myaosyed(ov/a) - Beefeater, Dobrolyub(ov/a) - Goodlover, Dobrodey(ev/a) - Dogooder. 

And here is Bob Dylan singing his Zatuliveter hit song:

Gavrilov Translation

Andrei Gavrilov

This is a video with Andrei Gavrilov (Андрей Юрьевич Гаврилов) talking about translation.  Gavrilov is a legendary figure in Russia. He dubbed an endless number of English, French and Japanese-language films on video, beginning from 1980s when the flood of Western cinema started to break through the walls of the Soviet Union on VHS cassettes. The films were voiced-over in Russian by a handful of translators who had a knack for a fast-paced, practically simultaneous translation in good intelligible Russian.

Gavrilov, usually uncredited, became one of the best known of them. To the point where the technique of voice-over, when the whole film is dubbed by one translator and his voice is heard a few split seconds after the actors' voices, had become known in Russia as 'Gavrilov translation' – "перевод Гаврилова".



Gavrilov is a professional journalist, fluent in French and English (he translated Japanese films via English subtitles). I worked with him in the European section of TASS news agency in the early eighties where I remember him as the fastest-working, practically faultless editor and writer of news despatches. Which allowed him to carve out time for writing on the side – additional stories, sometimes political, but often on Western culture. He wrote numerous introductory articles on musical record jackets.

Gavrilov stumbled into translating films almost by chance. When a regular translator at an important viewing for Soviet bosses didn't show up, a desperate manager grabbed Gavrilov and put him behind the mike.

His big love has always been music, classical, rock and especially jazz. Gavrilov now runs one of the top quality music companies in Russia, Solyd Records.

In the clip, one interesting observation by Gavrilov is on translating English-language invectives into Russian. He argues that Russian 'mat' (sexually based expletives) have a stronger offensive power than in English. That difference, he says, should be taken into account by a translator. In most cases English swear words shouldn't be translated literally, as Russian mat, but a milder, more acceptable phrasing should be used.