Nicholas II of Russia

Tim Curry

See? Granted, Tim Curry looks like he might be a bit more fun, but still.  If someone would drum up some interest for a movie about Nicholas II, they’ve got the man for the part.

The plot of the Heroes episode is largely unimportant for what I’m wanting to write about in this post, other than the fact that in the episode, Ivan was a bad guy. He had trained Bennett to work for The Company, and indeed, Ivan was still being employed by The Company, until Bennet blew his head off. Ivan was: of Slavic ancestry (which, for most Americans, might as well be Russian), and a bad guy. It’s peculiar how often this combo pops up in American television.

When I started thinking about this, I tried to conjure up as many instances in my memory of television shows where a Russian (or someone from a former USSR country) appeared as a character. While I’m sad to say I can’t come up with any specific examples, I know I’ve seen a fair number of Russian characters in television shows over the years – usually in things like Law and Order (and its offshoots), Criminal Minds, etc. – and all of them were dirty in some manner or another. Killers, drug dealers, mob lords – if they were Slavic, they were trouble.

Does any of this sound familiar to American television watchers (or non-Americans who regularly watch our shows), or have I just imagined this?

If I’ve not imagined this, it begs the question: why? Why have I never seen a good Russian / Slavic person in an American T.V. show? Does it hearken back to when Americans hated Russians because of communism and the Cold War, and the negative view of the people as a whole has continued to this day? Do Russians just make really good bad characters?

What gives?

(Click for full size)

Heh.

Since you study Russian, I was wondering what actually attracts you to it and to the people and the country. I can imagine someone studying a language on a purely theoretical basis, but it makes more sense if you actually admire or like the culture behind the language. Just thought of this while watching the news actually: Putin, Yeltsin, the protests, the riots in Estonia… It’s all very fascinating.

He also mentioned that the answer to that could prove to be an interesting blog post, and I agree, so here we are.

While I’d love to say that I have a solid reason for wanting to learn Russian – admiration of their culture, preference towards a communist state, plans of visiting Russia in the future – I’d be lying if I said I had such a reason. I began studying Russian right around the beginning of 2007, when I received a copy of The New Penguin Russian Course as an early Christmas gift. That doesn’t really help much in regards to why I started studying the language, though, because I specifically asked for that book as a gift. Now that I try to think back and remember of any particular thing that said “learn Russian!” to me, I’m coming with a bank.

I suppose it’s just a variety of things that led to my studying it. For one, I’m just a language geek in general, and enjoy learning languages. I’ve been studying German for about 4 years now, and felt that it was time that I try to add a second foreign language into the mix. I know one influencing factor was my interest in World War 2. Due to the Russians playing such a large role in the war, I was interested in learning more about them in general (because I knew next to nothing about them). I guess this desire to learn more about Russia and its peoples simply bled off into the language department. When I decided to learn Russian, it wasn’t a thought out, planned course of action, but more of a “hey, what the hell, why not?” thing.

While I hadn’t thought of this reason specifically, I’m glad I selected Russian. As I progress in my study of it, I’m finding that I enjoy the language, particularly how it sounds. I’m also glad that it’s a Slavic language, because by learning it, I’ll have given myself a good base to learn other Slavic languages, if I were so inclined. I don’t know how knowing it will help me professionally, or if it will at all, but I can’t help but think that knowing even the basics of a fairly difficult language will help me at some point, somehow.

When I get a decent base down for my Russian, I’ll probably start working on Spanish. For that language, I do have a reason: it’s practical for where I live. Spanish is the most often spoken foreign language in the U.S., and I’d say knowing some of it would help me career wise. If nothing else, it would let me communicate with all of the Mexicans who have appeared in my town during the past 5 years or so.

So, to give a short answer to my friend’s question: no particular reason. I just kind of decided to learn Russian. (Regarding politics though, communism doesn’t look too bad, on paper, anyway. It’s never actually worked like the theory prescribes, though, so we have no historical example to judge.)

I’ve not really gotten into any grammar, or even real Russian texts as of yet: I’ve been learning the Cyrillic alphabet, along with the pronunciation. As of yesterday, I’ve covered all 33 letters, which were broken down into 4 groups. With a little reviewing of the last group, which consists of letters totally unknown in English (coupled with quite a few sounds that are generally not used in English), I’ll be able to move on to lesson 2. When I first started working on the Cyrillic alphabet, I thought the biggest hurdle would be remembering all of these oddly formed letters. Now that I’m mostly through with the first lesson, I know otherwise. It’s not overly difficult at all to remember the letters; it is, however, difficult for my American tongue to produce some of the sounds that are called for. For example, in Russian, there is a letter that is called a soft sign. What it does is combines with the previous consonant, and blends a y sound into it. Now think about trying to say a rolled r at the end of the word, with y blended into it. The author stresses that you should try to not separate the sounds. They should be together. It’s doable – I’ve achieved it a few times – but it’s not easy. Luckily I don’t feel too bad about it, because in the book, the author notes that the r sound with y blended into it is one of the most difficult Russian sounds to make. I can see how he could come to that conclusion!

Having never studied Russian before, having only heard bits and pieces of it occasionally, and having always looked at the Cyrillic writing in awe (and with more than a bit of trepidation), I was surprised to find that there are some words that are cognates in English. At this point I have no idea how to produce Cyrillic on my computer, so here are some of the pronciations provided by the book:

• mye-tró – metro, underground
• tra-llyéy-boos – trolleybus
• kó-fye – coffee
• rye-sta-rá-ni – restaurant

While not specifically about the Russian language, I think it’s fitting to mention this here. I’ve always had trouble gauging my progress in German, particularly once I got past the beginning stages. Sometimes I’d think, all of this work and so little to show for it! I often felt like I was making no progress at all. After dipping into Russian I feel completely different. Starting a new foreign language has brought to my attention just how much German I do know. In my Russian book, I’m seeing basic words that I have no idea how to say – words which I’ve known how to say in German for a long time. It’s serving as an excellent reminder that, yes, at one point, I knew absolutely no German, so I should be happy with my progress.

* The person I was buying for was my older nephew. I had no idea what he’d want and he had no idea what I’d want, so we agreed to just tell each other what we’d like. Hence, there wasn’t much point in waiting a couple more weeks to swap gifts, because the mystery aspect was gone. If you’re curious, he wanted the Dungeon Guide to World of Warcraft.