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Self-Employed Doesn’t Mean Self-Serving Posted by on Jun 20, 2011 in Culture, language, Soviet Union

When I was «маленькая» [a child], «лето было моим любимым временем года» [summer was my favorite season]. I had 2 hugely important reasons to love summer – my birthday and «летние каникулы» [summer break from school].

As I started getting older, the excitement of celebrating yet another «день рождения» [birthday] wore off. But I did try to hang onto «каникулы» for as long as I could by staying in college for a record-breaking and awe-inspiring grand total of almost 10 years.

But even after college was over, «я всё ещё любила лето» [I still loved summer] and always took my «двухнедельный отпуск» [two-week vacation] «в июне, июле или в августе». It all changed a few years back when I became self-employed and stopped «иметь право на отпуск» [having a right to a vacation].

One day I started wondering how to say “self-employed” in Russian. Turns out, there are quite a few ways. For example, I can say that «я работаю не по найму». The noun «найм» means “employment” in a very general sense.

  • «агентство по найму» is a hiring or a recruitment agency
  • «найму» – when the stress is shifted to the last vowel, the word changes its meaning to “Will hire” as in «Я найму Вас на пол-ставки» [I will hire you part-time].
  • «наёмник» is a mercenary
  • «сдать квартиру в наём» is to rent out an apartment (you can also say «сдать в найм»)
  • «наниматель» is an employer
  • «наёмный работник» is a wage worker
  • «нанять на работу» is to hire for a job and «наняться на работу» is to be hired for a job
  • Finally, I can’t resist the word «наймит» [a hireling]. It is not widely used, but carries an added meaning of a hired help driven purely by «корыстные побуждения» [vested interests].

In addition to «не по найму» [not working for wages] I can also describe myself as «индивидуал», a short-hand for «индивидуальный предприниматель» [a sole proprietor]. Do not confuse it with «индивидуум» [an individual, a person]. After all, there might be «десять индивидуумов» [ten persons] in a room, but only «один из них – индивидуал» [one of them is a sole proprietor].

Another way to describe a self-employed individual is to say that she is «занята собственным бизнесом» [is running her own business] or he is «занят собственным бизнесом» (note that the stress in the word «занят» [busy] shifts)

The word «предприниматель» is the closest in meaning to the English “entrepreneur”. «Предприниматель» is literally a person who «что-либо предпринимает» [undertakes something], typically a business venture. However, the adjective «предприимчивый» means “enterprising” and might be used both positively and negatively:

«Наташа – очень предприимчивая. Она знает, чего хочет от жизни и работает над достижением своих целей» [Natasha is very enterprising. She knows what she wants in life and is working on attaining her goals.]

«Предприимчивый гаишник заработал больше 600 тысяч рублей на смерти своей бабушки» [An enterprising traffic cop made over 600 thousand rubles from his grandmother’s death] – this is actually a real headline (the story is really not that exciting and is about a guy who did not report his grandmother’s death and instead kept collecting her pension)

Back in the Soviet days to be «предприниматель» was not acceptable. The word itself was hardly used and instead «частник» [private owner] or even the derogatory «деляга» [huckster] was used. If the nature of a business was «купипродай» [lit: buy-sell; a resell business], other no less negative terms were also used – «спекулянт» [a profiteer], «торгаш» [a huckster] and, especially for black-market items, «фарцовщик» [a spiv].

All in all, running a private business considered «рвачество» [lit. grabbing, using unethical methods to derive personal benefits from one’s work] and «делячество», another wonderfully «ёмкий термин» [meaningful term] that described a narrow-minded mercantilism combined with complete disregard for society.

Fortunately, that’s all ancient history now. Nowadays Russian businessmen (and women) «занимаются коммерческой деятельностью» [are engaged in commercial activity]. And although some of them are still «аферисты» [crooks], the two terms are no longer automatically synonymous.

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Comments:

  1. Rob McGee:

    Question: Is there a difference between в наём and напрокат, when talking about renting/leasing?

    For example, in English, one can “rent an apartment” or “rent a car” or “rent ice skates” or “rent a movie from Netflix.”

    But would в наём and напрокат be interchangeable when translating these expressions into Russian?

  2. Rob McGee:

    Ooops, I forgot to clarify that in English, one can also “lease an apartment” or “lease a car” — but we would rarely use “to lease” when talking about small, relatively inexpensive things such as ice skates or DVDs!

    But one can “rent an apartment” for $3000 per month, or “rent a pair of ice skates” for just 3 dollars.

  3. Richard:

    I have a Soviet-era dictionary and came across the word торговец (“merchant” or “trader”) which in turn led me to мелкий торговец which is defined as “small trader”. Was there any negative connotation to мелкий торговец? Just curious from a historical point of view.

    All of this from the little word торг meaning “haggling” or “bargaining” and also “bazaar”! That’s what I love about Russian: you can take one little word and get a lot of different words from it.

  4. Minority:

    Rob, we use word “в наем” very seldom. We can “нанять сотрудника” or “нанять гида” – but it always will be a verd, not a noun. I guess word “наем” is archaic.

    Richard, if you’re talking about soviet period, every person who ran its own business had to face negative treatment from society. 🙂 But in fact, it’s not such a negative phrase.

  5. Richard:

    Thanks Minority! 🙂 The negative treatment you mention, was that from the government or from citizens? I know that there was a fair amount of waste in the Soviet economy, were small “under the table” businesses seen as a more viable alternative to the state-run enterprises? For example, if my neighbour’s TV set was broken and I repaired it in exchange for the use of their car for the day, i.e. a barter economy.

  6. Minority:

    It’s hard to say, I was born in late 80s, so I didn’t see this in my life. But as I understand, it was official point of view to capitalists, and may be first it was only political stuff, but then people used to think the same way. Soviet people didn’t have any problems with ideology.