Две «Исходные» Беды России [Russia’s Two Initial Troubles] Posted by josefina on Jun 12, 2008 in Culture, History, language
When I in my last post stated that, according to the vice-premier of Russia, this country has five problems getting in the way of its development, one reader (thank you, Stas!) brought it to my attention that, initially, Russia only had two problems. And initially they were called «беды» [trouble, singular form «беда»] instead of the modern «проблема» [problem]. Already sometime during the first half of the 19th century, one classic Russian writer (philogy as well as history scholars are still undecided if it was Пушкин [Pushkin], or Гоголь [Gogol], or perhaps Карамзин [Karamzin] who said it first) stated that «В России две беды: дороги и дураки» [In Russia there are two troubles: roads and stupid people]. A couple of years ago, while on a train somewhere in Siberia, I heard someone add to this the following: «И одна ремонтирует другую» [And one is fixing the other]. I found an interesting article in Russian about this here, which deals mostly with explaining the problem of bad roads in Russia. Though bad roads may be an exclusively Russian thing (and bad news for all of us Russophiles who dream of roadtripping from coast to coast instead of taking the train), I must say that stupid people are common in most places…
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Comments:
Peggy Verrall:
On my first trip to Russia, in 1996, on boarding a coach (?) for a trip we were warned that in Russia there are no roads – only directions. I have found this to be generally true on subsequent visits, at least outside towns. On a recent visit, riding in one of those privately owned mini vans turned buses, we were stuck in traffic. No problem, the driver knew the direction of the train station we wanted, drove on to the pavement round a couple of corners, scattering pedestrians and cyclists, then crossed the road at right angles to the traffic jam, succeeding in disgorging us in time for the next train! No-one made any comment though everyone had had to hang on extremely firmly!
Peggy