Who Owns The Rights To Lenin’s Face? Posted by josefina on May 31, 2008 in Culture, language, Soviet Union
After his death in 1924, the face of Владимир Ильич Ленин was used for mainly religious purposes, as he became known as a sort of ‘icon’ for the Soviet Union. After the death of the Soviet Union, the face of Lenin, and even more so his profile, has been used for a wide array of purposes, many of them purely commercial, some even rudely capitalistic. If Lenin must have been spinning in his grave – uhm, I mean mausoleum, back in the days of building communism and being on the constant watch-out for a classless society, then I suppose he’s getting sweaty with movement in modern Russia of today. Here and now you’ll run into Lenin in places where you least of all expect him to, like in advertisement for juice or on children’s t-shirts, while at the same time statues of him are being torn down quietly all over the country. But then again, the Russian mind has a history of being complex and even more so the Russian soul – and which one of these two body parts was it that he had more influence on? If there’s a Bolshevik Hell, I’m sure to burn in it: I call the minor statues of Lenin [those are often forgotten and will probably be the last to go, if they ever will that is] «Ленинчик» [“little Lenin”] which has the suffix «чик» in the end, which used in this waysand in this context is what in Russian is called a «уменьшительно-ласкательный суффикс» [diminutive-endearment suffix]. Such a suffix is often used when wanting to express certain feelings (perhaps of endearment) toward certain things, or if the things talked about are small. In my case, though it is risky to be your own therapist, I’d say my distortion of the Russian leader’s name is an expression of my familiarity both with him and the statues of him. Come to think of it, I’ll probably not go straight to Bolshevik Hell for this – in usual manner The Party will probably invite me up for tea in Communism Heaven first, where they’ll treat me cookies and smile at me, right before denouncing me in their paper “Heavenly Pravda” and purging me… Anyway, that’s not important – and may be offensive to some – what I wanted to discuss was this ad that I came across today:
The verb «принадлежать» (impf.) [sig. pres. я принадлежу, ты принадлежишь] is not only an interesting and a very useful verb to know, but also one of my personal favorites. When paired only with the dative case it has the meaning of ‘to belong to’ as in the sentences above. When paired with the preposition «к» it translates as ‘to belong to; to be a member of’. The following sentence illustrates the flexibility of this verb as it’s paired with «к числу» [to the number] plus genitive: «М. М. Зощенко принадлежал к числу самых известных прозаиков 20-х годов» [Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko was among the most famous prose writers of the 1920’s]. There’s also a noun that’s derived from it: «принадлежность» (fem.)[accessories, articles, gear; belonging (to), affiliation (with); characteristic, attribute]. You could say «эти штаны моя принадлежность» [these pants are my belongings] but you could also say «эти штаны принадлежат мне» [these pants belong to me]. Though the connotation of these sentences differs slightly, I have chosen them to illustrate two ways of saying pretty much the same thing with these two words – get your hands of my pants!
I saved the best for last, to turn to the question posed in the title of today’s entry: who has the right to Lenin’s face? Living relatives of Lenin, perhaps, but then again he and Krupskaya failed to have any children? And if there any members of the Ulyanov clan still up and about, shouldn’t they rather be fighting for a burial of their relative then profiting from his legendary beard? Clearly the Russian Communistic Party isn’t claiming any rights to his profile and making people pay to use it (because if it did, they’d be in a much better financial situation)? Maybe it belongs to us all, maybe it was written somewhere in his will – «моё лицо, как и власть и многие другие вещи, вообще почти всё, принадлежит народу» [my face, like power and many other things, generally speaking almost everything, belongs to the people].
Build vocabulary, practice pronunciation, and more with Transparent Language Online. Available anytime, anywhere, on any device.
Comments:
John Baker:
Josefinchka!
You have made me laugh like no other. We have a saying in America, and maybe it is used in Sweden and Russia as well, “Only the Good die young.”
I offer a revision, in honor of the Bolsheviks the consummate Revisionists. “Only the Good are invited to Communist Heaven. But afterwards the Good are Rehabilitated.”
But this makes me ask the question, “If this is semi-de-Leninisation, when did the Secret Speech take place?” Can there be de-Leninisation without a secret speech?
Thanks again!!1
Anya:
A few corrections to your Russian in this blog:
If you wish to use the diminutive case on the word “Lenin,” it would probably sound more like “Lenichka” or “Lenishka,” but not Leninchik. I am only a native speaker, not a Russian teacher, so forgive me if my explanation is awkward:
I feel that Leninchik sounds wrong because of the awkward accent in this word. For example, in the word “ГОлубь”, the accent falls on the first syllable, just as in the word ЛEнин. In the diminutive, the accent falls on the second syllable “ГоЛУбчик,” but in the word “ЛеНИнчик,” the accent ought to fall on the second syllable. However, if you try pronouncing it that way, you’ll immediately feel the awkwardness and loss of the word “Ленин.” To preserve the accent on the first syllable, the diminutive ending would change to “-чка,” or “нька,” as in converting the male name “Миша” to “Мишенька.”
Then again, you can take this grammar discussion into another realm entirely based on the origin of the word Lenin, which comes from the river Lena, and literally means “of Lena.” If you are trying to make a diminutive adjective, then the correct word would be “Lenochkin.”
——-
and one more note: «эти штаны моя принадлежность» doesn’t work for two reasons: штаны and принадлежности are always plural. So there is really only one way to say it: «эти штаны принадлежат мне».
Anya
Anya:
Come to think of it, you could write a whole blog on the word «принадлежность».
The first translation that you cite for the word — accessories, articles, gear; — is correct only of the plural noun “принадлежности.”
The second meaning – belonging (to), affiliation (with); – is correct only in the verb form of this word, as you explained it in your blog.
The third meaning – characteristic, attribute -is the trickiest usage of this word. If you just wish to translated the word “attribute, characteristic, property” into Russian, you should use “своиство.” The word «принадлежность» in the singular noun form becomes applicable only when speaking about a characteristic of a specific object within a specific context. «Принадлежность» is a combination of the prepositions “при” [with, in the surroundings of], “над” [above, before, over] and the verb “лежать” [to lay, v.] Together, the meaning of the word mutates to “its/his main purpose here is. . .” -> as in «принадлежность этой вещи/этого человека . . .» The implication is that the same object in a different context will have a different “принадлежность”.
Whew. . . Explaining Russian language is tough! I hope this will helpful to you in furthering your understanding of Russian.
Anya