Всем привет! [Hello all!] I have been very, very busy recently – since I want поступить в аспирантуру [to apply to graduate school], I have been madly working on my essays, writing samples, and taking the GRE, the exam that applicants to many American graduate schools need to take. The good news: I have managed to get a lot of my work done. The bad news: there’s still so much more to do. But enough about me – давайте говорить по-русски [let’s speak Russian]. Note: the photo above is a screenshot of a video in Russian with English subtitles. Unfortunately I could not embed the video on this post. Please click on the photo or here to go to the webpage and watch it.

If you читаешь новости каждый день [read the news every day], you probably have seen that elections were recently held в Грузии [in Georgia]. The political party Грузинская мечта [Georgian Dream] won in these elections. Many observers did not predict this. Since these were парламентские выборы [parliamentary elections], Михаил Саакашвили [Mikhail Saakashvili] will remain the president for the time being. But Georgia may very well have a new leader as soon as next year.

This new leader would be Бидзина Иванишвили [Bidzina Ivanishvili]. The question recently has been: так кто же такой Бидзина Иванишвили? [But who is Bidzina Ivanishvili?] From what I can tell, he has not been a very prominent figure in the public eye. С первого октября [Since the first of October], I have been reading about him and I will share what I have learned.

Бидзина Иванишвили родился 18 (восемнадцатого) февраля 1956 (тысяча девятьсот пятьдесят шестого) года в селе Чорвила [Bidzina Ivanishvili was born on the 18 of February 1956 in the village of Chorvila]. В 1980 (тысяча девятьсот восемьдесятом) году окончил инженерно-экономический факультет Тбилисского государственного университета [In 1980 he graduated from the engineering-economics department of Tbili State University]. В 1982 (тысяча девятьсот восемьдесят втором) году поступил в аспирантуру в Москве [In 1982 he applied to graduate school in Moscow]. Он — предприниматель и богатейший человек в Грузии [He is a businessman and the richest man in Georgia].

Он женат и имеет четверо детей [He is married and has four children]. Он живёт в большом комплексе зданий под Тбилиси [He lives in a large compound of buildings outside of Tbilisi].

From what I know of Georgian politics, Иванишвили could become the next prime minister (and possibly president) of Georgia. He is certainly a figure to watch.

Assignment: watch the video I linked to above (or click here). If you’re just learning Russian, try to watch it without the subtitles (I don’t know if you can turn them off or not; if you can’t, try to ignore them) and see what you can understand. Then watch with the subtitles and see if you were accurate. The video is very short, so it’s easy to watch it multiple times!