For some reason whenever I’m searching for some interesting piece of news from the Великая Родина [Great Motherland] to comment on here, there’s nothing even remotely interesting to be found on any of the many abundant Russian news sites. I’m not just trying to find a news story to comment on in a purely ‘journalistic’ way, no, my goal is more of a linguistic one – the articles have to contain at least one good sentence from a Russian grammatical point of view. Just like in most countries today, Russian journalists aren’t always that concerned with remarkable grammar or skilled stylistics, but prefer to write simple, dry sentences without any of that juicy use of cases or imperfect/perfect verbs or impersonal constructions. While surfing Комсомальская Правда [which has an amazing website on which you can choose your city or region, and after that get almost nothing but local news – but if you don’t have an uncle living in Penza or friends in Ulan-Ude, you should pick the capitol… if you think you can handle all the gossip about Russian stars that cover the pages of the weekly paper] I came across this headline: Гомосексуалистов Содома и Гоморры убило астероидом? [Were the homosexuals of Sodom and Gomorra killed by an asteroid?] Of course the article, though perhaps worth a quick glance nevertheless, is, as the Russians would say, полная чушь [complete nonsense], but the construction used in the headline with the perfect verb убить [to kill] combined with the instrumental case, чем, did catch my attention. The sentence in the headline is of my personal favorite kind – the impersonal kind. In such constructions the verb is written in third person singular, in every tempus, making the past form of it «убило астероидом» [killed by an asteroid]. In such a simple way the sentence above conveys that the death was accidental and not the fault of the people killed (i.e. in this case that the ‘homosexuals’ of the Old Testament weren’t actually punished by God, but suffered death because of foreign objects coming from space). You can of course use other ‘reasons of death’ like for example, «убило молнией» [killed by lightning] or «убило чумой» [killed by the plague].

Another headline that caught my attention, this time not solely on grammatical grounds, was the following «Третий Рим или “третий мир”? Взгляд на Россию с Запада и наоборот» [Third Rome or “the third world”? A look at Russia from the West and the other way around]. The article does not only contain news, nor is it pure journalism, but more like an entry in the travel diary of the woman who wrote it, Елена Ямпольская, after visiting Rome and thinking about the eternal problem of the (often troubled) relationship between Russia and Europe. In Russian history Moscow has been a child of many names – one of these being ‘Third Rome’, and Russia is (despite everything – all of the best of intentions, all them billionaires in the duma or rolling around in them SUVs in the capitol and their big factories) still a third world country, thus explaining the title of the article. Elena complains that when she flew into Rome with Aeroflot she arrived together with tourists from Pakistan and Ghana, something that she as a ‘white’ person feels was degrading. While I was reading the article, which is not completely uninteresting, though a teeny bit «односторонняя» [one-sided], the Russian expression that came to mind was one that she also herself refers to later in the article – «обидно» [offended, annoyed; unfortunate, distressing; pitiful].

Here’s a piece of it:

«Мы верили, что нас будут любить за культуру, за Толстого и Чехова, за красивые глаза и загадочную русскую душу. Обломилось. Может, прав был умный человек, по другому поводу сказавший: “Не умеют любить – пусть боятся”? Но это взгляд крайний, с точки зрения либерально-демократической – крамольный и в целом почти невыносимый. Разлюбить Запад обидно, как обидно вообще разлюбить» [We believed that they would love us for [our] culture, for Tolstoy and Chekhov, for [our] beautiful eyes and [our] mysterious Russian soul. We messed up. Maybe the smart person was right who said on another topic: ‘If they can’t love, then let them be afraid’? But this view is extreme, from a liberal-democratic point of view – rebellious and in general almost unbearable. To stop loving the West is a pity, just as it is a pity to stop loving in general].

In other news, it seems to be high time to congratulate Russia’s former president В. В. Путин on successfully following in the footsteps of the president of France and thus soon to get married to Russia’s most beautiful woman – Алина Кабаева. I first came across this yesterday in the Swedish news, under the most (to me yesterday because it was so not expected) disturbing headline of “Putin gifter om sig med 24-årig gymnast” [Putin gets remarried to a 24 year old gymnast]. Later I found the Russian source, and it was a little less disturbing since it at least included some doubt in the form of a question mark – «Владимир Путин женится на Алине Кабаевой?» [Is Vladimir Putin marrying Alina Kabaeva?] Perhaps not everyone knows who this 24 year old woman – a gymnastics and winner of a couple of Olympic medals plus currently member of the Duma for United Russia – is and what’s so special about her. I won’t act like I know what’s so special about her, but she was proclaimed the most beautiful woman of Russia by an almost unpresented unified Russian public opinion in March this year, and with that I can’t argue. Google her for pictures – she’s gorgeous and she’d make any man happy – and will now also be making all women jealous, if it’s true and she’ll be walking down the aisle with Vovochka on the 15th of June.