Comments:

1. 

    

   Kristina:

   СМИ: Средство массовой информации. Translated into English as “mass media.” I hear/read this all the time on the radio and in news papers. It took me a while to figure out exactly what it meant!

   • 

      

     Jenya:

     @Kristina Kristina,
     СМИ is in fact used quite frequently. That is a great example! However, in most cases you would assume the term is in plural, like news: средствА массовой информации 🙂

2. 

    

   Moonyeen Albrecht:

   One of my Russian teachers, an American, also had the same mis-informatiuon about what an acronym is. The examples given here are not acronyms. Here is a dictionary definition of an acronym: “A word (such as radar, snafu) formed from the initial letter or letters of each of the successive parts or major parts of a compound term.” i.e. USSR (СССР) is not at acronym. When it is said in English and Russian we say each letter separately. We say: U S S R.
   We don’t say “yooser.” These are abbreviations. They are initial letters, but they are not WORDS that are pronounced as WORDS (like RADAR, SONAR, SNAFU.) So they are not acronyms.

3. 

    

   Moonyeen Albrecht:

   One correction to my comment: If Вуз is pronounced “vooz” instead of saying the letters then it IS an acronym.

4. 

    

   samonen:

   This probably is a bit controversial. Namely, in the Russian language an abbreviation is often pronounced, understood and written as a word, thanks to the Soviet Union and its usage. For example Чека (=ЧК) is a word formed pronouncing the initials of “чрезвычайная комиссия” as a word, and writing it as it is pronounced, the official name of the organization being Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия по борьбе с контрреволюцией и саботажем.

5. 

    

   Cathy Kuehnert:

   How about СМИ (Средства массовой информации) ?

6. 

    

   Сrаigаlin:

   ВДНХ – Выставка Достижений Народного Хозяйства
   And колхоз. Not an acronym, but very common abbreviation.

7. 

    

   Jenya:

   Wow, thank you all for the feedback! I have to admit that Moonyeen is right. Initially, I did write “abbreviations” in the post but after reading some stuff online, which was apparently misleading, I went with “acronyms” instead. Well, I am changing it back to abbreviations, even though some of them are acronyms, but definitely not all of them 😉 Thanks again for reading!

8. 

    

   Mark S:

   Not exactly abbreviations of the same type in the post, but:

   и т.д. : и так далее (“and so on”, “etc.”)
   и т.п. : и тому подробнее (“and so on”, “etc.”)
   з.ы.: “PS” (Latin P is З on Russian Keyboard, and S is letter Ы – took a while for me to figure that out)

9. 

    

   Helio:

   What about KGB?

10. 

     

    samonen:

    МХАТ is often read as a word, there is even an adjective derived from it: мхатовский. (МХАТ = Московский Художественный Академический Театр).

11. 

     

    Sarov:

    Maybe you can remember that not all your readers are from USA! As a native British English speaker I have no idea what LLC or doozy mean. Please use International English and not USA specific idioms.
    Spasibo

    • 

       

      Jenya:

      @Sarov Sarov, thank you for reading. LLC stands for Limited Liability Company and doozy (according to Google) means “something outstanding or unique of its kind.” We have plenty of readers from all over the world which I find pretty awesome 🙂 . Google usually does a pretty good job of explaining slang, colloquialisms or idioms; try that next time 🙂 .

12. 

     

    Anna:

    Hi, can you tell me if the abbreviation YVLL means anything in Russian? Thanks!

13. 

     

    utku:

    Hello

    I would like to learn ‘жв’ means in Russian.

    Thanks

14. 

     

    Sid Trevethan:

    A Russian official history document refers to an organization with the abbreviation AN USSR. What does that stand for?