Russians are proud of many characteristics which they believe they possess as a people. One is the загадочная русская душа (mysterious Russian soul), the one that cannot be understood by mind alone. Another one is терпеливость (patience). Yet another one is смекалка which usually gets translated as resourcefulness, such as shown in this video at the top of the post.

Much of this resourcefulness is explained by a good saying голь на выдумки хитра meaning necessity is the mother of all inventions or, more literally, poverty is crafty. Some believe that the capacity на выдумки (for inventiveness) reached its apogee during Soviet era with its тотальный дефицит (across-the-board shortages).

You can see some of the examples of such находчивость (resourcefulness) on this site dedicated to collecting artifacts of народный дизайн (folk design). [Not just from Russia, but from other countries as well.]

Another meaning of the word смекалка is sagacity as seen in the title of this article

Народная смекалка, или как москвичи сдают свои дворы под парковки – Folk sagacity or how Muscovites rent their yards for parking spaces.

And in this article road police in Saratov is said to exercise “смекалка, сноровка и креативность” (sagacity, skill, and creativity) in their work.

Someone who has смекалка is called смекалистый, for example, this смекалистый кот (crafty cat)

Or, as in phrases смекалистый малыш (fast-learning child), смекалистый народ (savvy folk), смекалистый читатель (savvy reader). Another way of saying смекалистый is сметливый.

Resourcefulness – secret weapon of the Russians

Someone who проявляет смекалку (exhibits sagacity) is смекает (gets it; puts two and two together):

Ты смекаешь, на что он намекает? (Are you getting what he’s hinting at?)

Я быстро смекнул, кто здесь за главного (I quickly figured out who is the boss around here)

Смекни, сколько нам надо будет кирпичей (Figure out how many bricks we’ll need)

Have you noticed how much alike the words смекать and намекать are? That’s because they come from the same word мекать which means to think or to understand. The word мекать is no longer used. But you can still come across its derivatives:

смекать – to figure out, to put two and two together

намекать – to hint at

кумекать – to think, to ponder

 Getting back to смекалка, someone who shows находчивость (gumption) and can think on their toes is said to possess смётка (and that’s where the adjective сметливый comes from).

Of course, Russians do not have exclusive rights to смекалка. In fact, if you google this word, you will likely find examples from all over the world. In the US, the classic example of смекалистый парень (a crafty guy) is MacGyver, a secret agent who can solve pretty much any problem with a few pieces of junk, a roll of duct tape and a Swiss Army knife.

Russian MacGyvers are called кулибины (the Kulibins) in honor of Иван Кулибин (Ivan Kulibin), a famous Russian mechanic and inventor whose name long ago became имя нарицательное (an appelative).

If you search for examples of смекалка online, in images or videos, you will find some really ingenious ones, but also lots and lots of things that make you go ё-моё! (darn it!), like this video of an attempt at unloading sand.