Moscow Times article
Oct. 2nd, 2004 08:28 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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learn_russianThe Bad Old Days of Sovok
By Michele A. Berdy To Our Readers
Совок: 1. dustpan, trowel, scoop; 2. derogatory slang for the Soviet Union, the Soviet government, a person of ingrained Soviet mentality or the negative aspects of Soviet reality.
Совок is one of those words that defies -- or at least challenges -- both cogent definition and translation. I think it's like glasnost and perestroika: better to transliterate than translate.
The origin of the word has been lost in the mists of time. It may have simply come from the play on words of совок (dustpan) and совет (Soviet). One source insists it comes from СОВетский челОвеК (Soviet person, homo Sovieticus). Another insists the term was coined by a film director. As the story goes, he had won an award and wanted to celebrate with some friends. But it was Sunday in the Soviet Union, and no bar was open. So they ended up sitting in a sandbox in a playground, where they suddenly found a child's trowel (совок). Whereupon the director said, "А ведь живём мы все, ребята, в совке." (You know, guys, we're all living in this dustpan.) Probably apocryphal, but a nice story.
In any case, the word caught on. It can simply mean the U.S.S.R.: Как мы жили в совке -- я не знаю. (How we lived in the Soviet Union, I just don't know.) Or it can mean a person of typical Soviet mentality. Sergei Kara-Murza has a piece titled, "Совок вспоминает свою жизнь." (A Soviet man remembers his life.) In one Internet discussion on the meaning of совок, one chatter defines this kind of man as someone who went through all the rituals of Soviet life: октябрёнок -- пионер -- комсомолец -- коммунист -- расстрел, если ещё не помер; посещение мавзолеев, вывешивание портретов партийной верхушки, томик Маркса под подушкой (Child of October, Young Pioneer, Young Communist League member, Communist, then execution if he hadn't already kicked off; visiting the mausoleum, hanging portraits of the party leadership on the wall, a volume of Marx under his pillow). Another Internet chatter wants to reclaim the word as a neutral description of the Soviet Union and its people: СССР, Союз, Совок. Была такая страна, огромная, великая, могучая. Был народ, советский народ, попросту совки. (U.S.S.R., the Union, Sovok. There was once a country that was huge, great and powerful. There was once a nation, the Soviet people, or simply "sovki.")
It can also mean "Soviet government." One fellow defines what he calls the first law of совок: Любые действия истеблишмента совершаются исключительно в его интересах и направлены на достижение его целей независимо от того, совпадают ли эти интересы и цели с интересами и целями народа. (All actions by the establishment are carried out exclusively in its own interests and aimed at achieving its goals regardless of whether those interests and goals are the same as the interests and goals of the people.) In other words, совок is government of the government, by the government and for the government.
It can also be used to describe all the negative aspects of the Soviet Union. Here it means something like "the bad old days," "back in the U.S.S.R.," as in this recent quote from Yevgeny Kiselyov: Не хочу возвращаться в совок. (I don't want to go back to the bad old days.)
However you translate it, you know it when you see it: When you see guys laying asphalt in the snow (thus guaranteeing a job to repair their work in two months), you can say, Совок вечен!(Sovok is eternal/the old Soviet ways never die.)
Or let's say you show up to interview an official and discover there is no pass to get in the building. When you finally reach the official by cellphone and tell her there's no pass, she says, Я заказывала. (I ordered one for you.) You say, Нету пропуска. (There isn't a pass for me.) She repeats, Но я заказывала. (But I ordered it.) You repeat, Нету. (It isn't here.) When you think you're going to stand on the street for the rest of your life, repeating the same lines of dialog, say instead, Ну и совок! (It's back to the Soviet Union/Nothing ever changes!)
Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter
By Michele A. Berdy To Our Readers
Совок: 1. dustpan, trowel, scoop; 2. derogatory slang for the Soviet Union, the Soviet government, a person of ingrained Soviet mentality or the negative aspects of Soviet reality.
Совок is one of those words that defies -- or at least challenges -- both cogent definition and translation. I think it's like glasnost and perestroika: better to transliterate than translate.
The origin of the word has been lost in the mists of time. It may have simply come from the play on words of совок (dustpan) and совет (Soviet). One source insists it comes from СОВетский челОвеК (Soviet person, homo Sovieticus). Another insists the term was coined by a film director. As the story goes, he had won an award and wanted to celebrate with some friends. But it was Sunday in the Soviet Union, and no bar was open. So they ended up sitting in a sandbox in a playground, where they suddenly found a child's trowel (совок). Whereupon the director said, "А ведь живём мы все, ребята, в совке." (You know, guys, we're all living in this dustpan.) Probably apocryphal, but a nice story.
In any case, the word caught on. It can simply mean the U.S.S.R.: Как мы жили в совке -- я не знаю. (How we lived in the Soviet Union, I just don't know.) Or it can mean a person of typical Soviet mentality. Sergei Kara-Murza has a piece titled, "Совок вспоминает свою жизнь." (A Soviet man remembers his life.) In one Internet discussion on the meaning of совок, one chatter defines this kind of man as someone who went through all the rituals of Soviet life: октябрёнок -- пионер -- комсомолец -- коммунист -- расстрел, если ещё не помер; посещение мавзолеев, вывешивание портретов партийной верхушки, томик Маркса под подушкой (Child of October, Young Pioneer, Young Communist League member, Communist, then execution if he hadn't already kicked off; visiting the mausoleum, hanging portraits of the party leadership on the wall, a volume of Marx under his pillow). Another Internet chatter wants to reclaim the word as a neutral description of the Soviet Union and its people: СССР, Союз, Совок. Была такая страна, огромная, великая, могучая. Был народ, советский народ, попросту совки. (U.S.S.R., the Union, Sovok. There was once a country that was huge, great and powerful. There was once a nation, the Soviet people, or simply "sovki.")
It can also mean "Soviet government." One fellow defines what he calls the first law of совок: Любые действия истеблишмента совершаются исключительно в его интересах и направлены на достижение его целей независимо от того, совпадают ли эти интересы и цели с интересами и целями народа. (All actions by the establishment are carried out exclusively in its own interests and aimed at achieving its goals regardless of whether those interests and goals are the same as the interests and goals of the people.) In other words, совок is government of the government, by the government and for the government.
It can also be used to describe all the negative aspects of the Soviet Union. Here it means something like "the bad old days," "back in the U.S.S.R.," as in this recent quote from Yevgeny Kiselyov: Не хочу возвращаться в совок. (I don't want to go back to the bad old days.)
However you translate it, you know it when you see it: When you see guys laying asphalt in the snow (thus guaranteeing a job to repair their work in two months), you can say, Совок вечен!(Sovok is eternal/the old Soviet ways never die.)
Or let's say you show up to interview an official and discover there is no pass to get in the building. When you finally reach the official by cellphone and tell her there's no pass, she says, Я заказывала. (I ordered one for you.) You say, Нету пропуска. (There isn't a pass for me.) She repeats, Но я заказывала. (But I ordered it.) You repeat, Нету. (It isn't here.) When you think you're going to stand on the street for the rest of your life, repeating the same lines of dialog, say instead, Ну и совок! (It's back to the Soviet Union/Nothing ever changes!)
Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter
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blatant liberazi propagandist lie
Another version
Date: 2004-10-02 12:56 am (UTC)Gradsky is also the author of derogatory term журналюга.
One more related link
Date: 2004-10-02 01:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-02 01:09 am (UTC)could happen to an human being...
The article itself is pretty funny. Exactly how Michele A.Berdy,
Moscow-based translator and interpreter would see a life there :)
PS. last winter here in Virginia I saw guys laying asphalt
in the snow (route 28, Loudoun county). Sovok?
Re: Another version
Date: 2004-10-02 02:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-02 03:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-02 05:57 am (UTC)Re: Another version
Date: 2004-10-02 06:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-02 09:09 am (UTC)"Soviet" suggests images of chunky concrete architecture, practical solutions, and a philosophy of "perfect is enemy of good-enough".
Both concepts share a flavour of bureacracy and red tape, however. :)
Yeah, that's somewhat true also
Date: 2004-10-02 11:44 am (UTC)Sophisticated erudites, educated to explore Cosmos and expand the limits of Mankind, now are compelled to buysellsellbuy bells and whistles, of course it's psychologically very difficult for them now to eraze all the noble knowledge they have learned and they often "contaminate" these newly required primitive market tricks with it. The U.S.S.R collapsed and Byzantinnes are still having a hard time converting to Barbarians.
But
no subject
Date: 2004-10-02 06:15 pm (UTC)Though, perhaps it is an even slighter difference in definition. Perhaps something byzantine is ill-concieved, and something soviet is something ill-maintained. (Though thats obviously a vast generalization)
no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 02:20 am (UTC)As for the Solar system - what century Galileo lived in?