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I'd say it's obsolete, at least, if not completely forgotten.

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insaint.livejournal.com

I think you're right. It's one of those words that are sometimes used in jest among friends, but you'll never hear it in common daily conversations.

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I wonder why should they be astounded like that. Comrade is an English word, why should they expect it in Russian? Hollywood movies, maybe?

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Exactly. That's what they said.
They didn't realized the word was used as a translation.

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Many thanks to Hollywood, again. O Ye Russians who drink their vodkas every other minute.

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ulvesang.livejournal.com

When did the word "comrade" become associated with Russians and/or communism, anyway??? I rather like the word and use it a little too readilly-- to the confusion of (and sometimes garnering odd from) people around me.

Gotta thank uneducated moviegoers I guess.

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I have only heard it once in a Russian movie. It was used for an episode of a WWII movie which portrayed a bunch of NSDAP (German Nazi party) members. The actors spoke Russian, but one of them was addressing the others as "камрады". This is, I guess, because the normal salutation among NSDAP members was "Kamerad" -- as opposed to German communists and socialists, who were using "Genosse" instead.

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ulvesang.livejournal.com

Odd looks, I mean.

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Right. I never actually heard it, but I remember encountering it in a (translated?) book about Nazis.

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When did the word "comrade" become associated with Russians and/or communism, anyway???

Well, it is probably an adequate translation of the word товарищ, which was widely used in the USSR, but one just has to realize that this is a translation not the actual Russian word...

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And wave their bab'ushkas merrily around.

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The normal salutation among the members of many political parties is "comrade." In Russian, this word is "товарищ". It was the official salutation for everybody in the Soviet Union, especially in official use: an army private would be addressed by an officer as "товарищ солдат" (comrade soldier,) while the officer would be addressed by the soldiers as "товарищ лейтенант (майор, полковник etc.)" (comrade Lieutenant/Mayor/Colonel.) etc. The members of the Communist Party were also addressing to each other as "товарищ", and the official media (acually, any media: there was no media in the Soviet Union not controlled by the Communist Party) would write about the country leaders only like "Генеральный секретарь ЦК КПСС, товарищ Леонид Ильич Брежнев" (the Secretary General of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, comrade Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev.) The use of "товарищ" (comrade) as an everyday salutation only started to shrink after 1991. Actually, it's still around, many people still call each other this way, especially the older generation.
Does this explain your question? :)

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schwarzer-tod.livejournal.com

In all fairness, America hates its own tourists passionately. (See

overheardnyc for reference)

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Huh? No one hated tourists here...

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Those extra advanced ones may also remember that Russians play their balalaikas.
Hey, it's all in that "Back in the U.S.S.R." song by the Beatles!

...Let me hear your balalaika's ringing out,
Come and keep your comrade warm,
I'm back in the U.S.S.R. you don't know how lucky you are, boy,
Back in U.S.S.R.!

They knew! They knew! Thanks John, thanks Paul (actually, it's Paul's) for this 1968 masterpiece :)))

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P.S. I think that prohibiting anyone from leaning onto a column in a historical building (regardless whether this person is a tourist or otherwise) is perfectly normal and is not a sign of hating anyone.

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These guys weren't exactly tourists, they were invited by my brother-in-law to attend his wedding and he organized the tours for them.
Besides, they were his former classmates and thus they all were Stanford MBA graduates, not your regular bunch.
And in any case I don't hold this against them, they weren't supposed to know. It's just that I had somehow thought it was obvious and then I realized that it wasn't. So I decided to let the language learners know.

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Yup, back to our Myths concerning Russian language (http://www.livejournal.com/community/learn_russian/219468.html) community memoires post. Should we add this one, too? I guess we should.

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I personally think (http://www.livejournal.com/users/gera/467415.html) that the museum personnel went way overboard with that, although, of course it had nothing to do with the tourists being Americans.

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I agree.
Probably we should keep compiling them in one place and put a link in User Info.

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From what I heard, товарищ is still the official way to address an officer in the Army? (I heard that several years ago, though).

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Well, I've been in the military quite a long time ago (1986-87...), and it was still the Soviet Army, so I'm not exactly an expert in today's Russian Army :)

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