And why not? Mikhail Gorbachev's watchwords, perestroika and glasnost', made it into English usage. A couple of other phrases and words have made it halfway ("refusenik" and "near abroad" come to mind.)
Like all those Anglicisms floating around in modern Russian, some Russian words and phrases have meanings that can't be explained any better by translating them.
I would like to propose several that have no single English equivalent, but that sum up important human phenomena so aptly that the language would only be improved by adopting them:
?Tusovka: a crowd, gathering, group, gang, junta, party, consortium; in short, any time humans congregate, you can call it a tusovka, as in "What's that tusovka doing down on the square?" or "This is Joe. He's from my tusovka."
According to Fyodor Rozhansky's terse but brilliant dictionary of hippie slang, tusovka used to describe the place where local hippies met in a bygone era. Tusovka has since branched out, first receiving widespread international recognition in Artemy Troitsky's brooding work of the same name on "how democracy and perestroika killed the Soviet underground scene." You get an idea of the word's breadth.
?Pokazukha: So often in life, we are confronted with something that looks attractive from afar, but examined up close loses its luster. Here, then, is a word that means just that, and without all the lengthy historical explanations required by the phrase "Potemkin village."
Besides, pokazukha, which derives from pokazat', "to show," is more flexible in usage than its more ponderous cousin, as the following dialogue demonstrates:
"Hey, what do you think about the low inflation in Russia this month?" "Oh, that was just a pokazukha. The IMF is in town."
?Uravnilovka: As northern people have many words for snow and island folk a number of terms for different kinds of tidal waves, so did socialism leave Russia with a word that means "ways of making people look and feel alike."
Far more than "egalitarianism" or "wage-leveling," the spirit of uravnilovka is what's at work when the government embarks on one of its punitive profit taxes or a 60 percent levy on the baby carriage you bring in from abroad.
?Zhlob: The official definition is "a man of huge size and strength," but it has acquired the meaning of "a big, fat, bossy, boorish man." It even sounds bad. How often have you needed a word that does all that?
A Message from The Moscow Times:
Dear readers,
We are facing unprecedented challenges. Russia's Prosecutor General's Office has designated The Moscow Times as an "undesirable" organization, criminalizing our work and putting our staff at risk of prosecution. This follows our earlier unjust labeling as a "foreign agent."
These actions are direct attempts to silence independent journalism in Russia. The authorities claim our work "discredits the decisions of the Russian leadership." We see things differently: we strive to provide accurate, unbiased reporting on Russia.
We, the journalists of The Moscow Times, refuse to be silenced. But to continue our work, we need your help.
Your support, no matter how small, makes a world of difference. If you can, please support us monthly starting from just $2. It's quick to set up, and every contribution makes a significant impact.
By supporting The Moscow Times, you're defending open, independent journalism in the face of repression. Thank you for standing with us.
Remind me later.