IT’S ALL BLAT TO ME
You may have heard some of these terms from the old Soviet Union, because many of them are still used in English today. Now you’ll know exactly what they mean, Comrade!
Agitprop: Derived from the words agitatsii and propagandy, meaning “agitation” and “propaganda,” and created by the official Department of Agitation and Propaganda. It was the name given to all mass media—newspapers, radio, pamphlets, posters, etc.—used by the Soviet government to influence public opinion. Agitprop is sometimes used in the West today as a derogatory term for Left-leaning politically-based artwork, especially in the theater or in film, for example the work of documentary filmmaker Michael Moore.
Apparatchik: Referred to a loyal low-level member of the Communist apparat (“political apparatus”), especially an official in the Soviet government’s gargantuan bureaucracy. It’s still used in English as an insulting term for a blindly loyal member of a political party or other organization. (A CEO-friendly mid-level manager of a corporation might be described as an “apparatchik” for the CEO.)
Blat: Not really used in English, but interesting nonetheless, blat was a very common term in the Soviet Union. Its meaning was roughly “cronyism.” Because virtually every aspect of Soviet society was strictly controlled by the government, a pervasive underground society developed, in which blat—connections to people with power within the Communist Party—was the most powerful currency. Using blat, people could be bribed or bartered with, to get food, accommodation, a television, a car, employment, etc.
Bolshevik: In 1898 several Russian revolutionary groups merged to form the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. In 1903 that party broke into two factions, one led by Julius Martov, the other by Vladimir Lenin. Martov’s group was smaller, and was therefore called the Mensheviks—derived from the Russian word for “minority.” Lenin’s larger group was called the Bolsheviks—from the Russian word for “majority.” The Bolsheviks were the ones who overthrew the Tsar and founded the Soviet Union. The term is still used in the West as an insult for people with extreme Left-leaning political beliefs.
Horses, ferrets, ground squirrels, dolphins, and foxes can all get diabetes.
Glasnost: Literally meaning “openness,” this was the policy initiated by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s, requiring the famously secretive Soviet government to become more transparent. The policy had enormous—and mostly unintended—consequences: It allowed Soviet citizens to learn things about their country they had never been privy to, including truths about the murderous policies of former leader Josef Stalin. By June 1988, so much had been revealed that final exams for the entire country’s schoolchildren had to be cancelled, since by that time everyone knew that the official history books were almost complete fiction. Glasnost is credited as being one of the chief forces that resulted in the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Gulag: An acronym for the agency that ran the notorious Soviet labor-camp system, the Glavnoe upravlenie ispravitel'no-trudovykh lagerei—or the “Main Directorate for Corrective Labor Camps”—which was made up of hundreds of camps (and larger “colonies”) located all over the Soviet Union. Gulag camps were known for their extremely harsh conditions: meager food rations, virtually non-existent health care, forced labor, and extreme cold (many of the camps were located in Siberia). This prison system started in 1930 and lasted until 1961. More than 14 million people, many of them political prisoners, passed through the camps. The term “gulag” is commonly used today in English for an especially oppressive prison or other institution. (Note: The Soviets didn’t invent the system: It was a revamping of the katorga, brutal labor camps used since the 1600s by the regime the Soviets overthrew—the Russian Tsars.)
Izvestia: Meaning “delivered messages,” this was one of two major Soviet daily newspapers (along with Pravda). Both were 100 percent propaganda devices, but they were different: Izvestia was the voice of the Soviet government, while Pravda was the voice of the Communist Party. The leader of the Soviet Communist Party was often also the leader of the government, but not always, and when this was not the case, the party and the country’s leader were often political rivals. This meant that the two publications were often at odds—which meant that the two papers were closely monitored by Western intelligence agencies for signs of strife within the Soviet government. Izvestia still exists.
The avg. African family uses about 5 gallons of water a day. The avg. American family: 250.
KGB: The Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti (“Committee for State Security”) was the secret police and the national and international intelligence organization in the latter half of the Soviet Union’s existence. It began as Cheka (another acronym), formed by Lenin himself as an “emergency” security organization after the 1917 revolution—and the “emergency” never seemed to go away. The organization went through several name changes over the decades, becoming the KGB in 1954. The agency’s final act: The failed attempt to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachev’s government, just before the dissolution of the Soviet Union in August 1991. The KGB was dissolved a few months later. Its modern successor: the FSB, or the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation.
Kremlin: This was used as the name of the huge complex of buildings in Moscow that were the headquarters of the Soviet government, and was also used to refer to the Soviet government itself (much like “White House” is used for the American government). But kremlin is actually an old Russian word meaning “citadel” or “fortress.” It refers to any such fortified structure, of which there are many in Russia. (The current headquarters of the Russian government isn’t in the Moscow Kremlin—it’s in another Soviet-built Moscow building known as the “Russian White House.”)
Mir: This Russian word has several meanings, including “society,” “world,” and “peace,” and was the name of the world’s first long-term space station, launched by the Soviets in 1986 and maintained by the Russian government until it fell from orbit in 2001.
Perestroika: Meaning “restructuring,” this was the name given to Gorbachev’s democratization of the Soviet government beginning in 1986. Bolstered by glasnost (described earlier), perestroika led the way to the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.
Pravda: Meaning “truth,” Pravda (along with Izvestia) was one of two major Soviet daily newspapers. Pravda began publication in 1912, and is still in publication. The Washington Post is sometimes referred to by American conservatives as “Pravda on the Potomac” because of its perceived left-wing slant.
When the Karaya Indians of Brazil speak, they make some sounds through their nostrils.
Samizdat: Russian for “self-publication,” this was the name given to the printing and distribution of illegal essays, stories, novels, poetry, etc., without the approval of official censors, primarily by dissidents in Eastern Bloc countries after the death of Stalin in 1953. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Josef Brodsky—both Nobel Prize winners—took part in Samizdat activity starting in the 1950s.
SMERSH: This was a Soviet counter-intelligence agency formed in 1943 by Josef Stalin to infiltrate the Soviet military in search of spies. The name was invented by Stalin himself, derived from two Russian words that mean “death to spies.” The unit was broken up after World War II ended. (SMERSH is also the name of the anti-intelligence unit in several of Ian Fleming’s early James Bond novels. In the James Bond films, SMERSH became SPECTRE.)
Soviet: It literally means “council.” The “Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union,” the Soviet equivalent of a parliament, and the highest legislative body in the nation, was, therefore, literally the “Supreme Council of the Union of Councils.”
Zek: Zek was a slang term for a prisoner, derived from the Russian word for “incarcerated.” It became known to the English-speaking world with the 1974 publication of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago (he likens the hundreds of labor camps that dotted the Soviet landscape to an archipelago—a string of islands), which follows the life of a zek t
hrough the Gulag system.
* * *
A GUIDE TO RUSSIAN PRISON TATTOOS
Barbed wire: Usually around the inmate’s forehead, it means they’re serving life without parole
Executioner: The inmate is a former hitman
Skulls: The inmate is a convicted murderer
Cathedrals: The number of spires indicate number of years served behind bars
Faces of Josef Stalin and Vladimir Lenin: During the Communist era, it was forbidden to deface an image of those leaders. So a prisoner would have the leaders’ faces tattooed over his heart and lungs to prevent guards from hitting or shooting him there.
Worth it? The first pop-up toaster cost $150 in 1926, the equivalent of $1,900 today.
TAKE ONE!
Becoming a top film director takes time. Directors have to prove their abilities before studios will trust them to make big-budget movies. Until then, they hone their skills making edgy, weird, or just plain terrible movies.
KATHRYN BIGELOW
Then: Starting around 1990, Bigelow was a director-for-hire on TV dramas such as Homicide and Wild Palms, and flops like Strange Days and K-19: The Widowmaker. In 2005 her friend, journalist Mark Boal, brought her a screenplay he’d written called The Something Jacket, about his time as an embedded journalist in Iraq, and asked her to help him turn it into a movie. (They’d worked together on an episode of the 2002 summer TV series The Inside.)
Now: Retitled The Hurt Locker, the movie was an unlikely success. The gritty, unsettling, documentary-style take on what it was like to serve in the Iraq War surprisingly beat out Avatar to win the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director. Bigelow became just the fourth woman nominated for the award, and the first to win.
PETER JACKSON
Then: Among underground film fans, Jackson was known as the creator of a comic/horror genre he called “splatstick.” His early films include Meet the Feebles, an explicit comedy about the sex lives of Muppet-like puppets, and Dead Alive, in which zombies terrorize a town in 1950s New Zealand—notable for a five-minute scene in which the protagonist kills a horde of zombies with a lawnmower. His first “serious” film: 1994’s Heavenly Creatures, the true-crime story of two teenagers who conspire to kill one of their mothers. It also depicted the girls’ rich fantasy world, in which terra-cotta warriors came to life.
Now: Heavenly Creatures’ detailed fantasy sequences caught the eye of executives at New Line Cinema, who were looking for the right someone to adapt J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings onto film. Jackson got the job. He directed, produced, and co-wrote all three films in the series, which were released between 2001 and 2003 and earned a combined $2.9 billion. The third film, Return of the King, won 11 Oscars, including Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Picture. Jackson has since gone on to make King Kong, The Lovely Bones, and three films based on Tolkien’s The Hobbit.
Hi, Mom!
PAUL HAGGIS
Then: Over the course of 25 years, Haggis worked his way slowly up the Hollywood ladder. His first job: staff writer for the Saturday morning cartoon Richie Rich in the 1980s. He moved on to sitcoms (The Love Boat, One Day at a Time, and The Facts of Life) and eventually segued into better television, Emmy winners L.A. Law and thirtysomething, while creating the Chuck Norris action show Walker, Texas Ranger.
Now: In 2004 Haggis sold a screenplay he’d written called Crash, a dramatic look at race relations in Los Angeles. The movie was released in 2005, made a respectable $65 million, and won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay (for Haggis). Now working exclusively in movies, Haggis wrote the acclaimed World War II drama Flags of Our Fathers, as well as In the Valley of Elah and the James Bond movies Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace.
FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA
Then: While still in film school in the early 1960s, Coppola made three films in rapid succession: Tonight for Sure, The Bellboy and the Playgirls, and Dementia 13. Never heard of them? That’s because they were low-budget B-films, shown only in second-rate theaters and drive-ins. Coppola rose to the mainstream after writing and directing You’re a Big Boy Now in 1966 (it was his master’s thesis), which won him a chance to direct a movie version of the musical Finian’s Rainbow in 1968, which won a Golden Globe nomination.
Now: Coppola is widely regarded as one of the finest film directors of all time. He’s had a long career of commercially successful film classics, including The Godfather, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now. A proponent of the auteur concept (that the director is the creative force behind a film), a theory that revolutionized movie making, he’s also the head of a successful Hollywood family: His children are director Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation) and writer Roman Coppola (Moonrise Kingdom), and his nephews are actors Nicolas Cage and Jason Schwartzman.
What? THE PRAYING MANTIS HAS ONLY ONE EAR.
WHO ARE YOU?
Profound thoughts on identity.
“You aren’t born as yourself. You’re born facing a mass of possibilities, a mass of other people’s ideas and preconceptions—and you have to mold a ‘self’ by working through those raw materials.”
—V. S. Naipaul
“A human being is like a novel: until the last page you don’t know how it will end. Or it wouldn’t be worth reading.”
—Yevgeny Zamyatin
“Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.”
—G.K. Chesterton
“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.”
—Herman Hesse
“My sense of my importance to myself is tremendous. I am all I have, to work with, to play with, to suffer and enjoy. It is not the eyes of others that I am wary of, but my own.”
—Noel Coward
“I am a collection of water, calcium, and organic molecules called Carl Sagan.”
—Carl Sagan
“I don’t know who my grandfather was. I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.”
—Abraham Lincoln
“Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each as the other sees him, and each as he really is.”
—William James
“Animals can learn, but it is not by learning that they become dogs, cats, or horses. Only man has to learn to become what he is supposed to be.”
—Eric Hoffer
“If I try to be like him, who will be like me?”
—Yiddish proverb
“Know thyself? If I knew myself, I’d run away.”
—Goethe
Yes, but it’s a dry heat: The temperature on the moon can get hot enough to boil water.
“IT WAS LIKE SADDLING A PORPOISE”
On page 194, we gave you some examples of literary similes. Here are some others—of a slightly grittier nature.
JUST THE FACTS
Before Jack Webb became famous for playing Sgt. Joe Friday on the 1950s and 1960s police drama Dragnet, he played the lead roles in two hard-boiled detective radio shows: Jeff Regan, Investigator and Pat Novak…for Hire. One thing both characters had in common: a penchant for over-the-top, corny similes. Here are some of our favorites.
“Things were starting to move like a hula dancer with the Hot Foot.”
“He looked sad—like a water buffalo caught in a drought.”
“That left me with as much chance as a blue peanut on a wedding cake.”
“She had a voice that stole over you like a pint of Irish ale.”
“He just kept looking at me and waiting, like a guy feeding arsenic to a rich aunt.”
“She was wearing black lounging pajamas tied tight around her slim waist. She looked like a wasp with a nice sting.”
“There was a pinball machine in one corner, a couple of last year’s girls in this year’s slacks, and a bleary-eyed little night clerk. He looked like a well-groomed laundry bag.”
“I felt like a man in quicksand complaining about his height.”
“When she said, ‘Hello,’ it melted all over you, like honey on a hot biscuit.”
“From up on the hill, the Chinatown tenements lined up below like sweaty little kids waiting for a shower.”
A 60-year-old Hershey’s bar retrieved from Adm. Byrd’s 1939 South Pole trip was still edible.
“When I came out of it, I was all head—like tap beer in a cheap saloon.”
“It was the kind of a neighborhood where a ‘For Rent’ sign reads like a ransom note.”
“He was smiling like a vulture with the first option on a massacre.”
“She looked real good sitting there in a white crepe dress. It was one of those tight-fitting babies that made a bathing suit look like a toga.”
“When I got up, my face looked like a relief map of Death Valley.”
“He looked unhappy, like someone had fed him a Vaseline sandwich.”
“It was all crazy, like an Eskimo with a popsicle.”
“Hellmann stood there a moment and smiled, like a guy who just killed a landlord.”
“I didn’t have any leads. There wasn’t anything I could do but sit on my hands. It was like taking your niece to a nightclub.”
“She opened the door with a nice easy motion, like a cat getting ready to eat its young.”
“The rain hadn’t helped the alley much. It’s like washing your kid’s face and finding out he was ugly to start with.”
“He was shaking like a polar bear in a French bathing suit.”
“I stood in the doorway and watched the dull neons through the rain. They looked splotched and dim like water colors rubbed with a damp rag.”
Uncle John's Fully Loaded 25th Anniversary Bathroom Reader (Uncle John's Bathroom Reader) Page 39