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Kopek
As the kopek is mounting the monetary scaffold, likely to be beheaded by the Russia’s Central Bank for being a fiscal diva, I felt the urge to look into the history of the mighty coin that gave birth to such pithy sayings as:
- Копейка рубль бережет
- Копейка к копейке
- Вставить свои пять копеек (favorite activity of all the Russian conversationalists)
- Влететь в копеечку
- В белый свет как в копеечку
- Размах – на рубль, удар – на копейку
There are several versions as to the origin of the word kopek (kopeika). The most reliable interpretation derives it from kop’ë (копьë), Russian word for “spear,” a reference to the image of a rider, Saint George the Victorious (Георгий Победоносец) defeating a Serpent with his spear, on the coins minted by Moscow after the capture of Novgorod in 1478.
Vladimir Dal, one of the greatest Russian lexicographers, traces the stem of the word to kopit’ (копить), Russian verb meaning “to save money.” This goes along with the popular Russian proverb, Копейка рубль бережет – “penny saves a dollar.”
Russian kopek circa late 18th Century
Kopek was born on March 20th, 1535 out of the monetary reform initiated by Elena Glinskaya, mother of Ivan the Terrible (not a nice guy by the way). It was made out of silver and weighed 0.68 grams.
At the end of the 17th Century, Russian Czar Peter the Great, the biggest proponent of all things Western, decided to give the old kopek a facelift. After having visited Western European mints, the forward-thinking Czar could only squeamishly refer to the démodé 
Russian coins as fleas (вши). As a result, the year 1704 saw the birth of a kopek made of copper and minted according to the cutting edge technologies of that time. Thanks to Peter the Great, Russia became the first country in the world to implement a decimal coin system. As we will explore in my future posts, Peter was one swell Czar.
Soviet kopek
Under the Communist regime, the kopek acquired all the inevitable Soviet attributes with the USSR coat of arms in lieu of Saint George the Victorious, bearing the proletarian hammer and sickle. As copper was needed in the all-consuming take-over-the-world Soviet industrialization process, kopek was now minted of an alloy of copper and zinc and weighed 1 gram.
When I was growing up in the Soviet Union, kopek was quite a relevant currency. 1 kopek could buy you a matchbox (I used to terrorize my mother with mock attempts to set a fire), two unstamped envelopes (I bought envelopes to write letters to my American pen pal Leslie), and a glass of carbonated soda at a local grocery store (a sinful anti-hygienic pleasure, since all the neighborhood drunks thirsty for hangover remedy shared the same cup at the grocery vending machine).
Sadly, the kopek era might soon be coming to an end. The nostalgic coin is an endangered species these days and may soon become металлолом, Russian for “scrap metal.” There is certainly nothing you can buy with one kopek today. A recent Reuters article reported on the innovative application of the coin in some Russian villages, where people use kopeks to make the floors (!!! – Голь на выдумки хитра, goes the Russian saying – a testament to the Russian commoners’ creativity). Deemed too expensive to produce – production cost is 45 times higher than the value of the coin itself – kopek is now a luxury item on the Central Bank’s minting menu.
I keep a few kopeks in the coin purse of my fat American wallet – they remind me of the good old times when the metro ride was 5 kopeks, a telephone booth swallowed 2, and my favorite Russian baguette went for 22…
Intelligentsia
Nikolay Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky, Leader of the Russian Intelligentsia
Intelligentsia as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary:
“Intellectuals or highly educated people as a group, esp. when regarded as possessing culture and political influence.”
The word has its origins in the Latin intellegere – inter, “between” + legere, “to choose.” The essence of the word is one’s ability to understand and perceive, which serves as basis for what we consider intellect.
English intelligence/intelligent, French intelligence/intelligent, German Intelligenz/Intellekt, Italian intelligenza/intelligente, Spanish inteligencia/inteligente all take common root in the Latin intellectus/intellegere.
The concept of intellectual elite as a distinct social stratum can be traced back in history. The emergence of the intellectual classes had been noted, among others, in Western European countries with die Gebildete in Germany and les intellectuels in France.
Intelligentsia (Интеллигенция), however, is a Russian borrowing that came into English in the 1920s.
Intelligentsiya as a specific term was coined in the 19th century Russia, the country polarized between vast ignorance and concentrated refinement. The economic and cultural situation in Russia was conducive to creation of a separate well-educated прослойка (“stratum”) afflicted with all the typical symptoms of intellectual elitism: incessant brainwork and academic ambition, sensitivity, tact, subtle and at times self-effacing demeanor, moral idealism and high ethical standards, creative activity and independence.
Messianic in aspiration and patriotic in nature, Russian intelligentsia was tortured by two eternal questions: “Who is to blame?” (in Russia’s doom), and “What is to be done?” (about saving the Motherland). Russian revolutionary democrat and writer, Nikolaly Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky, hit the nail on the head, so to speak, with his famous “What Is to Be Done?” (Что делать?) – a novel that convinced the young generation of the revolutionarily inert intelligentsia in the necessity to act to overcome Russia’s socioeconomic problems. The call to action gave a sense of purpose to the otherwise passive intellectuals and focused their abstract mental efforts on paving the concrete way to the Great Socialist Revolution. Ironically, Russian intelligentsia was one of the first social classes to be victimized by the Soviet State, as any kind of intellectual and individual thinking posed a threat in the Bolshevik dictatorship.
Hmm… I always found intellectuals, especially of a Russian variety, to be rather absent-minded and self-destructive in their tendencies…
Kulak
Hello language lovers!
Until today, I did not know that the somewhat prosaic Russian word kulak (кулак) existed in the Oxford English dictionary, along with the more popular perestroika and glasnost.
Russian words adopted into English usually carry a heavy historic significance.
Same for kulak, a Russian word for “fist,” or “tight-fisted person,” which in turn takes its origin from the Turkic kol, meaning “hand.”
Kulaks were wealthy independent peasants under the Russian Empire, who were labled “tight-fisted,” because they were thought of as stingy employers who took advantage of their workers.
After the Russian Socialist Revolution of 1917, the Soviet State wanted to industrialize the agricultural production, which required collectivization of farms and land. Described by Lenin as “bloodsuckers, vampires, plunderers of the people and profiteers, who batten on famine,” kulaks resisted expropriation of their private property and were considered class enemy.
Kulaks’ defiance to let the Communist Party seize their property reinforced their tight-fisted reputation and let to dekulakization (раскулачивание) – liquidation of the kulaks as a class, when millions of kulaks and their families were exterminated by the Communists in 1929-1932.
Soviet attempts at agriculture reform, including collectivization, dekulakization and other equally brilliant Soviet measures, resulted in mass starvation and death of at least 14.5 million peasants in 1930-1937.
As we say in Russian, “Хотели как лучше, получилось как всегда” – “we wanted the best but got the usual.”
theUmlaut 