Russian Idioms

Idiom

Idiom (n): a group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words.
 
In all three of my novels I gave my Russian speakers a definite Slavic flavor by having their dialogue employ regional idioms.  On one of my 'visits' to Belarus I shopped at a book store in Minsk.  Among the thousands of titles was an illustrated handbook of Russian idioms  Not only were the sayings presented in both English and Russian, but it also contained cartoons depicting each.  This book became my official source for much of my 'authentic' dialogue.

A Book of Russian Idioms Illustrated - by M. I. Dubrovin

 Massey and Sam Leave Home

In the first chapter of Ikons: Saint Nicholas the Wonder Worker, Massey convinces his brother Sam to leave their village by calling him one of the timid dozen.  In other words, he called Sam a coward.

Don't be a coward, Sam.

When their father learns of his sons' plan, Sergei chides them for their overly ambitious action. "You're dividing the skin of a bear you haven't killed," he growls, calling up an old Russian saying. In English it's comparable to 'counting your chickens before they hatch.'

Too much confidence

Boris Talks to Petr

My main speaker in idioms was Boris Lukavich Koscik, Akulina's father.  I sprinkled sayings throughout his dialogue resulting in his defining voice.  Boris' favorite catch phrase was, "or so they say."  For example in Banners: For God, Tsar and Russia, when Akulina questioned him concerning his unsuccessful meeting with the leader of the Old Believers' Boris complained, "It's like throwing peas against the wall, or so they say."

It's no use talking to him

In my opinion, the use of idioms colors a story's dialogue.  Especially, if you are using those from a foreign culture.  It is also an easy way to distinguish individual characters.  If one of them speaks continuously with idioms, you can drop the constant use of voice tags. 

Refugees

My three novels, Ikons, Banners, and Slogans, are based on a family history of immigrants and refugees.  While the immigrants' story shouts out from a trail of ships' manifests, passports, census records, and official documents; the refugees' story whispers through grainy black and white photographs and the hushed conversions of memories better left unsaid.

Belarus diaspora - 1915

Diaspora

In 1915 the Russian government instigated a scorched earth program to stop the advancing German army and ordered the evacuation of its western frontier.  My father's village, Hutava, was one of the hundreds abandoned.  While the plight of the inhabitants merited little more than a paragraph in history books, the event was seared into my father's memory.

Refugee Transportation

"We left with our cattle, horses, pigs and our goods.  We traveled in covered wagons until we reached Warsaw.  It took us five months.  We had no food left, no home--lost.  The Russian government put us on a freight train to Siberia, Chelyabinsk.  In the middle of the trip my mother got off to get water.  It was about 40 below and the train left without her.  It took her three months to find us."

The Silence of Horror

Not all refugees were fortunate enough to relate their ordeal.  In Russia's hardest hit areas, parents were faced with choices seldom passed on in family lore.  As food shortages and disease took their toll, mothers were forced to make heart rendering decisions.  How do you explain to those in a land of plenty you had to choose which child was fed and which was starved?  How do you tell your surviving children you abandoned their siblings and left them to fend for themselves?  How do you relate these horrors to those who know only comfort?

Abandoned Russian children in the famine region

In authoring Slogans: Our Children, Our Future, I felt obligated to speak for those muted voices.  It was not enough as a writer of historical-fiction to coldly chronicle events, but to also to relive its anguish.  It was nearly impossible for me to imagine what they went through, let alone reach inside their souls and expose their raw emotions.  It was difficult, but their silent screams made it necessary. 

Refugees awaiting transport - 1914

The refugees' story still continues.  But instead of grainy back and white, today their plight is broadcast in high-definition color.  Their faces still reflect the same fear of the unknown as those from a century ago.  Will a future writer tell their story?

Refugees awaiting transport - 2015

Breaking the silence

Rockdale, Illinois

My trilogy, Ikons, Banners and Slogans, weaves together the tale of two villages; Hutava, Belarus, and Rockdale, Illinois.  In my previous posts I provided background stories of Hutava.  In this post, Rockdale, Illinois takes center stage.

Nestled along the banks of the Des Plaines and abutting the city of the city of Joliet to its east, lies the village of Rockdale.  In the early 1900's it was a small mill town that owed its existence to several industries including the United States Steel's Wire Mill.

Map of early Rockdale

The Wire Mill

My main character, Massey Pribish, was one of the thousands of Eastern European immigrants drawn to the labor intensive factories dotting the northwestern Illinois landscape and and one of the hundreds that gave Rockdale its Slavic flavor.  His story in Ikons: Saint Nicholas the Wonder Worker, is told through the heat and glow of molten steel of the wire mill.  Six days a week Massey trudged to this basilica of modern technology as its smokestack loomed over him like a modern Colossus of Rhodes.  Ten hours a day he labored in that hell driven by a single goal -- bring his wife and sons to America.

Rockdale Wire Mill - 1910

The Old House on Fisher Avenue

Massey, as did most immigrant men, lived in the cramped quarters of rooming houses clustered around on Moen and Otis Avenues.  It wasn't until the late 1920's that Massey saved enough to purchase a multi-family house on Fisher Avenue.  The basement's dank confines is where each of my novels began.

Massey Pribish's home on Fisher Avenue in Rockdale.

This picture clearly shows the style of homes of early Rockdale.  Note the stone foundation supporting the first floor.  Rockdale's limestone substrata made raised basements a necessity.

The Rockdale Streetcar

In Ikons, the long-gone Rockdale streetcar played an important role gliding along its single track from the village to the city.  I was fortunate to work with the nephew of the car's conductor.  He introduced me to the intricacies of the trolley operation and thus put a human touch on this rather mundane mode of transportation.

The Rockdale Streetcar

Rockdale Taverns

I would be remiss if I left out another of Rockdale's bustling industries--taverns.

Typical tavern in early 1900

I'm not sure how many bars and taverns existed in Massey's period, but during mine in the 40's and 50's Rockdale sported nearly forty, one for every twenty-five residents.  It was from these free-flowing taps I populated Massey's world.  Since my father partook of Rockdale's establishments of relaxation, I experienced the Jockey Club, Brosman's, Eniche's, Schmik's, and the 400 Club.  But the place that impressed me the most was Bill's Tavern.  Bill's was owned and operated by the Tallman family and young Buddy Tallman was my grade-school best friend.  It was my memories of Bill's that supplied the inspiration for Tallman's Tavern, my character's favorite watering hole.

Instead of William Tallman, I created the proprietor Wilhelm Tallman, a German veteran of the American Civil war.  Old Wihelm's past allowed me to decorate his bar as I recalled Bill's back in my day.  I furnished it with racks of civil war rifles, photos of old Union regiments and batteries, and bearded generals.  But the one imposing item I still vividly recall and would never forget was the barroom's lithograph of Custer's Last Fight.

While not historically accurate, the lithograph was spellbinding

To our gang of eager eight-year old boys, this battle scene depiction was the source of many arguments and reenactments.  I was naively optimistic that the horde of riders on the right were reinforcements coming to rescue Custer.  No one else agreed. But what I could never have imagined was that sixty years in the future, this image would still fire my mind and find itself in my first novel, Ikons: Saint Nicholas the Wonder Worker.

Almost, but not quite factual

While doing my historical research, I often ran across intriguing items I hoped would add realism to my novel.  Such was the case of the Orthodox church in Streator, Illinois.  The actual story behind the church didn't require embellishment, but since I didn't have the full story, embellish it I did.

I discovered Streator's church while digging into the history of my grandfather's church, Saint Nicholas, in Joliet. In a paragraph documenting Orthodoxy in 19th century Illinois, a few sentences were devoted to the Orthodox Church of the Three Saints that began with the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. 

The Russian church as it appeared at the 1893 Chicago Exposition

According to the article the Church of the Three Saints was part of the Russian exhibit at the Exposition.  Two years after its close, Vasile Hunter and Albert Dock arrived in Chicago and purchased the forgotten building.  Alone, the two disassembled the church, loaded it on a train, and rebuilt it anew in Streator.  Based on this sketchy information I wrote the third chapter of Banners: For God, Tsar and Russia.

Orthodox Church of the Three Saints, Streator, Illinois circ 1904

Chapter Three takes place in Illinois during the late summer of 1914.  Russia is at war and my main characters along with other Eastern European emigres want to show support for their Motherland.  Their plan is for a Pan-Slavic pilgrimage to Church of the Three Saints in Streator and perform a high service asking for God's blessings.  The organizers secure passage on the Chicago and Alton Railroad and proceed to Streator, picking up Russian and Serbian worshipers along the way. 

The Alton Limited streaking across the Illinois prairie

They exit the train on a rail siding and prepare to march to the church.

What might have been a version of my Slavic procession in 1914

The emigres' procession of banners and icons travels four miles from the train to the church under the blistering August sun and proceed to offer prayers on behalf of their countries.

Twenty years after I wrote this, thanks to the home page of the Lake Michigan Chapter of the Carpatho-Rusyn Society, I discovered more to the story.  According to the site's author, Tsar Alexander III of Russia commissioned the church as part of the Exposition's Russian Pavilion. The entire Pavilion was built in a dark wood and was designed by the Tsar's favorite architect, Ivan Ropet, in a 17th century Muscovite style and resembled the palace in which Peter the Great was born. It was built and assembled in Russia, disassembled, then sent to Chicago where it was reassembled for the 1893 World's Fair. Once the fair was over, arrangements were made for the purchase of its façade, tower, and traditional ornamentation by the congregation in Streator, and again, it was disassembled, then reassembled at its new home at 401 South Illinois Street.

In 1910, the church building was sold to a Beaulah Baptist congregation. In 1916, the building was sold again, this time to a Polish Roman Catholic congregation and named St. Casimir. Over the years as a non-Orthodox church, all the Russian trappings of the building were eventually removed, and in the end every surface of the original exterior had been covered with brick-patterned asphalt siding. In 1964, St. Casimir Church razed this building to the ground in order to build a bigger church, citing its small interior and as well as general condition. The parish disbanded in the 1960s. 

So based on actual events, my version of history could not happened as I wrote.  But that's the tricky part of historic fiction -- how much history and how much fiction?  And the church of the three saints?  It turns out that's its anglicized name.  In the parlance of Orthodoxy, it was named Three Hierarchs Orthodox Church, in honor of the three stalwarts of the Eastern Church.  For this error, I apologize to the three.

The Three Hierarchs: Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, and John Chrysostom

Pictures Don't Lie

The genesis of my three novels was the Pribish family portrait.  In chapter thirty-five of Slogans: Our Children, Our Future,  I laid the groundwork for its creation.  I introduced a character named Andre Petrovich Antanov, a zealous young Communist photographer assigned to document Unkurda's spring planting.  Armed with the latest Eastman Kodak Brownie camera, and six rolls of well-regulated film, Andre rumbles into the village and sets about his task. 

Andre Antanov's mobile photography studio

Kodak Brownie Camera - circ 1910

Akulina approaches Andre and offers to pay him with American money for likenesses of her family.  Andre is torn by the offer.  One on hand he does not believe in capitalism, but on the other hand, the hard currency is attractive.  As a compromise, and to keep the Ministry of Truth from discovering his capitalistic weakness, he proposes using his old wet plate camera instead of Kodak film.  This enabled me to write a scene in which each member of Akulina's family is captured individually and explain how the portrait came into being.

Vintage Wet Plate Camera

Afterwards, Andre secretly plans to use a popular darkroom technique to create a family portrait for Akulina which includes Massey.  What Andre envisions is a political ploy sweeping Russia where low level party apparatchik doctor photographs to show themselves associating with high ranking party members.  If you want your picture taken with Lenin, Andre knows how to do it. 

Joseph Stalin employed manipulated photos in two ways.  As an up and comer, he had photos created showing him shoulder to shoulder with Lenin.  Later, when Stalin became the absolute ruler, he was adept at displaying photos to shape public image.  As in Orwell's 1984 Ministry of Truth, it was not enough for Stalin to eradicate an opponent, the very existence of the person was erased.  This was before Photoshop and an era when people believed pictures never lie.

Joseph Stalin - With and Without Nicolai Yezhov

Andre later returns to record the fall harvest and presents Akulina with a gift of a colored family portrait.  In it, Akulina not only sees her immediate family, but all past and future members.

Original Photos

Andre's Reuslts

Andre also served another purpose. He and a deposed factory owner named Abraham Kubechev debated the pros and cons of capitalism and communism.  The result was a rather heated exchange.