History of the гопни к

[John Dunn]

It is worth consulting whatever dictionaries of slang, жаргон [zhargon] etc. you can get hold of, e.g. Mokineko & Nikitina's Bol'shoj slovar' russkogo zhargona, M.A. Grachev's Slovar' sovremennogo molodezhnogo zhargona  and the Slovar' tjuremno-lagerno-blatnogo zhargona by Baldaev et al.  The Russian Wikipedia entry for гопники [gopniki] is also worth looking at, not least because of the links and references. 

Attempts have been made to derive the word from a couple of acronyms, the pre-revolutionary городское/государственное общество призрения [gorodskoe/gosudarstvennoe obshchestvo prizrenija and the post-revolutionary государственное общежитие пролетариата [gosudarstvennoe obshchezhitie proletariata], though I suppose that as with comparable proposed etymologies for English 'ned' and 'posh', these should be regarded with some caution.  At any event the word seems to go back at least to the early years of the last century.

John Dunn.

________________________________________
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list [SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of Ian [baiterek at HOTMAIL.COM]
Sent: 21 March 2011 21:55
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Subject: [SEELANGS] History of  the гопни к

I am preparing a short piece and was curious what people knew about the history of the word and the concept (definitions and such).  I had been told it might come from Алесандр Розенбаум's song Гоп-стоп,мы подошли из-за угла (гоп-стоп being a term for street robbery) and wanted to tap SEELANGS mighty collective wisdom.  Many thanks an feel free to respond off list to baiterek at hotmail.com though I think a discussion here might be quite entertaining.Best,Ian

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