"Rossianin"

[Belianine Valeri]

Zdravstvuyte, SEELANGERs!

For me as a Russian the weirdest thing about Rossiyane is that it may
be used as appellative. Nobody addressed me as Russian for the whole
of my life before Eltcin. He was the first (in my memory) to tell me
that I was Rossiyanin. I used to hear: Grazhdane Sovetskogo Soyuza,
tovarischi, trudjaschiesa, uchenyye i izobretateli, etc.
And mostly not as appellative but as nomination in third person singular
(I mean the calls for the holidays - 1-st of May and 7-th of November).
That is why Rossiuyanin sounds so strange. But people get used to everything.
And the crisis of national self identification with Russians
should be over sooner or later.
And may be they /we/ will accept this name and say about themselves
/ourselves/ with proud: Ya Rossiyanin / Rissiyanka. Shall we witness this?

Cordially, Val Belianine
Professor of Russian, Moscow State University <www.cie.ru>
vbelyanin at mtu.ru       Friday, August 30, 2002

>> At 03:39 PM 8/28/02 -0400, John Pendergast wrote:
>>> For what it's worth...
>>> "Rossiyanin" and "rossiyanka" appear in the Soviet-era Ozhegov dictionary of
>>> 1987 published by "Russkij Yazyk" and in the 1983 4-volume Dictionary of the
>>> John Pendergast
g> In 1822, was  publicized : "Okolo sveta, pervoe puteshestvie Rossijan,

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