A dark and stormy night in downtown Murmansk

[John Dunn]

The time: a Friday night sometime in the depths of World War II
The place: beautiful downtown Murmansk

You and your shipmates were part of a Royal Navy convoy that has just successfully escorted a consignment of lend-lease Studebakers intended for Our Gallant Soviet Allies and are now exploring the city in search of whatever action it has to offer.  On turning a corner and suddenly encountering a group of OGSA intent on a similar mission, you are faced with a choice.  Do you:
(a) stand there glaring at each other in sullen silence until someone breaks the top off a bottle and the mother of all street battles ensues;
or
(b) attempt a mildly licentious and sailor-friendly approximation of a Russian greeting that is both sufficiently recognisable and sufficiently inexact to prompt an outbreak of uproarious laughter leading to the exchange of cigaretters, spirituous liquors, girlie magazines and odd bits of uniform and resulting in a general, if temporary improvement in British-Soviet relations? 

Difficult, isn't it?

John Dunn.

P.S. To add to Emily Saunders's list (and not in the slightest improper):
диван так хорош
which I will leave to work out for yourselves.


John Dunn
Honorary Research Fellow, SMLC (Slavonic Studies)
University of Glasgow, Scotland

Address:
Via Carolina Coronedi Berti 6
40137 Bologna
Italy
Tel.: +39 051/1889 8661
e-mail: J.Dunn at slavonic.arts.gla.ac.uk
johnanthony.dunn at fastwebnet.it

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