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Russian Culture and Polls
Russia is a country at war. And it is at war not just in a physical battlefield where people go over the line in mass attacks, but it is at war with modernity. It is now fighting a war with the imagination. Nor is this the first time.
So, this battle over the name of things is part of this war of the imaginaries. And it sounds funny to our ear, but this is deadly serious business:
In Russian cities such as Yekaterinburg and Yaroslavl, an active fight against the use of foreign words on signs has begun.
The terms banned include “coffee,” “barbershop,” “hotel,” “cafe,” “shop,” and others. The only exceptions are registered foreign brands.
Now, I can understand this. Language is how the colonization of the mind happens. After NAFTA, we saw a similar entry of English worlds into the Mexican landscape and marketing. It was not the pocho English of the border region, with words like trucka and freezear. It is the entirety of the Starbucks experience, including the fake Italian. Can you say venti?
So, Russians decided to preserve their language by going to war with the words cafe and coffee shop, which have a very specific meaning in the European experience. This makes sense. The mere idea of having a place to drink coffee and argue about current events will soon be gone, too. It’s too much enlightenment…