Cyrillic

Cyrillic (pronounced si-ril-ik)

(1) Noting or pertaining to a script derived from Greek uncials and traditionally held to have been invented by Saint Cyril, first used for the writing of Old Church Slavonic and adopted with minor modifications for the writing of Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, and some non-Slavic languages of Central Asia.

(2) Of or relating to Saint Cyril.

1842: From the Medieval Latin Cyrillicus, the construct being Cyrill(us) (Saint Cyril) + -icus or –ic (the Latin suffix added to a noun, adjective, verb, etc to form an adjective.  From an i-stem + -cus, occurring in some original case and later used freely. It was cognate with the Ancient Greek -ικός (-ikós), the Proto-Germanic -igaz, the Old High German & Old English -ig, and the Gothic -eigs).  The name Cyril is from the Medieval Latin Cyrillicus & Cȳrillus was from the Ancient Greek Κῡ́ρῐλλος (Kū́rillos or Kyrillos) (literally "lordly, masterful”) and related to kyrios (lord, master).  The name Cyril is from the Late Latin Cyrillus, from the Ancient Greek Kyrillos (literally "lordly, masterful) and related to kyrios (lord, master).

From the Balkans to Moscow

Saints Cyril and Methodius (1912), oil on canvas, by Uroš Predić (1857-1953).

Dating from the ninth century, the early Cyrillic replaced the Glagolitic script earlier created by Saints Cyril and Methodius as something easier for the copyist to write and for the foreigner to acquire and the same disciples that created the new Slavic script in Bulgaria.  Becoming the official Bulgarian script after being brought into general use by St. Cyril's pupil, Clement (first bishop of Bulgaria) in 893, Cyrillic became the basis of alphabets used in various languages, especially those of Orthodox Slavic origin, and non-Slavic languages influenced by Russian.  Today, it’s used by some two-hundred and fifty million people in Eurasia as their official alphabet, Russians accounting for about half of them.  With the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union in 2007, Cyrillic became the third official script of the European Union, following Latin and Greek.

Lindsay Lohan in Moscow for the FIA Formula E ePrix, June 2015.  In Cyrillic Russian, Lindsay Lohan is spelled Линдси Лохан.

Cyrillic is a derivative of the Greek uncial script, augmented by letters from the older Glagolitic alphabet, including some ligatures, letters used in Old Church Slavonic sounds not found in Greek. The script is named in honor of two Byzantine brothers, Saints Cyril and Methodius, who earlier had created the Glagolitic alphabet; despite the name and some Medieval myth-making, the script was conceived and popularized by the followers of Cyril and Methodius, rather than the saintly brothers; the name Cyrillic denotes homage rather than authorship.  In the early eighteenth century, the Cyrillic script used in Russia was modernized by Peter, the new letterforms being closer to the Latin alphabet with several archaic letters removed and some new ones personally designed by the Tsar himself, the best known of which is Я, inspired by the Latin R.

Tsar

Tsar (pronounced zahr)

(1) An emperor or king.

(2) Title of the former emperors of Russia and several Slavonic states.

(3) Slang term for an autocratic ruler or leader.

(4) Slang term for a person exercising great authority or power in a particular field.

1545-1555: From the Old Russian tsĭsarĭ (emperor or king), akin to the Old Church Slavonic tsěsarĭ, the Gothic kaisar and the Greek kaîsar, all ultimately derived from the Latin Caesar (an emperor, a ruler, a dictator) while the Germanic form of the word was the source of the Finnish keisari and the Estonian keisar.  The prehistoric Slavic was tsesar, Tsar first adopted as an imperial title by Ivan IV (Ivan Vasilyevich, 1530–1584 and better remembered as Ivan the Terrible, Grand Prince of Moscow and all Russia 1533-1584 & Tsar of all Russia 1547-1584) in 1547.  There’s a curious history to spelling tsar as czar.  Spelled thus, it’s contrary to the usage of all Slavonic languages; the word was so spelt by the Carniolan diplomat & historian Baron Siegmund Freiherr von Herberstein (1486–1566) in his work (in Latin) Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii (Notes on Muscovite Affairs (1549)) which was such a seminal early source of knowledge of Russia in Western Europe that "czar" passed into the Western languages; despite that history, "tsar" definitely is the proper Latinization.  It still appears and some linguistic academics insist the lineage means it should be regarded as archaic use rather than a mistake and, as a fine technical point, that’s correct in that, for example, the female form czarina is from 1717 (from Italian czarina and German zarin).  In Russian, the female form is tsaritsa and a tsar’s son is a tsarevitch, his daughter a tsarevna.

Nicholas II (Nikolai II Alexandrovich Romanov, 1868–1918; last Tsar of Russia, 1894-1917).  He cut an imposing figure for the portraitists but his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859–1941; German Emperor & King of Prussia 1888-1918) reckoned the tsar's mental abilities rendered him most suitable to "a cottage in the country where he can grow turnips".  Wilhelm got much wrong in his life but historians seem generally to concur in this he was a fair judge of things.

Tsar and its variants were the official titles of (1) the First Bulgarian Empire 913–1018, (2) the Second Bulgarian Empire (1185–1396), (3) the Serbian Empire (1346–1371), (4) the Tsardom of Russia (1547–1721) (technically replaced in 1721 by imperator, but remaining in use outside Russia (also officially in relation to certain regions until 1917) and (5) the Tsardom of Bulgaria (1908–1946).  So, although most associated with Russia, the first ruler to adopt the title was Simeon I (usually written as Simeon the Great; circa 865-927, ruler of Bulgaria 893-927) and that was about halfway through his reign and nobody since Simeon II (Simeon Borisov Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, b 1937; (last) Tsar of the Kingdom of Bulgaria 1943-1946) has been a tsar.  The transferred sense of "person with dictatorial powers" seems first to have appeared in English in 1866 as an adoption in American English, initially as a disapproving reference to President Andrew Johnson (1808–1875; US President 1865-1869) but it has come to be applied neutrally (health tsar, transport tsar) and use does sometimes demand deconstruction: drug tsar has been applied both to organised crime figures associated with the distribution of narcotics and government appointees responsible for policing the trade.  In some countries, some overlap between the two roles has been noted.

Comrade Stalin agitprop.

Volgograd, the southern Russian city was between 1925-1961 named Stalingrad (Stalin + -grad).  Grad (град in Cyrillic) was from the Old Slavic and translates variously as "town, city, castle or fortified settlement"; it once existed in many languages as gord and can be found still as grad, gradić, horod or gorod in many place-names.  Before it was renamed in honour of comrade Stalin (1878-1953, leader of the USSR 1924-1953), between 1589-1925, the city, at the confluence of the Tsaritsa and Volga rivers was known as Tsaritsyn, the name from the Turkic-related Tatar dialect word sarisin meaning "yellow water" or "yellow river" but because of the similarity in sound and spelling, came in Russia to be associated with Tsar.  Stalingrad is remembered as the scene of the epic and savage battle which culminated in the destruction in February 1943 of the German Sixth Army, something which, along with the strategic failure of the Wehrmacht in the offensive (Unternehmen Zitadelle (Operation Citadel) in the Kursk salient five months later, marked what many military historians record as the decisive moment on the Eastern Front.  It has become common to refer to comrade Stalin as the "Red Tsar" whereas casual comparisons of Mr Putin (Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999) don't often reach to Russia's imperial past; they seem to stop with Stalin.

Caesar (an emperor, a ruler, a dictator) was from the late fourteenth century cesar (from Cæsar) and was originally a surname of the Julian gens in Rome, elevated to a title after Caius Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) became dictator and it was used as a title of emperors down to Hadrian (76–138; Roman emperor 117-138).  The name ultimately is of uncertain origin, Pliny the Elder (23–79) suggested it came from the Latin caesaries (head of hair) because the future dictator was born with a lush growth while others have linked it to the Latin caesius (bluish-gray), an allusion to eye color.  The "probity of Caesar's" wife (the phrase first recorded in English in the 1570s) as the figure of a person who should be above suspicion comes from the biography of Julius Caesar written by the Greek Middle Platonist priest-philosopher & historian Plutarch (circa 46–circa 123).  Plutarch related the story of how Julius Caesar divorced his wife Pompeia because of rumors of infidelity, not because he believed the tales of her adultery but because, as a political position, “the wife of Caesar must not even be under suspicion”.  That’s the origin of the phrase “the probity of Caesar’s wife, a phrase which first appeared in English in the 1570s.

In late nineteenth century US slang, a sheriff was "the great seizer" an allusion to the office's role in seizing property pursuant to court order.  The use of Caesar to illustrate the distinction between a subject’s obligations to matters temporal and spiritual is from the New Testament: Matthew 22:21.

They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.

Christ had been answering a question posed by the Pharisees to trap Him: Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar (Matthew 22:15–20)?  To answer, Jesus held up a denarius, the coin with which pay the tax and noted that on it was the head of Caesar, by then Caesar had become a title, meaning emperor of Rome and its empire.  It was a clever answer; in saying "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and render unto God that which is God's", Jesus dismisses the notion of believers being conflicted by the demands of the secular state as a false dilemma because, one can fulfil the requirements of the sate by a mere payment of coin without any implication of accepting its doctrines or legitimacy.  Over the years much has been made of what is or should be "rendered unto Caesar", but more interesting is inference which must be drawn: if we owe Caesar that which bears his image, what then do we owe God?  It can only be that we owe God that which bears the image of God, an impressive inventory listed in the book of Genesis and now interpreted by some Christians as "the whole universe".  To Caesar we can only ever owe money; to God we owe ourselves.

In the Old English the spelling was casere, which would under the expected etymological process have evolved into coser, but instead, circa 1200, it was replaced in the Middle English by keiser, from the Norse or Low German, and later by the French or Latin form of the name.  Cæsar also is the root of German Kaiser, the Russian tsar and is linked with the Modern Persian shah.  Despite the common assumption, "caesar" wasn’t an influence on the English "king".  King was from the Middle English king & kyng, from the Old English cyng & cyning (king), from the Proto-West Germanic kuning, from the Proto-Germanic kuningaz & unungaz (king), kin being the root.  It was cognate with the Scots keeng (king), the North Frisian köning (king), the West Frisian kening (king), the Dutch koning (king), the Low German Koning & Köning (king), the German König (king), the Danish konge (king), the Norwegian konge (king), the Swedish konung & kung (king), the Icelandic konungur & kóngur (king), the Finnish kuningas (king) and the Russian князь (knjaz) (prince) & княги́ня (knjagínja) (princess).  It eclipsed the non-native Middle English roy (king) and the Early Modern English roy, borrowed from Old French roi, rei & rai (king).

The Persian Shah was from the Old Persian xšāyaθiya (king), once thought a borrowing from the Median as it was compared to the Avestan xšaϑra- (power; command), corresponding to the Sanskrit (the Old Indic) kṣatra- (power; command), source of kṣatriya (warrior).  However, recent etymological research has confirmed xšāyaθiya was a genuine, inherited Persian formation meaning “pertaining to reigning, ruling”.  The word, with the origin suffix -iya was from a deverbal abstract noun xšāy-aθa- (rule, ruling) (Herrschaft), from the Old Persian verb xšāy- (to rule, reign).  In the Old Persian, the full title of the Achaemenid rulers of the First Empire was Xšāyaθiya Xšāyaθiyānām (or in Modern Persian, Šāhe Šāhān (King of Kings)), best as "Emperor", a title with ancient, Near Eastern and Mesopotamian precedents.  The earliest known instance of such a title dates from the Middle Assyrian period as šar šarrāni, used by the Assyrian ruler Tukulti-Ninurta I (1243–1207 BC).

Tsar Bomba: the Tsar bomb

Tupolev Tu-95 in flight (left) and a depiction of the October 1961 test detonation of the Tsar Bomb.

Царь-бомба (Tsar Bomba (Tsar-bomb)) was the Western nickname for the Soviet RDS-220 hydrogen bomb (Project code: AN602; code name Ivan or Vanya), the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated.  The test on 30 October 1961 remains the biggest man-made explosion in history and was rated with a yield of 50-51 megatons although the design was technically able to produce maximum yield in excess of 100.  For a long time the US estimated the yield at 54 megatons and the Russians at 58 but after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was confirmed the true yield was 50-51 megatons.  Only one was ever built and it was detonated on an island off the Russian arctic coast.  The decision to limit the size blast was related to the need to ensure (1) a reduced nuclear fall-out and (2) the aircraft dropping the thing would be able to travel a safe distance from the blast radius (the Kremlin's attitude to the lives of military personnel had changed since comrade Stalin's time).  No nuclear power has since expressed any interest in building weapons even as large as the Tsar Bomb and for decades the trend in strategic arsenals has been more and smaller weapons, a decision taken on the pragmatic military grounds that it's pointless to destroy things many times over.  It's true that higher yield nuclear weapons would produce "smaller rubble" but to the practical military mind such a result represents just "wasted effort".

Progress 1945-1961.

The Tupolev Tu-95 (NATO reporting name: Bear) which dropped the Tsar Bomb was a curious fork in aviation history, noted also for its longevity.  A four-engined turboprop-powered strategic bomber and missile platform, it entered service in 1956 and is expected still to be in operational use in 2040, an expectation the United States Air Force (USAF) share for their big strategic bomber, the Boeing B-52 which first flew in 1952, the first squadrons formed three years later.  Both airframes have proven remarkably durable and amenable to upgrades; as heavy lift devices and delivery systems they could be improved upon with a clean-sheet design but the relatively small advantages gained would not justify the immense cost, thus the ongoing upgrade programmes.  The TU-95's design was, inter-alia, notable for being one of the few propeller-driven aircraft with swept wings and is the only one ever to enter large-scale production.  It's also very loud, the tips of those counter-rotating propellers sometimes passing through the sound barrier.

Footage of the Tsar Bomb test de-classified and released after the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1922-1991).

The Tsar Bomb was in a sense the “ultimate” evolution of the centuries long history of the bomb although it wasn’t the end of innovation, designers seemingly never running out of ideas to refine the concept of the device, the purpose of which is to (1) blow stuff up and (2) kill people.  Bomb was from the French bombe, from the Italian bomba, from the Latin bombus (a booming sound), from the Ancient Greek βόμβος (bómbos) (booming, humming, buzzing), the explosive imitative of the sound itself.  Bomb was used originally of “projectiles; mortar shells etc”, the more familiar “explosive device placed by hand or dropped from airplane” said by many sources to date from 1908 although the word was in the former sense used when describing the anarchist terrorism of the late nineteenth century.  As a footnote, the nickname of Hugh Trenchard (1873-1956), the first Marshal of the Royal Air Force (RAF) was “boom” but this was related to his tone of voice rather than an acknowledgement of him being one of the earliest advocates of strategic bombing.

The figurative uses were wide, ranging from “a dilapidated car” (often as “old bomb”, the use based presumably on the perception such vehicles are often loud).  The bombshell was originally literally a piece of military equipment but it was later co-opted (most memorably as “blonde bombshell) to describe a particularly fetching young women.  So, used figuratively, “bomb” could mean either “very bad” or “very good” and in his weekly Letter from American (broadcast by the BBC World Service 1946-2004), Alistair Cooke (1908–2004) noted a curious trans-Atlantic dichotomy.  In the world of showbiz, Cooke observed, “bomb” was used in both the US & UK to describe the reaction to a play, movie or whatever but in the US, if called “a bomb”, the production was a flop, a failure whereas in the UK, if something was called “quite a bomb”, it meant it was a great success.

I Know Who Killed Me (2007)

I Know Who Killed Me bombed (in the traditional US sense) but in the way these things sometimes happen, the film has since enjoyed a second life with a cult-following and screenings on the specialized festival circuit.  Additionally, DVD & Blu-Ray sales (it's said to be a popular, if sometimes ironic, gift) meant eventually it generated a profit although it has never exactly become a "bomb" (in the UK sense).  However, while it now enjoys a following among a small sub-set of the public, the professional critics have never softened their view.

Zarf

Zarf (pronounced zahrf)

In the Levant, a holder with a handle, rendered traditionally in ornamental metal and used to hold a coffee cup without a handle.

1836: Adopted in English from the Ottoman Turkish ظرف‎ (zarf), from the Arabic ظَرْف‎ (ẓarf) (container, sheath).  An alternative spelling is zurf and in the Balkans: zȁlf & zȁf (Serbo-Croatian); zȁrf (за̏рф in Cyrillic).  Zarf is a noun; the noun plural is zarfs.

Ottoman era solid silver zarf (with a depiction of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul (formerly Constantinople), Turkey (now the Republic of Türkiye), circa 1890.

Zarf was a specialized adoption in Ottoman Turkish of the Arabic zarf which means “container”.  In Arabic, a zarf is also an envelope and the word is sometimes appended to various Arabic, English and international forms as required.  A Zarf-DL is the familiar DL envelope, a zarf değiştirmeyi is a change envelope and, specific to printers, a zarf yazıcı is an envelope feeder & zarf dönüş an envelope return.

Lindsay Lohan out getting the morning coffee fix.

The modern plastic zarf.  Modern zarfs are designed to accommodate most disposable coffee cups, made usually in a small-medium-large range which is not quite internationally standardized but with variations small enough not to matter.

Better to minimize the risk of an almost inevitable spillage and seldom seen without a most capacious handbag in which one might be carried, noted coffee fiend Lindsay Lohan really should invest in a modern, portable zarf although, how long single-use, disposable coffee cups will be permitted isn’t known.  Weather forecaster Greta Thunberg (b 2003) would probably suggest we should all carry our own cup but history suggests governments are unlikely to rely on environmental consciousness to induce behavioral change and consumers may soon be charged to use disposable coffee cups and wooden utensils.  The experiment with forcing supermarkets to charge for plastic bags proved yet again what increasing the cost of cigarettes had repeatedly demonstrated: that nothing changes behavior quite as well or as quickly as making the target more expensive.  Remarkably, since the UK government introduced their levy on plastic bags, consumption has dropped by over ninety percent, a good outcome which pleased the supermarkets too.  It meant a small but not insignificant cost of operating was shifted from retailer to consumer and the introduction of a relatively low-volume but highly profitable a new profit centre: plastic bags.  In Australia, the dominant duopoly, Coles and Woolworths, which once had to give away a combined 5.7 billion bags annually year at .3 cents per bag, costing them Aus$171 million, now sell 1.2 billion of the heavier bags, yielding an annual profit estimated to be about Aus$70 million; a turn round of Aus$240 million so a nice little earner and some handy green-washing to boot.

Kyiv (formerly Kiev)

Kyiv (formerly Kiev) (pronounced kee-yiv (Ukrainian) or kee-yev (Russian))

(1) Capital of Ukraine, in the north-central region of the country on the Dnieper River.

(2) An oblast (a region or province in Slavic or Slavic-influenced countries (plural oblasts or oblasti)) of Ukraine, the medieval principality centered on Kiev (the Kievan state (Kievan Rus)).

(3) In culinary slang, a shortened for the dish Chicken Kiev (a breast of chicken stuffed with butter, garlic and parsley, rolled, breaded and fried). 

Pre 1000: From the Ukrainian Kýjiv or Kyyiv (Ки́їв), from the Russian Kíjev (Ки́ев), perhaps from the name Кий (Kij or Kyi), one of the city’s four legendary founders, from the Proto-Slavic kyjь (stick, club) although some historians regard this as a folk etymology and instead link it to an evolution of something from the local language.  The alternative forms are Kyïv, Kyjiv & Kyyiv, the earlier forms Kiou, Kiow, Kiovia, Kiowia, Kiew, Kief, Kieff & Kief all obsolete.  Historically, in Western use, an inhabitant of Kiev was a Kievan.

The Ukrainian government's official roman-alphabet name for the city is Kyiv, according to the national standard for romanization of Ukrainian Київ (Kyjiv), and has been adopted by geographic naming databases, international organizations, and by many other reference sources.  In the West, many style guides have been updated to reflect the government’s recommendation the preferred spelling should be Kyiv (although a few historians insist it should be Ki'iv), pronounced kee-yiv and a transliteration of the Ukrainian Київ.

The Russian form was a transliteration from the Russian Cyrillic Киев and, along with the associated pronunciation, was the internationally accepted name during the Soviet era, something that lasted well into the twenty-first century and many who couldn’t have found the place on a map would have been familiar with both because of the eponymous chicken dish introduced to popular Western cuisine in the 1960s.  The post-Soviet reaction to the Russification of Ukraine encouraged the Ukrainian authorities to adopt the local spelling, the cultural sensitivities heightened by Russia’s military incursions into Ukrainian territory since 2014.  The changing of locality names is nothing new in Europe, various parts of the continent having changed hands over thousands of years and names of localities have often been altered better to suit the needs of conquerors, sometimes as a form of triumphalism and sometimes just to ease the linguistic difficulties.  The area in which sits Kyiv has at times over the last millennium fallen under Mongol, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, Soviet and now Ukrainian rule and while Russian and Ukrainian are both east Slavonic languages (as opposed to west Slavonic languages such as Polish, and south Slavonic ones like Bulgarian) and from the one original root they have, like just about all languages, diverged in forks which sometimes evolved and sometimes went extinct.

In the early modern period, Ukrainian absorbed some Polish influences and a number of vowels came to be pronounced differently from their Russian counterparts, the kind of regional difference quite familiar to those in England, Germany or the United States.  That would be variation enough to account for many differences but in its evolution, several letters of the alphabet became unique to Ukrainian (such as the ї in Київ) and the variations can make it difficult for native Russian speakers to understand some words or expressions when spoken by Ukrainians.  Still, there must be acknowledgement that name changes imposed from Moscow (whether Russian, Tsarist or Soviet) have so often reflected an astute understanding of propaganda and the implications of language.  When in the 1660s the Ukraine was taken from the Kingdom of Poland, the Russians promptly renamed the territory "Little Russia" although despite the assertions of some that here began the Kremlin's manufactured fiction that Russians & Ukranians are the one people with the one language, the root of that lie earlier.  The legend shared by three Slavic peoples is of three brothers, Czech, Lech & Rus who set off in three directions from the family and later settled in different places, the three fathering the Czechs, the Poles and the Rus (which begat both the Russians and Ukranians).     

Sometimes the changes effected by governments happen instantly upon occupation such as much as what was done in Nazi-occupied Europe but sometimes, the rectification or correction waits for centuries.  Although the Byzantine capital Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in 1453, it wasn’t until the Turkification movement, which began in the 1920s after the formation of the modern Turkish state, that the government began to encourage other countries to use Turkish names for Turkish cities, instead of the transliterations to Latin script which had been used during the Ottoman era.  In 1930, the Government gazetted the official change of name from Constantinople to Istanbul.  Ankara’s interest in linguistic hygiene was recently revived, the Turkish authorities issuing a communiqué advising the country’s name would change from the internationally recognized name from "Turkey" to “Türkiye”.  The concern is said to be the association of Turkey with other meanings in English (not the birds but rather “a person who does something thoughtless or annoying; an event or product which fails badly or is totally ineffectual”).  Around the word, those in chancelleries dutifully adjusted their directory entries while cynics wondered if the Turkish president might be looking for something to distract people from their problems.

The Chicken Kiev speech

What came to be known as the “Chicken Kiev speech” was delivered by President Bush (George HW Bush, George XLI; 1924–2018; US president 1989-1993) to a session of the Supreme Soviet of Ukraine in Kyiv on 1 August 1991.  The tone of his words came to be much criticized by the right of the Republican Party, still infused with the spirit of Ronal Reagan and heady from breathing in the dust which rose as the Berlin Wall fell.  Three weeks after the speech, the Ukrainian Declaration of Independence would be presented and a few months after that, over 90% of Ukrainians would vote to secede from the Soviet Union which would collapse before the year was out, an event at least hastened by Ukrainian independence.  Bush’s speech came directly after his meetings with Mikhail Gorbachev (b 1931; leader of the USSR 1985-1991), the last Soviet leader, who seems to have impressed the US president with both his sincerity and ability to pursue economic and political reform. 

Bush started well enough, telling his audience “…today you explore the frontiers and contours of liberty…”, adding “For years, people in this nation felt powerless, overshadowed by a vast government apparatus, cramped by forces that attempted to control every aspect of their lives.”  That encouraging anti-Moscow direction must have raised expectations but they were soon dashed, Bush continuing “President Gorbachev has achieved astonishing things, and his policies of glasnost, perestroika, and democratization point toward the goals of freedom, democracy, and economic liberty.”  Just to make sure there was no hint that Washington might be encouraging in Ukrainian minds any thoughts of independence, Bush provided clarification, telling his by now perhaps disappointed audience that “…freedom is not the same as independence.  Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred."

The speech had been written by Condoleezza Rice (b 1954; US secretary of state 2005-2009), then on the eastern Europe desk at the National Security Council and a special assistant to the president for national security affairs although the "suicidal nationalism" flourish was inserted by Bush himself.  Commenting later, Dr Rice and Mr Bush would acknowledge the speech did not capture the moment, the winds of change which had been blowing since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, but both in their (sort of) apologias made the point that August of 1991 was a very different time and place from December and nobody had predicted the imminent demise of the Soviet Union.

Whatever the reaction of the Ukrainians, it was no more severe than that unleashed at home by the aggregations of anti-communists, American exceptionalists and right-wing fanatics, New York Times columnist William Safire (1929-2009) calling it the "Chicken Kiev speech" and a "colossal mis-judgment".  Later presidents, all of course who served in a post-Soviet environment, seemed to agree and changed direction, pushing for an aggressive expansion of NATO to embrace all the former Soviet bloc.  NATO would, at the now famous Bucharest summit in 2008, go further still, pledging that Ukraine and Georgia would one day be invited to join the alliance. Perhaps wishing to atone for the sins of the father, another President Bush (George W Bush, George XLIII; b 1946; US president 2001-2009) then wanted immediately to offer both nations membership roadmaps but even then, Berlin and Paris were cautious about antagonizing Russia and put both the former Soviet republics on the back-burner.  There they’ve stayed.

Chicken Kiev (côtelette de volaille in Russian & Ukrainian cuisine)

Chicken Kiev variations.

Ingredients

4 rashers of smoked streaky bacon
Olive oil
4 x 150 g skinless chicken breasts
3 tablespoons of plain flour
2 large free-range eggs
150 g fresh breadcrumbs
Sunflower oil
2 large handfuls of baby spinach or rocket
2 lemons
Butter
4 cloves of garlic
½ a bunch (15g) of fresh flat-leaf parsley
4 knobs of butter (at room temperature)
1 pinch of cayenne pepper
800 g Piper potatoes
1 head of broccoli
1 knob of unsalted butter

Instructions

Fry bacon in a pan at medium heat with no more than a drizzle of olive oil, until golden and crisp, then remove.

For the butter, peel garlic, then finely chop with the parsley leaves and mix into the softened butter with the cayenne.  Refrigerate.

Stuff the chicken breasts.  Pull back the loose fillet on the back of the breast and use a knife to slice a long pocket.

Cut the chilled butter into four and insert into the pocket, then crumble in a rasher of crispy bacon.  Fold and seal back the chicken, completely covering the butter so it becomes a wrapped parcel.

Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C).

Place flour in a shallow bowl, whisk the eggs in another and put breadcrumbs and a pinch of seasoning into a third.  Evenly coat each chicken breast in flour, then beaten egg, letting any excess drip off, and finally, turn them in the breadcrumbs, repeating until all four are evenly coated.

Shallow-fry in ¾ inch (20 mm) of sunflower oil on a medium to high heat until lightly golden (should take no more than 2-3 minutes), then transfer to a tray and bake in the oven until cooked through (typically around 10-12 minutes).  The alternative method is to bake them completely in the oven and skip the frying process; this requires drizzling them with olive oil and baking for about 20 minutes; taste will be the same but they won’t have the golden surface texture.

While cooking, peel and roughly chop the potatoes and cook in a large pan of boiling salted water until tender (typically 12-15 minutes).

Chop up broccoli and add it to the potatoes for the last 8-odd minutes of cooking.  Drain and leave to steam dry, then return to the pan and mash with a knob of butter and a pinch of salt and pepper.

Dollop the mash on the serving plates, placing a Kiev atop each. Lightly dress the spinach leaves or rocket in a little oil and lemon juice, then sprinkle over the top as garnish. Serve with a wedge of lemon.

Nomenclature

Nomenclature (pronounced noh-muhn-kley-cher, noh-men-kluh-cher, noh-muhn-kley-choor or noh-men-kluh-choor

(1) A set or system of names or terms, the terminology used in a particular science, art, activity etc, by an individual, community or institution.

(2) The names or terms comprising a set or system.

1600-1610: From the sixteenth century French nomenclature, from the Latin nōmenclātūra (a calling by name, list of names), from nomenclator (namer), the construct being nōmen (name), from the primitive Indo-European root no-men- (name) + calator (caller, crier), from calāre (call out), from the primitive Indo-European root kele- (to shout); a doublet of nomenklatura.  In many cases, the words classification, codification, glossary, locution, phraseology, taxonomy & terminology will be synonymous and interchangeable.  The related forms include nomenclatural, nomenclatorial & nomenclative, nomenclaturally, nomenclator, nomenclatory (and the equivalent systems using exclusively numbers: numericlature.  The noun plural is nomenclatures.

In Ancient Rome a nomenclator was (1) the title of a steward whose job was to announce visitors and (2) a prompter who helped a politician seeking election recall names and pet causes of his constituents.  The meaning "systematic list or catalogue of names" is attested from the 1630s; that of "system of naming" dating from the 1660s while the modern sense of "the whole vocabulary or terminology of an art or a science" is from 1789.  In English, circa 1600, it also had the meaning “a name” but, being a complicated way of saying something simple, this quickly went extinct.

In the Soviet Union, nomenklatura was the "list of influential posts in government and industry to be filled by Communist Party appointees".  The origin of this predated the formal creation of the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; (Союз Советских Социалистических Республик, СССР the Russian abbreviation in Cyrillic, transliterated as SSSR in Latin script)) and was emblematic of the centralization of authority and decision making the party organization imposed almost immediately on the state.  It was too indicative of the way the dictatorial structure of the party, mapped onto the mechanism of the state would, disguised sometimes as a collective model, to almost the end distinguish the USSR from many of the non-communist models of authoritarian rule which flourished during the twentieth century, their corporatist nature often misunderstood because of the way the label “dictatorship” was applied.

Formalized during 1919-1920, the party’s system of control was created in the months after the revolution, the Politburo (a creation of the party’s Central Committee which, technically, exercised only the authority delegated by the committee) dealt with all matters of significance and thus reserved the key decisions exclusively for their remit, the routine and procedural matters handled either by the Orgburo (essentially the body which enacted the Politburo’s edicts and coordinated the regional organizations and thus best understood as a kind of party chancellery) or the famously bureaucratic Secretariat.  It was in the Secretariat (where the paperwork from the higher bodies tended to end up) that the need for a reliably indexed filing system to conquer the developing administrative chaos quickly became apparent and nomenklatura was part of the system.  Accordingly created was the Учраспред (Uchraspred), (the Department of Files & Assignments) which, operating rather as gangsters would run as HR department, handled the registration of party members and their subsequent allocation to positions below the higher-level appointments, which remained in the gift of the Politburo or Orgburo.

Comrade Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986; early Bolshevik, Soviet foreign minister 1939-1949 & 1953-1956), Edward R Stettinius Jr (1900–1949; US secretary of state 1944-1945 and ambassador to the UN 1945-1946 (“Stettinius the younger”, his father having been assistant secretary of war 1918-1921)) & Anthony Eden (1897–1977; thrice UK foreign secretary and prime-minister-1955-1957) at the foundation conference of the United Nations, San Francisco, 1945.

Predictably, the structure provided much scope for patronage, nepotism and factionalism but, handling annually thousands of movements, it nevertheless demanded efficient administration, something lacking until in 1921, Vyacheslav Molotov, just elevated to the Central Committee and Orgburo, was put in charge of the Secretariat.  Studious, serious (of the many photographs which exist, in few is he smiling) and with a mind which if not as quick as his colleagues was certainly thorough, he excelled in the role and though the more intellectually illustrious were inclined to decry his “needless and shameful bureaucratism", they couldn’t not be in awe of his capacity to spend long hours sitting at his desk, creating order our of what was a post-revolutionary mess, comrade Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov 1870–1924 and known by his alias Lenin; revolutionary, political theorist and founding head of government (Soviet Russia 1917-1924 and the Soviet Union 1922-1924) dubbing him “stone ass” (often misquoted as “iron ass”), a moniker later used (behind his back) by the negotiators from the West with whom he sat through many meetings and conferences during his long tenure as Soviet foreign minister, his intransigence legendary even by diplomatic standards.  Other ambassadors dubbed him "comrade nyet"; nyet a Russian word meaning a particularly blunt "No!".  "Stone ass" was most productive during those long sessions at his desk, producing endless streams of paper which fed a burgeoning bureaucracy; Lenin also dubbed him "comrade filing cabinet".        

Stone ass: comrade Molotov sitting at his desk.

The English nomenclature was a borrowing in the 1600s of the sixteenth century French which was from the Latin nōmenclātūra (assignment of names to things, mentioning things by name, a list of names).  Almost immediately, the word was picked up by many branches of science (most notably in botany or zoology) where it gained the definitive senses of “a systematic assignment of names” and later in the same century, “the technical terms within a science”.  The noun nomenklatura existed in Russian since the early nineteenth century but it was particular and well-publicized use by the Soviet communists which made it known in the West.  Understanding its implications, the Kremlinologists in the 1950s adopted nomenklatura when discussing bureaucracies and administrative structures in both the USSR and other communist states.

Memo: Team Douglas Productions, 29 July 2004.

Also of interest to students of nomenclature is the process by which the names of people can become objects applied variously.  As Napoleon, Churchill and Hitler live on as Napoleonic, Churchillian and Hitlerite, on the internet is a body of the Lohanic.  Universally, that’s pronounced lo-han-ick but Lindsay Lohan has mentioned in interviews that being a surname of Irish origin, it’s “correctly” low-en, a form she adopted early in 2022 with her first posting on TikTok where it rhymed with “Coen” (used usually for the surname “Cohen” which is of Hebrew origin and unrelated to Celtic influence).  For a generation brought up on lo-han it must have been a syllable too far because it didn’t catch on and by early 2023, she was back to lo-han with the hard “h”.  Curiously, while etymologists seem to agree that historically lo-en was likely the form most heard in Ireland, the popular genealogy sites all indicate the modern practice is to use lo-han so hopefully that’s the last word.  However, the brief flirtation with phonetic h-lessness did have a precedent:  When Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005) was being filmed in 2004, the production company circulated a memo to the crew informing all that Lohan was pronounced “Lo-en like Coen” with a silent “h”.

Shturmovik

Shturmovik (pronounced sturm-oh-vic)

The Russia word used to mean “Ground Attack Aircraft”.

1939-1941: From the Cyrillic штурмовик (shturmovík) which in English is written sometimes as the simplified (phonetic) Stormovik or Sturmovik.  The word is a shortened form of Bronirovanni Shturmovik (Bsh) (armed stormtrooper) and was the generic term in Russia for aircraft designed for this role; in English it was a synecdoche for the Ilyushin Il-2.

A flight of Ilyushin Il-2s.

The definitive Shturmovik was the Илью́шин Ил-2 (Ilyushin Il-2), a remarkable platform which provided a template for future airframes of its type.  Over 36,000 were produced, an all-time record for combat aircraft and one more impressive still if the 7000-odd of its closely related successor (Ilyushin Il-10) are included, the family total thus close to 43,000.  Although not as ascetically unhappy as the infamously ungainly French bombers of the era, the Il-2 was not a delicate, elegant thing in the style of something like the Supermarine Spitfire or a muscular form like the North American P-51 Mustang and one popular nickname adopted by the Soviet infantry viewing from below was “hunchback” although those better acquainted with its construction and purpose preferred “Flying Tank”.

The idea of “flying tank” is a useful one to explore.  Many theorists in the early 1930s had advocated the use of low-altitude aircraft, flying at relatively slow speeds as the most effective weapon which could deliver ordinance with sufficient accuracy to neutralize tanks and other armored vehicles in battlefield conditions.  That implied the need for an airframe to both carry heavy weaponry and sufficient armor to resist attack from the ground and air, a combination judged impossible to produce because the engines at the time lack the power needed for such heavy machine.  The engines did during the 1930s became more powerful but the conceptual breakthrough was in the design of the airframe.  Previously, designers had done essentially what the nineteenth century naval architects did to make the early “ironclads”: attach additional metal plates over an existing lightweight structure.  Even at sea that limited performance but did (for a while) make the craft close to impregnable; it couldn’t however produce a military aircraft with its need for specific performance over different ranges.  The solution was to make the armor an integral part of the shell, protecting the crew, engine and fuel tank, the weight of this central unit some 700 kg (1540 lb), a number offset by not having also to support the weight of a conventional fuselage, the steel part of that having little supporting structure inside, the armor used as a structural member.  It was an approach which in the post-war years would be implemented in cars as the “safety-cell”, the central passenger compartment onto which the other components would be added.

Ilyushin Il-2 with 37 mm ShFK-37 cannons.

Early in July 1941, some two weeks into Operation Barbarossa (the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union), the Wehrmacht (the German armed forces) first became aware of the Shturmovik which initially they compared to the Luftwaffe’s (the German air force) Junkers Ju 87 (Stuka) dive-bomber which had been such an effective ground-forces support weapon in the conquest of Poland and then Western Europe, its limitations not exposed until it was deployed in the early days of the Battle of Britain (July-October 1940).  The Ju 87 could support a heavier bomb-load than the Il-2 but, equipped with automatic cannons, rockets, machine guns, and bombs, the Russian aircraft was much more lethal.  The Germans however quickly identified the weak points and that most had been rushed into service with pilots provided with neither adequate training or the tactics needed to protect each other in flight, especially during attacking runs.  Moreover, they lacked the optical sights needed accurately to aim their weapons and while the thick armor surrounded the pilot and engine, the structure behind the cockpit was plywood, highly susceptible to damage (tail-gunners suffered a death rate seven times that of the pilots because the gunner’s portion of the airframe was mostly of plywood).

Literally hundreds of Il-2s were lost to anti-aircraft fire or attacks by fighters, usually from the rear during bombing runs but, defying the expectations had infected the highest levels of the German political and military command, the Soviets were able to make good their losses of Shturmoviks and pilots, just as they were able to re-equip armored divisions with tanks, exceeding the capacity of the Germans ability to destroy formations.  As the war proceeded, the Shturmoviks increasingly came in waves and although the attrition remained high (the losses at a rate other allied forces would never have countenanced), the sheer weight of numbers meant the Soviets could overwhelm what were increasingly numerically inferior formations.  Noting the robustness of the Il-2, the Germans nicknamed them Betonflugzeug (concrete plane), acknowledging the ability to absorb punishment; others preferred Der Schwarze Tod (the Black Death).  The ability of the Soviet industrial machine to first maintain and later vastly increase production of things like aircraft and tanks was because of decisions taken by the Germans during the 1930s which afforded priority to create an air-force best suited to supporting brief, high-intensity conflicts (which came to be known as blitzkrieg (lightning war), thus the mass-production of small dive-bombers, medium-range light bombers and fighters rather than long-range strategic, heavy bombers.  As the Soviets moved their plant & equipment eastward (itself a remarkable achievement), the factories became immune from air attack as they were beyond the range of the Luftwaffe.  However, as the German advance stalled, production in Moscow resumed, increasing the available numbers and innovations appeared, one prototype even tested with a flame-thrower mounted in the nose.

Red Army Air Force Yakovlev Yak 9B dropping PTABs.

Another innovation first delivered by the Shturmovik was the Protivo-Tankovaya Avia Bomba (Anti-Tank Air-Bomb; the PTAB), one of the predecessors of modern cluster munitions and similar in concept to the contemporary German two-kilogram Sprengbombe Dickwandig (SD-2) (butterfly-bomb).  In Mid-1943, knowing the Wehrmacht’s Unternehmen Zitadelle (Operation Citadel) against Soviet forces in the Kursk salient was imminent, the Russians stockpiled the PTABs, producing almost a million of the 2 Kg devices, designed specifically so a Shturmovik could carry almost 200, each with a “shaped charge” warhead able to penetrate the armor of even the best protected tanks.  The battle of Kursk (July 1943) was the biggest tank engagement ever fought and for days some 8000 tanks (3000 German, 5000 Soviet) ranged around a vast battlefield of swirling heat, dust and death and although visibility at times restricted the use of air-power, the PTAB equipped Shturmoviks damaged or immobilized a verified 419 enemy vehicles.

RAF Hawker Hurricane IID with a 40mm Vickers anti-tank cannon fitted under each wing.  The pilots noted the "tank buster" moniker but preferred "Flying Can Openers".

The Shturmovik concept was quickly adopted by other air forces and one was rapidly improvised by the UK’s Royal Air Force to counter the threat posed by tanks in the North African campaign.  By 1941 it was apparent the Hawker Hurricane was no longer suitable in its original role as an interceptor and fighter but it was a robust, reliable and easily serviced platform and it proved adaptable to the ground attack role.  By early 1942 deliveries had begun of the Mark IID Hurricane and equipped with a pair of under-wing mounted 40mm (1.6 inch) canon, it proved an effective counter to the Africa Corps’ tanks in the Western Desert as well as fulfilling a similar role in the Burma theatre against the even more vulnerable Japanese armor; in both places they were dubbed, with some accuracy: “tank busters”.  The effect of the 40 mm canons was such that when fired, they perceptibly slowed the plane in flight but pilots learned techniques to compensate.  So convincing were the results that a generation of heavy fighters either designed for or able to be adapted for the purpose, Hawker’s Typhoon & Tempest and Republic’s huge P-47 Thunderbolt all as famed as “tank busters” as for any other part they played in the war, especially noted for their role in the development of air-to-ground rockets.

Lindsay Lohan in body armor.

Despite progress, notably the use of UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles, often casually referred to as “drones”) Shturmoviks have remained an important component of military inventories and some years after the end of the First Gulf War (1990-1991), one of the first conspiracy theories to appear on the then novel WorldWideWeb concerned them.  It was claimed a study the Pentagon conducted (using as targets Iraqi tanks abandoned in the Kuwaiti desert) concluded blocks of concrete dropped from aircraft were just as accurate as bombs as well as being cheaper and easier to produce, while equally effective in disabling a tank.  The conspiracy theory claimed that suggestions the concept be pursued was vetoed by the “military-industrial complex” which made much money out of building anti-tank bombs.