Russian Ladies and Gentlemen Struggle To Develop New Etiquette
Russians are having difficulty figuring out how to properly address one another in post-Soviet times .
In the days before the revolution Russian men were called gospodin, sudar or barin(sir) and Russian women were addressed as gospozha, sudarynya or barynya (madam). The communists made things short and simple by calling everyone regardless of gender tovorishch (comrade) or grazhdanin (citizen), for women, grazhdanka. According to the fashion historian Alexander Vasilyev, who also lectures on etiquette, the polite forms of address came about because the Bolsheviks who came to power after the 1917 revolution were uneducated with peasant roots.
Linguists and psychologists both agree that the way Russian women and men address one another is raw and lacking in polish. They say that this can also affect the way people think about one another – in some ways it demonstrates no respect for the person as an individual. The use of terms like “man” and “woman” takes out social differences between people. Some linguists say that Russian is one of the only modern languages that does not have a polite form of address.
Others point to the use of terms like mother, father, son and daughter when talking to strangers as examples of emotional depth in the Russian language. Older Russians use tender terms such as synok (sonny) and dochka (little girl, lamb or sweetie pie) which is much more emotionally demonstrative than say, British culture.
The country has yet to settle on a new form of addressing one another in the post-Soviet era, with the older generation favoring the old style of address, like comrade while the younger generation is moving towards ladies and gentlemen.
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