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Zdrast-vwee-tyeh (Hello)
by Jean d'Isle
'

ith a cheery "aye aye", I saluted smartly, loaded wife and one-year-old son into the car and headed east for the Navy Language School in Anacostia, Maryland to spend most of 1963 studying the Russian language. I had abandoned my dreams of studying French and all the glorious assignments that surely would have followed. What I was going to do with this Russian language that didn't even have a recognizable alphabet, I didn't know. I was aware, however, that there were documented cases of people dislocating their jaws trying to pronounce some Russian words.

We were settled into an apartment in Southeast Washington, D.C. (not far from John Hinkley's current accommodations at St. Elizabeth's Mental Hospital), by the time classes started in early January. The D.C. winter was not especially harsh that year, unless you happened to be a transplanted Californian whose experience with snow had been limited to the kind in a paper cup, with syrup on top.

The Navy's language school was located in a WWII vintage building, directly across the Anacostia River from the Naval Gun Factory, where all the big guns that went aboard the battleships and cruisers of the U.S. fleet were manufactured. Long since bulldozed for some loftier government purpose, the complex of buildings at the foot of the South Capitol Street Bridge housed a variety of Navy odds and ends including the Navy Band and the language classrooms for the numerous foreign military personnel preparing to move on to navy technical schools once they attained a basic grasp of English. Besides Russian language instruction, several other foreign languages were being taught in the school, including French (sniff), German, Spanish, Chinese and Vietnamese (this was 1963, and the U.S. was just starting to develop an interest in communicating in the language of this small Southeast Asian ally).

The Russian Department occupied one wing of the dilapidated building. Eight classrooms opened onto a common central area which barely allowed students to move from room to room or to exit the wing without running into each other. Each austere classroom belonged to a different instructor and classes rotated from one room to the next, and one instructor to the next, on a daily basis. This allowed the students to experience a variety of accents, as well as distributing the inevitable strengths and weaknesses of the instructors over the duration of the course.

The Russian Department was staffed by a fascinating group of individuals, almost all of whom had fled the revolution of 1917 that brought the Communists to power in Russia. One exception, who was generally shunned by his teaching compatriots, came out of the Soviet Union after WWII and was rumored to have been a Nazi collaborator. He was best remembered by students as the one who sucked on grapefruit during the morning sessions and who taught us all the dirty Russian words. Each of these emigres had endured incredible hardship before arriving in America and each was probably worthy of a book. Over the many months of close association with these individuals, their stories came out in reminiscences and vignettes they used to teach us the language.

One particularly fascinating instructor named Petrovhad escaped Russia through Harbin, China. He spent several years there as a bodyguard for a Chinese warlord and eventually made his way to the U.S. When he wasn't teaching Russian, he was doing analyses of the Soviet economy for the CIA. There was an ex-Colonel of cavalry named Kovalevsky who regaled us with tales of heroic charges and swinging sabers. Another, named Galitzen, a chain smoker of Gaulois cigarettes, claimed royal lineage and may very well have been from the same family as the Prince Galitzen of Katherine the Great's stable of lovers. There was old Professor Zubov, who must have told us his favorite joke, in Russian, at least once a week ("What's big and black and hides under the bed?" He'd then start laughing and coughing and say, "Gromadny chemodan!"-- a big suitcase). Probably lost something in the translation.

Next Week
Ne sui hui v chai

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Jean d'Isle is a retired naval officer living in Hawaii.During his military career he served in a number of overseas assignments, including Germany, England, Spain, Viet Nam and Puerto Rico. Following his retirement, he was an adjunct faculty member of Hawaii Pacific University and is currently under contract with the U.S. Navy at the submarine base in Pearl Harbor.

Jean's column, View From d'Isle, is a regular feature of VegSource On-Line Magazine.