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At the time Gospodin Kalashnikov designed the weapon which brought his name to the world's attention, his nation had just suffered an invasion of Germans, which
by aaronem 13y ago
At the time Gospodin Kalashnikov designed the weapon which brought his name to the world's attention, his nation had just suffered an invasion of Germans, which was repelled only at the cost of roughly twenty million of his countrymen's lives -- an invasion, moreover, against which Gospodin Kalashnikov himself fought, and was wounded, as part of a T-34 regiment -- and was by no means certain it would not soon suffer an invasion of far more numerous Chinese. In light of that, perhaps it's not so hard to understand how he could have conceived of his weapon as one of defense.
(It is, though, rather difficult to understand how you, or indeed anyone, could with a straight face describe such a man as "naïve and unworldly". Ignorance is the kindest explanation I can devise.)
- eps 13y agoGospodin is "master" as in "master and servant". It's been out of active use as a salutation for well over a century. Just FYI.
- aaronem 13y agoI've seen it used, albeit not often, in a sense precisely parallel to that of the German Herr or the Spanish Señor, and it is that sense in which I use it. I have never found myself troubled by being regarded as old-fashioned, but if you know a term which would better serve my purpose, I'd be obliged to you for making me aware of it.
- eps 13y agoSalutations are just not that common in modern Russian. It used to be Gospodin or Sudar (сударь) before the Revolution, but these were forcibly replaced by Tovarish (comrade, or rather - friend). Then after collapse of Soviet Union tovarish died out and neither of old salutations came back. In day to day life if you need to attract someone's attention, you'd use an equivalent of "excuse me", "hey" or "hello". In rare cases people would use "man" (мужчина) or "woman" (женщина), but that's very impersonal and frequently antogonistic, so most people avoid it. In press and written language, it's just the last name, preceded by the position when appropriate. Sometimes they will use gospodin, but that would typically be reserved for pompous occasions and when referring to people at important positions, e.g. a president of a bank. And yet it still looks odd and catches the eye. So in the context of your post it's just Kalashnikov. No gospodin.