Why I Started Learning Russian in 2024
Embracing the People of Yesterday.
It’s time I let you in on a little secret: last summer I started learning Russian. You are probably wondering why, so let me explain.
It all began when I was recommended a YouTube-video by a young French woman living in Moscow.
Her name was Gabrielle Duvoisin and at the time she had been living in Moscow for a year and a half. In the video, she reviews Moscow compared to other big European cities she has lived in, talking about the people, cleanliness, food, etc.
Not long after, I was reintroduced to German through political commentary videos, also on YouTube, and I became interested in brushing up on the language.
I had German for three years in High School and have maintained it since, making me a trilingual person who speaks Norwegian, English and German rather well.
Last time I was consistently improving my German, I imagined that if I was going to learn a fourth language, I would pick one using a different “alphabet”, or more accurately script. Russian was my first choice already back then, but I never got around to it.
After a couple of weeks of German, those thoughts returned and I decided to give it a try.
Now, an important part of learning a language is listening to it every day, so naturally I had to start listening to Russian daily.
I had listened to Russian music on YouTube before, and really enjoyed some of the songs, but I was amazed by the variety of Russian content available once I began looking.
Before long, I was watching a student’s vlog about their first day at university in Vladivostok or a Belarusian booktuber talking about their 24 hour reading marathon.
In addition to content by native Russian-speakers, I also discovered videos by Western travel/expat vloggers talking positively about their experiences in Russia, showcasing interesting places and interactions with locals, as well as giving advice to others planning to visit Russia.
While most of the content is in English, there are also creators speaking French, German, Spanish, etc. appealing to their unique audiences.
A third category, is content made by those I affectionately call “fellow Russian students”, i.e. other non-native speakers who either have learned or are still in the process of learning Russian.
One such person is Nastya, a polish woman who speaks Russian fluently. On her channel, she discusses Polish culture and Poland’s relationship to neighboring countries.
After my first evening devouring Russian content, I lay awake the whole night, bawling my eyes out, unable to sleep. The next morning I rose dazed and confused, needing a day off to walk around town and just think.
I initially studied Russian alongside German, but I soon found learning two languages at the same time meant making slower progress, so I dropped German in favor of Russian.
Before taking up Russian, Russia was entirely outside my frame of reference, “in Russia” was as good as “on Mars”. Learning Russian was like discovering a brand new world to explore.
However, what impressed me wasn’t how foreign, but rather how ordinary the people and places seemed.
Jan Böhmermann is a German journalist and TV host, in August 2024 he published an article in “Die Zeit” titled “Hier spricht Jan Böhmermann” (“Here speaks Jan Böhmermann”).
In the article, Böhmermann invents the term “Menschen von Gestern” (“People of Yesterday”), by which he means those who might more commonly be known as “conspiracy theorists” or “populists”.
Böhmermann describes them as simple-minded and callous people, helplessly misled by online “fake news”. He despises them for rejecting the enlightened ideas “fact-checked” by the Progressive intelligentsia.
I, on the other hand, wholeheartedly love the People of Yesterday and have been defending them for a long time. They are devoted and wholesome, and have often been unjustly silenced by pseudointellectual busybodies thinking they know best.
While exploring Russia, I concluded that Russians are the ultimate Yesterday People. The same can be said about the “Soviet-nostalgic” peoples across the former Eastern bloc.
They have been much abused by corrupt Western NGOs imposing “Liberal” values, but with what has been happening in Georgia for the past year, I think their time is up.
In any case, as their struggle is for Traditionalism and against Globalism, they have my support!
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