In light of the fact that I have an essay due today in my Russian Idioms class, and it is currently the night before and it's not finished, here is a story I have shamelessly lifted from Wikipedia about a Russian idiom, and the story behind it.
The flea is given to the czar, to whom Lefty explains that
he needs to look closer and closer at the flea to see what they have achieved.
He winds it up and finds that it doesn't move. He discovers that, without any
microscopes ("We are poor people"), Lefty and his accomplices managed
to put appropriately sized horseshoes (with the craftsmen's engraved signatures)
on the flea (Lefty made the nails, which cannot be seen since they are so
small), which amazes the Tsar and the English (even though the flea now cannot
dance as it used to). Lefty then gets an invitation and travels to England to
study the English way of life and technical accomplishments. The English hosts
try to talk him into staying in England, but he feels homesick and returns to
Russia at the earliest opportunity. On the way back, he engages in a drinking
duel with an English sailor, arriving in Saint Petersburg. The sailor is
treated well, but the authorities finding no identification on Lefty and
believing him to be a common drunkard, send him off to die in a hospital for
unknowns.
The Tale of Cross-Eyed Lefty and the Steel Flea
Tsar Alexander I of Russia, while visiting England with his
servant the Cossack Platov, is shown a variety of modern inventions. Platov
keeps insisting that things in Russia are much better until they are shown a small mechanical flea. After his ascension
the next tsar, Nicolas I, orders Platov (after he tries to hide the flea) to
find someone to outperform the English who had created the clockwork steel flea, which is as small as a crumb, and the key to wind it up can only be seen through a
microscope. Platov travels to Tula- a center for the armaments industry- to find someone to better the English invention.
Three gunsmiths agree to do the work and barricade themselves in a workshop.
Villagers try to get them to come out in various ways (for example by yelling
"fire"), but no one can get them to come out. When Platov arrives to
check on their progress, he has some Cossacks try to open the workshop. They
succeed in getting the roof to come off, but the crowd is disgusted when the
trapped smell of body odor and metal work comes out of the workshop. The
gunsmiths hand Platov the same flea he gave them and he curses them, believing
that they have done absolutely nothing. He ends up dragging Lefty with him in
order to have someone to answer for the failure.
The sailor, after sobering up, decides to find his new friend,
and with the aid of Platov they locate him. While dying (his head is smashed
from being thrown onto the pavement), he tells them to tell the Emperor to stop
having his soldiers clean their muskets with crushed brick (after he sees a
dirty gun in England and realizes it fires so well because they keep it oily).
The message never arrives, however, because the man who had to inform the
Emperor never does. Leskov comments that the Crimean War might have turned out
differently if the message had been delivered. The story ends with Leskov
commenting on the replacement of good, hard-earned labor and creativity with
machines.
This story is deeply embedded into Russian consciousness as
an archetype of relationships between Russia and the West. The language of the
story is unique; many of its folk-flavored neologisms and colloquialisms (very
funny and natural, though mostly invented by Leskov) have become common sayings
and proverbs. Ironically, both Slavophiles and Westernizers used the story in
support of their views; indeed the story of Levsha may signify Russian
ingenuity and craftsmanship that amaze the world, or it may just as well be
used as a symbol of the oppressive Russian society that mistreats its most
talented people.
Man, they put more parenthetical explanations in than I do! But there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, the explanation behind the Russian idiom, "Russian masters can shoe a flea." It's up to you how you wish to take it. Cheers!
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