There has been a straight swap of international spies between the Foreign Intelligence agency and the USA’s Central intelligence agency this week. The swap comes as the 10 Russian spies were discovered living in the US as US citizens in the last few weeks. It is believed that the trade is being made on humanitarian terns and in an attempt to improve overall relations between the two countries.

The trade should see communication between America and Russia improve in the future, there has not been a trade as large as this between the two countries since the days of the cold war.

The ten Russian spies have been charged with leading the lives of American citizens under pretence, using secret names and codes, using secret ink to send messages and obtaining US passports under false pretences. It has been discovered that some of the people have been working in the field since the early nineties.

A representative for the Kremlin has spoken to confirm that President Medvedev has signed a decree in order to arrange the release of four western intelligence spies currently enraptured in Russia.

Arms analyst Igor Sutyagin has already been released and deported, a move which will be pleasing for the US government. The United States have, in turn deported ten Russian spies as an exchange for four western spied detained in Russia. It is widely thought that none of the spies are said to have been successful in infiltrating government information or other sensitive information.

All ten of the suspects have admitted that they knew their actions had been against the law, during the court appearance they were all forced to drop their American identities and resume their Russian identities.

Russian Foreign Ministry officials have denied that the spies acted against the interest of the US government but they have now at least admitted that they are Russian.

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A popular explanation for the balalaika’s three sides, as well as its three strings, is that they represent the Holy Trinity. However, this reasoning seems contradictory since musical instruments were banned during early Russian Orthodox rituals. A more believable reason for the shape is suggested by the writer and historian Nikolai Gogol in his unfinished novel Dead Souls. He writes that a balalaika was made by peasants out of a pumpkin, explaining that when you cut a pumpkin in quarters, you are left with the balalaika shape. Yet another theory suggests that once Tsar Peter I ended the ban on musical instruments, boat builders were the only Russians who knew who to work with wood, so they created the balalaika to resemble the front of a boat.

The Russian musician who takes credit for creating the modern musical marvel is Vassily Vassilievich Andreyev. Once he heard a peasant playing, he knew the instrument had great potential. He teamed up with other local craftsmen and invented several different sizes with different pitches, such as primo, sekunda, alto, bass, and contrabass. While he began playing himself, he also recruited many other musicians, and soon Andreyev brought the balalaika back to life. Russian Tsars favored the folk music fervor and it continued to be supported by the Soviet Union as well. It came to be the music of the working people and the government wanted more and more balalaika orchestras to be organized.

Russian folk music ensembles became so popular that the trend traveled to countries everywhere. Balalaikas could be found in Europe, Australia, Japan, and North America. In addition to orchestras, popular music groups can be seen incorporating the balalaika’s unique sounds into their songs. The Russian-American rock band the Red Elvises slaps the contrabass balalaika, as well as the Australian band Vulgargrad and the all-girl Norwegian pop group Katzenjammer.

Have you heard a balalaika chatter? Its name comes from the Old Slavonic language word balakat, which mean “to chat”. The range of this instrument is so great that it can be played on happy tunes as well as sad songs. But everyone that listens gets a feeling of Old Russian charm and history. This is one Russian folk instrument that will play on for people perpetually.

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Most Russians are very well read and are familiar not only with Russian literature but with world classic as well. Russian culture enforces love to art and literature, so even if someone is not a fan of reading, he or she is familiar with the classical world of literature.

Your knowledge does not have to be in only one kind of Russian author or authors, yet in order to impress your wife (even though it certainly would not hurt), but here are some names you do have to remember.

Alexander Pushkin. Pushkin is thought not only to be the best Russian poet, but the creator of the modern Russian language as well. In Soviet/post-Soviet schools Russian kids had to (and I believe they still do) memorize dozens of poems each year, many of these poems were written by Pushkin.

I found memorization to be pointless, but Pushkin’s poems were truly a pleasure to read, memorize and recite. I still remember most of the poems I learned 15 years ago.

The best of Pushkin’s writings was “Eugene Onegin” I strongly recommend you read it not only to impress your Russian wife, but to get pleasure from reading it as well. You can buy one on Amazon for under $10. I like James Falen’s translation, but the other ones I looked at looked decent as well.

Lev Tolstoy. Tolstoy and his writings are some of the most well know in the United States of America : War and Peace. Many Americans I met describe reading War and Peace as a torture, because it was extremely long and extremely boring. If you haven’t read it since you were 16, I recommend a refresh of your memory by re-reading it once again. It is not considered a classic for nothing.

In the USA it is hard not to know works like “Anna Karenina” from Lev Tolstoy. It is shorter than War and Peace and you may enjoy it more.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Another famous author who wrote many Russian classics was Dostoyevsky. He is most famous for his two novels: Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. If you read these already, make sure to bring it up in a conversation with your Russian woman. It will score you some extra points.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn is a historian, Novel Prize winner and famous novelist. His books The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich made the world aware of the Gulag – the major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union, which killed 25 (and according to some sources, 40) million people. You must read Solzhenitsyn not only because he is a literary genius, but because no one was able to describe the Russian history of Stalin’s times as well as Solzhenitsyn did. If you read his works, you will be able to understand Russian history, the Russian culture, and as a result, your Russian wife, better.

Other authors that you must read and know a bit about are Anton Chetov, the greatest Russian short-story writer; Mikhail Lermontov, a Russian romantic poet; Anna Akhmatova, a famous Soviet female poet; Nikolai Gogol, a Ukrainian born novelist and dramatist and a few other great Russian/Soviet poets: Sergei Yesenin, Marina Tsvetaeva, Andrey Voznesensky and Alexander Block.

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The hospitable offering of bread and salt to guests is a centuries old Ukrainian tradition. The hosts present an embroidered ceremonial cloth called a rushnyk, upon which a circular bread and mold of salt sit. The bread symbolizes hospitality and the salt represents friendship. After they speak the greeting, “With this bread and salt we greet you, welcome”, the guest dips a small piece of bread into the salt. Appreciation is shown with a small bow of the head and the treat can then be consumed.

An important aspect of Ukrainian holidays includes the baking and decorating of special occasion breads. A sweet, circular bread is baked for Easter, known as paska. Dough is used for the decorations of crosses, roses, and pine cones. Much larger, ring-shaped braided loaves are called kolach and are baked for Christmas celebrations. Three loaves are stacked upon each other which represent the Holy Trinity. A candle is placed inside of the rings and is lit before dinner and continues burning all night.

The korovai is the traditional Ukrainian wedding bread. Large, circular, and sweet, this bread is decorated with symbolic figures such as cones for fertility and doves for love and faithfulness. It can also be topped with green periwinkle leaves. Ukrainian folklore tells the tale of the wedding bread baking ritual. The korovai had to be made by seven young Ukrainian ladies chosen from seven happily married couples. They were required to draw water from seven different wells and to use flour from wheat that grew from seven different fields.

Special Ukrainian breads are often homemade, although they can also be purchased in bakeries. Some Ukrainian families have special recipes that have been passed down for many years. No significant family event can take place without bread. Ukrainians consider it bad luck to leave the slightest bit of bread on one’s plate as it dooms a person to haunting nightmares. There is even a National Bread Museum in the country’s capital city of Kiev. Never underestimate the power of bread in Ukrainian culture.

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How do you say “fun” in Russian? – my husband once asked. I thought I had a brain freeze, because I was not able to translate it even though I knew exactly what “fun” meant. After thinking about it for awhile I realized that there is simply no such word in Russian. The closest phrase to “having fun” which I could translate was “having a good time”.

Russians know how to have a good time and enjoy life, but the idea of “fun” is completely different.

I also remember once I tried making a joke and my husband smiled at me and said “you are so silly”. I was very offended (even though I didn’t tell him right away). There is no such concept in Russian language as silly. Well, there is but it means stupid and trite. Definitely not something you want to hear from your loving husband. Later I understood that “silly” means some sort of “funny”, but I still get uncomfortable when someone calls me or my kids silly. Even though I’ve lived here for 7 years, I still don’t understand why “silly” has a positive meaning, because every dictionary I have translates it as “glupyi”, which means “stupid”.

Here are few more words that Russians will not understand, “privacy”, “challenge”, “personal check” and “siblings”.

Russians don’t understand the concept of privacy the way Americans do, so they don’t even have a word for it. It is normal for a wife to read her husband’s email, or to open his wallet; it is normal in many families to enter each others rooms without knocking or even listen to each others conversations over the phone (I come from such a family).

And to make matters a little more confusing for Westerns, the word “private life” in Russian means your love life.

I am not certain why the words “challenge” and “siblings” do not exist in our Russian language., but “personal check” (even though it can be translated but will not have the same meaning) is hard to translate because for the most part Russians use cash to pay for all their purchases, rarely credit cards, but almost never personal checks.

Although, if you travel to Russia and want to cash personal checks, it can be done. You need to be aware though that it can take you up to several weeks to do it, so unless you are staying in Russia for more than a few months, it is not worth it. International travel checks are a better option. You can also use ATM machines in Russia, but make sure to find out whether or not there are any in the city you are traveling. If you are going to a bigger city, it wouldn’t be a problem, but smaller cities and villages may not have any ATM machines or any banks which can help you cash your check.

Another word which is not translatable is “shopping”. Until I came to the United States I never thought that shopping could be a hobby. Here, every second female I meet says she loves “shopping”. The closest phrase to the word “shopping” in Russian language is a phrase “making purchases” or “going to make purchases” which is used when someone is going shopping.

No doubt there are plenty of words in Russian which don’t exist in English (many of which don’t exist simply because of the American culture being different), but I will get back to those in my future articles.

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A number of American-Russian and International relationships are or were finding the same problems. We were not the exception. The first year of marriage was the hardest, especially for me, because I was missing my family and friends terribly and was very irritable. There were times when everything in the U.S. seemed wrong to me: clothes, food, roads, school system, relationships, and wit.

Residing in Russia, I often enjoyed making others laugh and I always thought I had a sense of humor. Apparently my new husband didn’t think so, because every time I would say something “funny” (funny in my opinion) he would either not understand that it was a joke or force a fake laugh if he knew I was joking. Then we would go to visit his friends and he would spend of the time laughing and making jokes which everyone but me understood.

It was really driving me insane. I will never forget these long visits with his friends. It was difficult for me to share my feelings with my husband, because I really did not want him to think I was not appreciative enough or that I didn’t like his friends. There were times when I secretly hated his friends, because they could make my partner laugh and I couldn’t and because every time we met with them I felt like I didn’t belong to my partner’s world at all. I kept coming up with justifications so I didn’t have to travel when it was time to see them again.

It is understandable to be upset when the person you love the most doesn’t understand the films which are very dear to your heart, the jokes which make you laugh or the books which bring tears to your eyes. In a marriage we want a partner who has not only similar values, but similar likes and dislikes and when you marry someone who has completely different roots, for some reason it does not always work in this way. The good news is – this stage is going to pass and sooner or later you and your Russian spouse will get in tune with each other.

My love of my life started to understand me much better after he read some history books on Russia and Russian history as well as some books on Russian-American relationships (such as Wedded Strangers by Lynn Visson). I started understanding him better simply by living in the U.S., watching people, talking to them and asking lots of questions.

The longer you live together, the more memories you are going to have and trust me, you will be able to laugh at the same jokes eventually. Patience, grace and time are going to do the trick and no matter how hopeless it may seem at times, you will be able to develop a very strong bond with your spouse.

You may come to the conclusion that you will never understand a Russian comedy show and you may never be able to become fond of Russian popular singers, but you can understand your wife better by asking her questions and learning more about her culture.

I will admit that I do not understand the humor of some of my husband’s friends and I still sit with a straight face during some of the American comedies. But you know what? It doesn’t bother me or my husband anymore. We know each other well enough to not crack jokes which we know the other one will not understand and we don’t roll our eyes at each other if we can’t relate to some historical event. As far as you have some things which you enjoy together, it is OK to enjoy different movies, listen to different music and laugh at different jokes.

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In 1911, a couple from Germany, the Herkendells, who had become Bible Students, spent their honeymoon preaching throughout Russia to German speaking people, and they were received in a positive way. A Polish Bible Student by the name of Dojczman was sent out to Russia shortly before the First World War and spent some months preaching there.

In 1917, the reign of the Russian czars ended after 370 years, and the USSR emerged. Interestingly, Vladimir Lenin, the first leader of the new republic stated concerning freedom of worship in Russia, “Everybody must be perfectly free, not only to profess whatever religion he pleases, but also to spread or change his religion. No official should have the right even to ask anyone about his religion: that is a matter for each person’s conscience and no one has any right to interfere.”

The new republic of the USSR, was, however, atheistic, and spoke of religion as “the opium of the people.” In 1924, when Lenin died, the USSR stepped up its attack against religion. In 1926, the League of the Militant Godless was formed in the USSR, its goals being clearly indicated in their name, and it produced large amounts of atheistic literature. From the 1920s until 1940, the numbers of Jehovah’s Witnesses continued to grow. At that time, the Russian Orthodox Church formed an alliance with then leader Stalin and it opened the way for more freedom for the Orthodox Church. Jehovah’s Witnesses in the years of 1940-1945, from Ukraine, Moldova, and the Baltic republics were exiled to labor camps during WWII in the USSR, because they would not participate in the war, while German Jehovah’s Witnesses, or Bible Students, as they were then known, on the other side of the battle lines were in concentration camps, along with the Jews. Thousands of Jehovah’s Witnesses would spend years exiled in Siberia or in labor camps, where many died from overwork or starvation, until the 1980s when a new openness began to form.

One Jehovah’s Witnesses woman commented that their husbands “were spending most of their lives in prisons and camps. We women had to endure much: Every one of us was experiencing sleepless nights, surveillance and psychological pressure from the Soviet State Security Committee (KGB), loss of employment, and other trials. The authorities tried various means to make us deviate from the way of the truth. We had no doubt that Satan was using the situation to try to stop the Kingdom-preaching work. But Jehovah did not abandon his people.”

Jehovah’s Witnesses became a legal entity in Russia in 1992. 150,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses are today active in Russia. What the future will hold for the present and future Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia is yet to be seen with recent efforts to ban Jehovah’s Witnesses again in Russia. However, Jehovah’s Witnesses have shown remarkable resilience, and whether or not their work is legal in Russia, they will no doubt continue in, what they believe to be is, their God-assigned work, or preaching the message that Jesus started some 2,000 years ago.

More information on the beliefs of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Check out the insights on the current state of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia – The related story of the history of Jehovah’s Witnesses struggle for freedom in Nazi Germany can be read at this US Holocaust Museum Jehovah’s Witnesses.