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The Russian Attitude to Fish

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By Alan Davidson

Published 1980

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Russians love their fish as much as their women. One of the great terms of endearment for a woman in the nineteenth century was to call her a ‘rӯbka’ or little fish. Aksakov explains this in his Notes on Angling, first published in 1847: ‘Almost all young fish, particularly some of the smaller species, are so beautiful or, better, so sweet in appearance, playful and clean, that people in the south of Russia use the term “little fish” as an expression of endearment and tenderness in praise of a woman’s beauty and charm.’ He then quotes a story by Gogol, in which a young Cossack entices his sweetheart out of her hut with the tender words: ‘My heart, my little fish, my necklace . . .’

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