Notes from Slavic Quick Cataloging, Pt. 20

A record today which came up including a link, in the field that would indicate an online copy of the text, but which actually pointed to a search on ebay. The book is a collection of award winning high school history essays about the terror of the 1930s, and the hardships suffered by previous generations. The ebay link is a search for swakara coat. That’s some sort of fur coat. WTF? This is a field which will not be copied into our library system.

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Нефтянка [Neftianka], by Валерий Ларин [Valerii Larin]. On the cover: Реальность такова: “нефть” и “кровь” – это синонимы [Real’nost’ takova: “neft'” i “krov'” – eto sinonimy/This is reality: “oil” and “blood” are synonyms]. I didn’t recognize that the title is actually a word — it looks like a made up word, to me at least, intimating a oil woman. Neft’ means oil, or petroleum, and the ending -ianin [-янин] or -ianka [-янка] is often used for nationality nouns. I.E. россиянка [rossiianka] means a woman of Russian nationality. So a нефтянка would be a woman with a …personal and political connection to oil.

As it turns out, though, нефтянка is also a word for oil machinery, like oil rigs. In any case, I think it is a novel about the corrupt world of oil corporations…