<HTML>In a message dated 11/13/02 11:55:03 PM Pacific Standard Time, chrisd@russiajournal.com writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">And years ago Spy magazine had a piece claiming that Gorby spoke vulgar, rube-ish Russian. Is that true? Doug</BLOCKQUOTE> Russia like the US has had a number of leaders with strong Southern or hillbilly accents (Think Carter, Clinton, Shrub ...). I am blanking on Russian leaders' hometowns, but Eltsin, Gorby, Brezhnev all have / had different regional speech patterns that would make my first-year Russian teachers scream "Don't talk like them...!" Of course one of the instructors was from Moscow and the other from St Petersburg so they had a certain good natured quibble about which of their accents was closer to standard. Putin on the other hand is from St Petersburg. As for vulgarity, Putin is usually so reserved and bureaucratic, the Chechen thing was kind of striking. Or MAYBE it was all an act, like Bush II saying "nucular" all the time when he means "nuclear..." DoreneC</HTML>