ATDTDA 755

[Ya Sam]

ATDTDA 755

Klopski

Klop is the Russian for a bedbug.

Mikhail Klopsky was a 15th century Russian “yurodivy” or God’s Fool. He was born in a noble family, but he concealed his high status and entered the Klopsky Holy Trinity Monastery where he spent 44 years till his death in 1456. 
http://rucivil-enc.info/n14-2012.html

Special machines 
 
Steampunk gizmos. According to Pynchon wiki they could be proto-video games. Any other guesses?

Naphtha lamps 

Reminded me of “naphtha winters” in GR.

Zipyagin
 
I couldn’t find this Russian surname anywhere. Not one instance. Sounds very Russian to me though. 

Grigori Nikolaevitch 

Cf. Grigory Nikolaevich  Potanin

An  outstanding traveller - researcher of Siberia, Mongolia and China, a geographer, ethnographer, publicist. In the period from 1863  till 1899  he made a number of expeditions to the Central Asia. Together with  his wife A.V. Potanina they collected  valuable folklore material, described  home and material culture of nomadic and settled peoples of Asia. He was in Kyakhta several times and promoted  the foundation of public library and a museum with  the branch of Russian Geographical Society. In honour of this traveller one of the streets of the town is named after Grigory Nikolaevich Potanin.. 
http://www.baikaltravel.ru:8083/raioni/kkk/ggg

Yob tvoyu mat’   the literary translation is “fucked your mother”, as the verb is in the past tense. A very popular expletive.

To this day, mat has retained certain elements of shamanism. Scholars believe that the most basic Russian oath, yob tvoyu mat’, is a fragment of an old Slavic formula, pyos yob tvoyu mat’ ("a dog fucked your mother"), which indicated the defilement of the mother by an unclean animal - an incarnation of the devil. (The individual addressed was thus assumed to have been sired by a dog-what Americans might call a "son of a bitch.") The dog has long since disappeared from the phrase and it has lost its literal meaning, but it retains an archaic aura of extreme transgression.
http://www.russki-mat.net/e/mat_VEvrofeyev.htm

zastolye  feast, taking part in a festive meal

imam 
1 : the prayer leader of a mosque 2 : a Muslim leader of the line of Ali held by Shiites to be the divinely appointed, sinless, infallible successors of Muhammad 3 : any of various rulers that claim descent from Muhammad and exercise spiritual and temporal leadership over a Muslim region 

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/imam

“begin to spin?” like a dervish or like an electron.

http://www.dankphotos.com/whirling/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_(physics)

“that cavalry rogue Putyanin who said he’d had her in St. Petersburgh”

Making fun of Putin, I presume.

Vladimir Putin looks like Prince Mikhail Tverskoy. They both are not tall, with little hair and similar noses. Is Putin an offspring of the Tver prince? This hypothesis was getting more and more real. The name Putin is not mentioned amid the Russian names. This means that the name is  of the artificial origin. 
This name has appeared recently, somewhere in the middle of the 19th century. All Putins originally came from the clan of Putins from the Tver region. Illegitimate offsprings of noble families were often given cut names. For example,  Russian writer Pnin was an illegitimate son  of Field Marshal Repnin. There were lots of other occasions like that – Betskoy instead of Trubetskoy, Gribov instead of Griboyedov. The new names of unofficial clan branches were formed by means of deduction: a syllable was simply taken out of it. 
The family book of the Tver region  mentions the name of Putyanin – a clan of Russian princes. This clan gave a lot of outstanding military leaders to Russia,  as well as artists, politicians and priests. This is one of the oldest clans in the Russian history. If President Putin  is a descendant  of the Putyatins clan, this means that Vladimir Putin  has a relation to  all royal families of Europe. 
http://english.pravda.ru/main/18/90/362/2526_Putin.html

Poshol ty na khuy  literary means “go onto the prick”. See the article about Russian mat above. 
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