the dice were loaded from the start

[musesfool]

I know there are some Russian speakers reading this - can anyone confirm for me that doveryai, no proveryai actually means "trust but verify" and is actually a Russian proverb and not something Ronald Reagan('s speechwriters) made up? I mean, that's what wikipedia tells me, but I trust you more than it.

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This entry at DW: http://musesfool.

Comments

[dagnylilytable]

I'm not a native speaker, but I can vouch for the translation being correct. I did some Russian googling, and the phrase definitely was used in a 1946 film. And it wasn't Reagan's favorite Russian movie. (Yes, he had one!)

[musesfool]

Heh. Thanks.

[nara_cat]

According to my husband (left St. Petersburg shortly after the Berlin Wall came down, but still does a decent amount of his reading in Russian), the translation is accurate, and it is something that people say, but it's not exactly a proverb. (His sample proverb involved a woman falling out of a sleigh which made the horse's job easier, just for the record. The context only helped a little.) It seems to be more of a common sense saying, like "Look both ways before crossing the street." He is under the impression that it's about 50-60 years old and might have come from the KGB; however, he's a big military history buff, and that might just be an artifact of his sources.

[musesfool]

Thanks.