Anyone on here ever lived in Russia?

Question

What are "Gopniki's"? I have seen pictures of them and they look a little like British chavs. Can somebody explain a little about them. Thank you

Answer 1

I live in Russia now. So, gopnik synonyms are chav, yobbo, charv, charver. They live, as a rule, in suburbs, come from so called difficult families. They hate any order, have negligent conduct, are emphatically carelessly dressed. May be aggressive towards well dressed young people. Some of them may migrate to skinheads.

Answer 2

The Russian term gopnik is close to  chav (also charv/charver - often stereotypically associated with a low socio-economic class, a striking dress sense and criminal activity) - an asocial person (thief, robber, violent  troublemaker)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ru...

Pics of a typical gopnik

http://gorod.tomsk.ru/i/u/15417/gop.jpg

http://berdtrash.creativecult.org/wp-con...

http://gopniki.my1.ru/_ph/1/2/463871466....

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http://russianwomenshome.com/simplemachi...

Answer 3

Here is the translation of the Russian article in Wikipedia about gopnik

http://kortlink.dk/5en6

Gopnik (originally from XIX century meaning in the criminal slang - "shag-rag", later "robber") - a representative of marginal youth leading asocial style of life.

The origin of the name

Most likely it took it's origin from the expression "gop-stop", that in it's place originated from the word "gop" - it's an expression of a jump or a hit, mentioned in the proverb "don't say gop untill you jump"

In 1920s in Petrograd (now Saint Peterburg) in the "Oktyabrskaya" and "Evropeyskaya" hotels was a City Hostel of Proletariat (in Russian abbreviation GOP), homeless people from railway stations who robbed in the streets and did other little robberies were brought there. They were called "gopniks" (after that shelter's name).

According to another version, before revolution of 1917 people who were called "gopniks" were not street hooligans, but beggars and vagabonds. That time in Russia existed "Public care acts" - committees that took care or beggars, disabled, invalids and orphans. These people were contained in special care houses at the state expence. According to this version "gopnik" was named after the name of such houses - a City Association of Care (in Russian abbreviation GOP).

Nowadays low-educated young people from the working families who inclined to commiting crimes are called gopniki.

There are attempts to extract gopniki like representatives of a special sub-culture or informal movement. It's worth mentioning that those who are being called "gopniki" don't call themselves like that.

Style of dress

Stereotyped appearance of a gopnik includes:

sweats and jacket from synthetic material, rarely - classical black pants often bigger size.

The most advanced gopniki wear sweat suit of "Adidas" trade mark.

A short jacket from leather, leather-like material or a cloth, often with band-collar.

A cap with a short peak, besides caps special hats of "adidas", "puma", "nike" are very popular.

A picture of such hat you can look here, the guy in blue

http://www.vagurov.ru/files/gopnik1.jpg

shoes or running shoes

man's handbag or a leather little bag at the belt (empty)

Such light dress gopniki wear even in a cold weather.

Where they are usually situated and habbits

Parks, public gardens, old yards are the favorite places of district's gopniki's gathering.

Often they sit on their haunches. This habbit came either from the prisons where in the cells there was almost no place to sit - or to preserve health and not to sit on cold surfaces.

Gopniki can be usually met with sunflower seeds and a beer.

Gopniki often tuck their sweater in their sweats.

I was born in Russia and lived there till 2006. But i didn't know much about gopniks, only saw them in some places. I hope the article could help you to know more about them. It helped me too, so i got to know the versions of the origin of their name.

Answer 4

Gonpik's tragic died! :)

read this - http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?...

"If you follow the Russian blog world, you'd think that gopniki are so ubiquitous in Russia that they're multiplying and threatening to spill over the borders, to take over China. Everywhere sites ridicule, mock, or glorify-by-way-of-ridicule the Russian gopnik.

We should have known, from experience in the West, what it means whenever an "authentic" sub-class gets discovered by cooler people. It means that they're dead, history, gone. And that is what this article is about: not only to introduce the Gopnik to the world, but also to announce the Gonpik's tragic death. Because whenever something this hardcore gets cool, it's always a bad sign."