Brown Nicholas J. The New Penguin Russian Course: A Complete Course for Beginners

Penguin (Non-Classics), 1996. — 514с.
ISBN: 0-14-012041-6Notes on Russian Prices. Since the fall of Communism, Russia has been afflicted by serious inflation. Rouble prices have risen a thousandfold in the last few years and continue to rise at an alarming rate. In the sections of this book which deal with money and shopping (Lessons 9 and 10), we have decided to leave the stable pre-inflation prices. These provide better practice for beginners, since they do not involve large numbers in the hundreds and thousands; they are also very much part of Russian folk memory (for example, the price of the standard loaf of bread did not change for thirty years). Some of the dialogues give prices in US dollars, which Russians have used since Communist times as a parallel ‘hard’ currency for trade, the tourist industry, and ‘black market’ deals, and as a sensible way to store savings ‘under the mattress’ (or, as Russians say, b ny/iKé ‘in a stocking’). If/when Russia returns to financial stability, the author hopes that Russia’s central bank will remove several zeros from its hopelessly inflated currency, restore the old rouble-dollar exchange rate which was (officially) about one to one, and enable a grateful population to return to the days of three-rouble notes and two-kopeck coins.