Kira Rambles

While I studied abroad in Bilbao, Spain, the war in Ukraine started. My Spanish university offered housing, Spanish language instruction, and student visas to fifty Ukrainian students, a move many of the professors blasted as a public relations stunt because no instructors at the university–even in the language center–spoke any of the same languages as the Ukrainian students. The students spoke Ukrainian and Russian, and while the language center professors spoke everything from Basque to Greek, none spoke any Slavic languages, and they largely relied on Google Translate to communicate with the new students. 

Regardless of the university’s motivation, I want to support people affected by war, which is why I feel frustrated that the same offer was never extended to Syrian or Palestinian students, but I feel grateful the opportunity could help some Ukrainian students in 2022. It also makes me grateful for technology like Google Translate that, while imperfect, helps people communicate. I used it during the weekly Basque dance group I participated in that Spring with some of the Ukrainian students, an experience that also made me want to learn Russian when the opportunity arose this Summer through a state department online critical language scholarship program. I wished I had spoken even a little Ukrainian or Russian to help them get settled in Spain. 

When I started the Russian program, I had just begun working as a historic maritime trades interpreter at Fort Ticonderoga, a rebuilt 18th century fort in Upstate New York on Lake Champlain occupied by the French, British, and American Northern Continental Army during the French and Indian and American Revolutionary Wars. As an interpreter, I work on historic trades like boat carpentry and sail making while educating visitors about the fort’s history. My boss generously let me take a long lunch to complete my two-hours of daily immersion classes on Zoom during the Russian course, and, since I was joining class from work, and my work uniform is 18th century clothing, I ended up learning Russian in a waistcoat. 

At one point, I sent a selfie in my work uniform to my partner during a break in class, which is when he told me I looked like John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States. When I asked him to explain, he said Adams learned Russian when he was young and lived in Europe, and he would have worn a waistcoat too. 

So I looked it up. Quincy Adams did learn Russian when he was fourteen and his father, John Adams–who would become the second president of the United States–sent him as a secretary to Francis Dana during the American Revolution to ask for Russian aid. Though that aid never materialized, as an adult, in the early 19th century, Quincy Adams used the language skills he gained as a teenager when he served as the United States’ first ambassador to Russia. 

Right after I started the Russian program, I also learned that the raw hemp to make the rope and sailcloth the British army and American Northern Continental Army used at Ticonderoga to rig ships was imported from Russia. In the late 18th and 19th centuries, Russia was the largest exporter of hemp and flax in the world, and Great Britain was their biggest customer. The British and their colonies used this hemp as rope and sail cloth in ship rigging, including at the King’s Shipyard at Ticonderoga in the 1750s-1760s and at Fort Ticonderoga and the adjacent peninsula Mount Independence that the Continental Army used to rig ships in the 1770s during the American Revolutionary War. 

When I started learning Russian, I expected my courses to remain separate from my work, but John Quincy Adams and 18th century ship rigging go to show, it is always worth examining history for unexpected connections.