‘What Matters Is Not What You Study, but Who You Study with’

Katerina Koloskova began studying Arabic expecting to give it up after a year—now she cannot imagine her life without it. In an interview for the Young Scientists of HSE University project, she spoke about two translated books, an expedition to Socotra, and her love for Bethlehem.

My Academic Work

I am only at the very beginning of my journey. Until quite recently, I did not plan to pursue research; I simply wanted to teach at the department. But then I realised that staying in a teaching position and treading water was not the best decision—one needs to grow in every sense. That is why I am now a postgraduate student.

Why I Decided to Study Arab Studies

This is not the shortest story…

I am a graduate of an Orthodox boarding school. The school’s spiritual mentor gave me his blessing to apply for Asian Studies, as I had wanted to do since early childhood. In fact, I wanted to study not Arabic but Japanese. However—quite frankly, providentially—during the additional entrance examination for Japanese Studies I fell ill with chickenpox. I did not get in.

Despite the fact that all my United State Examination scores were above ninety, I did not get into a single institute where it was possible to study Japanese. But after living in a boarding school, I did not want to return home. I decided that I should enrol in a branch of Asian Studies where I would definitely not want to stay, and then try again to transfer to Japanese Studies after a year.

An acquaintance advised me to apply to the Institute of Oriental Cultures and Antiquity at RSUH. She herself had studied Classical Philology there and liked it very much. In the year when I was applying, the institute offered three Asian languages to choose from: Vietnamese, Sanskrit, and Arabic. Vietnamese seemed a decent option because it is a tonal language; Sanskrit was not bad either—the script has beautiful squiggles… but Arabic did not appeal to me at all. My acquaintance did not recommend choosing it either: they only teach the Quran there, she said, why would you need that, you are Orthodox. ‘Exactly what I need,’ I thought, and submitted my documents.

It was a real nightmare. At first, I genuinely did not like anything, and I was simply waiting for the end of the year so that I could try to transfer to Japanese Studies. But the head of the department, Leonid Kogan, quite quickly offered me a job, and I decided to stay. That is how I became a laboratory assistant at the department. During my entire first year of work, I was sorting through the department’s archive of offprints—that is what individual academic articles printed on paper are called. It was rather dirty work: the uncatalogued offprints were piled up in heaps, and I had to clean them of dust, put them into plastic sleeves, and then arrange them alphabetically in folders. I loved this work very much and still do, since I continue to catalogue the department library, although now our students help me a great deal.

How I Came to Love Arab Studies

At my boarding school, no one understood why I had enrolled in Arab Studies. Well-meaning teachers would invite me in for a talk—they thought I wanted to convert to Islam, find myself an Arab husband, or something of that sort. Since the real reason (to study an uninteresting language so that I could transfer to Japanese Studies after a year) did not sound very convincing, I decided to invent a legend: supposedly, I was planning to go into academia and engage in comparative research on the Bible and the Quran. Everyone liked this explanation very much, and they immediately left me alone.

I almost immediately forgot about this legend, and a few years later I actually wrote my graduation thesis on ‘The Image of Christ and Mary in the Quran.’ It should be said that this topic was suggested by my academic supervisor, not by me. I only remembered my legend halfway through the work. I graduated with distinction, received a first-class diploma, and was then immediately offered a teaching position at our department.

That was exactly what I had wanted from the very beginning—to teach. I did not think about an academic career; I considered myself unsuited to it. I was convinced that research required qualities I did not possess: self-confidence and confidence in one’s knowledge, the ability to hyperfocus, and, finally, seriousness. Over time, however, it turned out that I did not know myself very well. Of course, I have not yet reached great heights, but now I look at academic work differently. I now understand that being a scholar is a job like any other. I used to think that only those specially favoured by God could engage in research. Now I believe that, as in any other profession, outstanding results are achieved only by those with real talent, but solid results can be achieved by anyone who approaches their work with full seriousness.

How I Translated the Novel The Blue Elephant by the Egyptian Writer Ahmed Mourad

Right after my first year, in the summer of 2014, I went to Egypt on an internship. When I first walked into an Arabic bookshop, I was stunned: right by the entrance there was a huge display made up of about a hundred copies of a single book with demonic eyes on the cover. The sight made me feel uneasy. I asked my local friends what this monstrosity was, and they replied: ‘Are you serious? This is the most popular book here right now—it is called The Blue Elephant!’ I followed their recommendation and ‘bought the elephant.’ From my suitcase, the book went straight onto the shelf.

Its time only came five years later, when I was choosing material for my master’s thesis. It turned out that, of all the books in my tiny Arabic library, only The Blue Elephant contained not only literary Arabic but also the Egyptian dialect. My supervisor and I decided to analyse the incorporation of colloquial forms into the novel’s narrative layer and, at the same time, to translate the novel in full.

At first, the work was very difficult, but it soon became clear that I enjoyed translating. It took a great deal of time—I even had to take an academic year off. I defended my thesis in 2020, and… the novel went back onto the shelf for another five whole years. A truly enchanted book, of course.

All these five-year waiting periods were, of course, not accidental. During the first five years, The Elephant was waiting for me to learn Arabic well enough not only to read it, but also to translate it. And the second five years are even more interesting.

When I entered the master’s programme, I was invited to teach Arabic to first-year students specialising in Arab Studies. Among them was a young woman who, a few years later, became an editor at the publishing house Eksmo. She was the one who took The Blue Elephant under her supervision. The novel is expected to be published in the spring of this year.

How I Translated the Novel The White Line of the Night by the Kuwaiti Writer Khalid Al-Nasrallah

After The Blue Elephant, I translated another novel—The White Line of the Night by the Kuwaiti writer Khalid al-Nasrallah. The book was published by Dom Istorii printing office last year. As with The Elephant, Leonid Kogan and I worked on the translation together.

To say that the translation process was painstaking would be an understatement. Once a week, Leonid Kogan and I would meet in a classroom. I would place the original text and my translation in front of him, sit opposite, and read the original aloud. Leonid Kogan would listen while simultaneously looking at the translated text and checking it against the original, assessing its accuracy and style, and offering advice. I would then go home, make the revisions, and bring the corrected text back for further work. After that, Leonid Kogan would return the revised version for yet another round of revisions. In short, there was a reason why the work took us two and a half years.

What I Will Be Doing During My Postgraduate Studies

I will be writing my dissertation under the supervision of Leonid Kogan. The approved topic is entitled ‘Sociolinguistic Aspects of the Functioning of Colloquial Language in Contemporary Arabic Prose.’

I will analyse selected Arabic novels published from the late 1990s–early 2000s up to the present day. These will be novels in which dialects from different regions are significantly present. Among them will be works written entirely in dialect, as well as those in which dialect is confined to dialogue. However, the greatest interest will be novels like The Blue Elephant: written in literary Arabic, yet for certain reasons allowing colloquial forms to enter the narrative itself.

Which Arabic Regions Interest Me

I am most interested in Egypt and the so-called Levantine countries: Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine. I am not a great traveller—abroad, I have only been to Arab countries. Last year I saw Bethlehem, and I think it has now become my favourite place on earth after my hometown.

What I Am Proud of

I manage to combine a love of my work with a love of motherhood. I returned from maternity leave when my daughter was only a year and a half old; now she is already four. Perhaps not everyone would see this as something to be proud of, but, as they say, those who understand, understand.

I am also very proud of our students’ achievements. At one point, I decided to include dialects in my course alongside literary Arabic. This was quite a bold decision, since I had only two classes a week with each group. Until the very end, I worried: had I made a mistake? Would it not have been better to devote more hours to literary Arabic? Recently, however, one of our graduates came up to me and told me that almost immediately after graduating he had found a job at a large international company solely thanks to his knowledge of a dialect. When I heard this, I nearly burst into tears with pride for him!

The problem faced by all graduates of Arabic Studies is that universities teach dialects poorly, if at all, focusing almost exclusively on literary Arabic—a language Arabs do not use in everyday life. The picture is this: you graduate with a level sufficient to read a book, listen to the news, or watch a cartoon. And then you arrive in an Arab country—and you understand nothing, and people are in no hurry to understand you either. Of course, educated Arabs know literary Arabic, but try to find one who actually wants to speak it with you. As a result, you spend four or five years learning an extremely complex language, and then, when it is time to work with it, you cannot—because everything you learned at university is undoubtedly useful, but simply not applicable in everyday communication.

In our country, Arabic dialects are taught at many universities, but everywhere they are either optional or allotted very few hours. I dream of reversing this sad statistic and giving dialects a worthy place in the training of professional Arabists.

In recent years, Leonid Kogan and I have been organising an internship in Arab countries for senior students. In 2023, we went to Damascus; in 2024, to Cairo; and in 2025, to Bethlehem and Jerusalem.

Before each trip, I get in touch with the local Russian Centre or with a university that trains professional specialists in Russian studies. The lecturers select 15–20 of their best students so that I can organise a language exchange project. Each of my students studying a dialect is paired with a student studying Russian. First, the students get to know each other online, complete joint tasks, and help one another with homework. Then they meet in real life when we come to visit. As a result, when we arrive in a new Arab country where none of us has ever been before, we are already awaited by our friends from the project. Our students visit them at home, meet their families, and in this way, over one or two weeks of placement, immerse themselves as fully as possible in the language and culture of the country. This is what distinguishes our trips from other field placements for students of Arabic: after an intensive cultural programme with excursions conducted in dialect, our students are immersed in the world of their Arab peers, and after returning home we maintain the same close contact as during the preparation stage of the trip.

These connections prove extremely valuable even after graduation: students pass job opportunities on to one another, edit each other’s translated texts, and explain nuances of colloquial speech that you will not find in any textbook. This is invaluable experience of interacting with a native speaker who is just as interested in your support as you are in theirs.

What I Dream of

That our institute would enrol students of Arab Studies not once every five years, but at least once every two years. We have small groups, and that has its advantages, but I would like more students to come to us. It would give my work greater meaning. When, for five years in a row, you have a single group of ten students, half of whom do not plan to stay in the profession, it is rather disheartening.

My Long-Term Goal

My main task for the next three years is to write my dissertation. Of course, I do have dreams and professional goals as well, but for now I am focused entirely on the dissertation.

If I Had Not Become a Scholar and a Teacher

I think I would have become a choir director. I have been singing in a church choir since childhood.

Recently, a priest from one of the Moscow churches got in touch with me. From time to time, services are held there in Arabic. They used to have a cantor from Lebanon, but he has left, and they are now looking for a replacement. So, at the moment I am looking for someone who could teach me Byzantine chant. A colleague who specialises in Arabic at Saint Tikhon’s Orthodox University for the Humanities helped me find books and video materials, but I hope I will still be able to learn from a living teacher.

Which Scholar I Would Like to Meet

Anna Polivanova. She taught our Introduction to Linguistics course in the first year of my bachelor’s degree. She passed away this September. At that time, I was in Bethlehem. Anna Polivanova and I had agreed that I would come to visit her, but I did not manage to—and I regret it deeply. I would like to see her and thank her once again for the fact that I am now where I am.

At one point, I did not leave the department precisely thanks to Anna Polivanova. When she learned that I did not want to tie my life to Arabic and was planning to transfer to the Institute of Linguistics, she invited me for a conversation and spent a full three hours explaining why I should not leave the department. The first two hours did not convince me, but then she uttered the phrase that made me stay: ‘What matters is not what you study, but who you study with.’ I thought: indeed, I really do want to study with Leonid Kogan. What difference does it make what exactly? Soon after that, I was offered a position as a laboratory assistant at our department, and there was no reason to leave at all.

Everything I have now is thanks to the fact that I did not leave the department. I would very much like to go back to that January, come to Anna’s home, and say thank you for this a hundred times over.

My Ordinary Day

I wake up early in the morning, prepare for classes, have breakfast, play a little with my daughter, and then go to university. After classes, I try to go to the gym, and then head straight home to change over with the nanny. At home, I mostly spend time with my little one: we play, read, cook, do crafts, or draw.

Do I Experience Burnout?

No. I genuinely love my work. However, I do go through very intense periods, when there is simply too much to do or when the tasks are so large that I cannot complete them on time. That was the case, for example, with the novel The White Line of the Night. For the two and a half years that the work was going on, I lived with the feeling that I had no right to do anything at all except work on the novel (and, of course, I still did other things—for which I reproached myself terribly). It was a very difficult time. I had several nervous breakdowns, and if it had not been for my husband’s support, I would simply have fallen apart.

My Hobbies

I spend time with my family. On non-working days, I look after my child, do the housework, and cook; and if my husband has a day off as well, we all go out somewhere together. I mostly read Arabic prose and Russian classics. Recently, I read a biography of Alexander Suvorov—an astonishing figure, indeed [a Russian general who lived in the 18th century and successfully led the Russian army in numerous military conflicts].

Advice for Early-Career Researchers

Make use of all the opportunities your university offers. Volunteer at events, take part in conferences both as a speaker and as a listener. While you are studying, it feels as though you have no time for anything at all; then you grow up, and there is even less time.

My Favourite Place in Moscow

The Basmanny District: Pokrovka, Maroseyka, Khokhlovka, and Staraya Basmannaya Street. In my first year, I worked at the Khodasevich bookshop on Pokrovka. Its founder, Stas Gaivoronsky, instilled in me a love for these places. When a shift at Khodasevich ended, we would close the shop and walk to the metro together. On the way, Stas showed me all sorts of remarkable spots around Pokrovka and the surrounding area, telling vivid stories about the neighbourhood. I remember those tiny walks with great warmth.

Five Favourite Places in the Arab World

Bethlehem, Cairo, East Jerusalem, Damascus, and, of course, the island of Socotra. Last year, I travelled there as part of a research expedition.

Socotra is an archipelago in the Indian Ocean. If you open a world atlas and point to the very centre, you will land exactly on Socotra. Administratively, Socotra belongs to Yemen, but in recent years it has been controlled by the United Arab Emirates.

Our team of linguists, led by Vitaly Naumkin and Leonid Kogan, has been travelling to Socotra for about fifteen years now. I went for the first time not as a member of a linguistic expedition, but as a translator for a group of archaeologists.

Socotra looks absolutely fantastical. I close my eyes and see it: us pitching tents on the shore of an azure sea with white sand; endemic species of local flora everywhere; an endless rubbish-strewn street; and goats jumping onto the table and finishing off our breakfast the moment we turn our backs…

Over the past five years, Socotra has become an extremely popular tourist destination. It is a real treat for travellers who have already been everywhere, since getting to the island is still not so easy. The point is that you cannot buy tickets to Socotra online. You have to go in person to a special (and the only) travel agency in the Emirates. Once you have secured a ticket, you go to Abu Dhabi Airport, approach check-in desk 9¾ hidden from the eyes of ordinary mortals by a magical barrier, then take a run-up and crash into the wall at full speed… I am joking, of course, but there really is a special counter solely for flights to Socotra. It is not hard to find: just look for the queue where everyone is standing with huge trekking backpacks.