Identifying Russian words in English

As the world becomes more and more international, languages and cultures
are constantly borrowing from and lending to one another, and Russian is no
exception. Many Russian words that now appear in English either describe
food and drinks or came into use during important historical periods.
Eating and drinking up
If you drink vodka, then you can already speak some Russian, because the
word, like the drink, came from Russia. Maybe you can even rattle off the differences
between Smirnoff (smeer-nohf) and Stoly. If so, you’re already on
your way to sounding like a real Russian, because Smirnoff is a Russian
person’s last name, and Stoly is an abbreviation for the word Stolichnaya
(stah-leech-nuh-ye), which means “metropolis” in Russian.
When you go out to eat, do you like to order a great big bowl of borsh’
(bohrsh’; beet soup) with sour cream? Well, then you’re eating one of the
most famous Russian dishes, and when you order it, you’re using a completely
Russian word.
Hearing historical terms
If you’re interested in world history, then you probably know that the head of
the Russian state in previous centuries was not the president or the king, but
the tsar, which is just what they called him in Russia, too: tsar’ (tsahr’).
Some of the best-known Russian words actually came into English during the
Cold War period, when the Soviet Union was competing with the United
States in the areas of science, technology, military, and education. Who
would’ve thought that a short and simple Russian word, sputnik (spoot-neek;
traveling companion), which refers to the first Soviet artificial Earth satellite,
would become a household word in English and even lead to a revolution in
American space education? And if you’ve ever used the word sputnik, then
you were speaking Russian. Sputnik means “companion” in Russian.
Maybe you followed world news in the 1980s. If so, you may remember a guy
by the name of Mikhail Gorbachev, who reformed Russian Soviet society. He
also added two new words to the English language: glasnost and perestroika,
or in Russian: glasnost’ (glahs-nuhst’; openness) and pyeryestroika (pee-reestrohy-
kuh; restructuring). These words have become part of American
speech. Even Ronald Reagan, who was president during Gorbachev’s era,
liked to repeat the famous Russian phrase, Dovyeryai, no provyeryai! (duhvee-
ryahy, noh pruh-vee-ryahy; Trust but verify!), when talking about the new
nuclear weapons treaties he was negotiating with the Soviet Union.

Courtesy:Russian for Dummies