In tsarist old-regime Russia, it was not accepted to reduce the names of departments, ministries and departments, and even less universities and academies, somehow. Speak longer, write too, but it sounded somehow more beautiful.
They must have come to us from America.
Overseas really apply a lot of cuts. We started with the name of the country, which was immediately identified by the abbreviation USA, and then it went: GI, USS, USN, USAF, CIA, FBI, NY and the like.
In Europe, too, capital letters were rarely used instead of whole sayings, unless in Austria-Hungary sometimes they wrote “K und K” instead of “imperial-Kaiser”. Well, okay, it’s excusable for them, the German words are generally long and similar, according to the tag joke of A.P. Chekhov, to an elongated rail. But after the victory of October in November, all sorts of proletcultes, cult enlightenments, educational programs, drug commissars, people's commissars and other consonances, including the Gulag, which were hardly perceived by the Russian ear, appeared. There were also very funny abbreviations, over which the surviving intellectuals of the old formation made fun of them. If they, of course, were joking.
The first Soviet abbreviations
In fact, in the post-revolutionary years, painted in red not only with the banners of the victorious proletariat, but also with shed blood, there was little fun. Any Cheka, Central Committee, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, the Red Army, ROST and other not very funny abbreviations rather scared incomprehensibility. The exception is, perhaps, the well-known name of the post of deputy commander for maritime affairs, which sounds abridged very merrily, albeit cruelly, - the deputy committee. People still tried to joke then. “I went to the CEC, ” said the husband to his wife, leaving home. She looked at him with respect. The salt of Hochma is that he did not pronounce the letter "r", but had in mind the circus. Many people knew firsthand how they poke about in the Central Committee and chick in the Cheka, firsthand. But all this, in the words of one Marxist, was a symptom of a "childhood illness of leftism." There were really many “literate” literate people, and then they started educational program by the forces of the entire People's Commissariat of Education and Social Security with the support of the Council of People's Commissars and the Central Committee. Then, under Stalin, much was corrected, and even the hard-to-pronounce Red Army created by Trotsky was renamed the Soviet Army. So really beautiful and clear.
But one honored cultural worker Faina Ranevskaya once called a reduction, made up of the initial letters of this honorary title, two for each word. It turned out very Soviet and funny.
Research institutes
In the fifties, in connection with the establishment of many research institutes, which became the haven of a large number of diploma holders who stubbornly did not want to work, the names acquired tremendous floridity. The Scientific Research Institute of Syphilis did not at all develop medical methods for the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases. This was the name of the Siberian Institute of Philosophy and History. The abbreviated name of the Institute of Animal Breeding, Livestock Breeding and Hunting also caused a smile among the understanding. The most ridiculous abbreviations hinted at the total unconventional orientation of employees, including leadership at the All-Russian Scientific Research Geological Institute (VseGeI), or (with some emphasis), the universal genius of those at the Geographic and Economic Research Institute (GENII).
Two quite serious institutes involved in the life support of underwater vehicles (the second - manned) had funny abbreviations. Examples of such a combination are, for example, in the Zhytomyr Regional Party Archive.
But what can we say about individual institution-institutions, when the entire ministry, leading education and science in the country, abbreviated as "EDUCATION".
Where students study
Higher educational institutions were not inferior. Funny abbreviations of universities served as the topic of student jokes, however, rather monotonous. Civil engineering institutes, if they were lucky to be in Moscow, Odessa or even in Kiev, were called decent (MISI, OISI, KISI), here in Poltava or Penza … and if in Simferopol or Sverdlovsk, then even more fun.
Only two days lasted an attempt to rename the MAI into the University of Long-Range Aviation and Cosmonautics, again Moscow, of course. Do not transfer it to Saratov because of indecent reduction. In addition, the name of the Moscow University of Road-Automobile Communications looks identical, you can confuse one with the other.
In the eighties, students had to pass the AIDS exam, it just became known. The subject - the former "Marxism-Leninism" - was called the socio-political ideas of the twentieth century.
Reverse processes
Funny abbreviations are enough to see and read, they do not require imagination. But to see something new in the ordinary and familiar combination of letters is not so simple. Here you need fiction, ingenuity and time. These qualities were fully possessed by the employees of numerous research institutes, who acquired erudition during the course of their work and developed mentally. To call a junior scientific employee (emanes) a little needed employee meant to demonstrate remarkable knowledge of the rules prevailing in most research institutes, but esenes (the same, only the senior one) became completely aerobatic - completely unnecessary. Funny transcripts of abbreviations have become a real sport. Sometimes, for the sake of a red word, they also sin against the truth. Trains in Russia are good (if there is anything to compare with), but the Russian Railways painted some wits as a desire to “rejoice that they arrived alive.”
