There are very few loanwords that English speakers have borrowed from the Russian language. “Robot” is often considered to be one of these, even though the origin is Czech. “Bistro” is another, the allegation being that Russian customers would yell “Bistro, bistro!” (“Quickly, quickly!”) at French waitstaff in attempts to get them to hurry—but this seems to be more of a good story than good etymology. But there is one word in English whose Russian origin is not in dispute: Gulag. The term’s Russian origin is itself an acronym for Glavnoye Upravleniye Lagerey, which translates to Chief
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