Bryansk wolf


A Bryansk wolf is a Russian idiom used to describe a treacherous person. The term has little to do with wolves from Bryansk. Its first recorded use is reported in Jacques Rossi's The Gulag Handbook in the sentence "a wolf from the Bryansk forest is your friend, not me!"
The phrase is similar to the Russian idiom of the Tambov wolf, referring to economic migrants who moved to Tambov to work at very low rates, thus lowering wages for all in the region. In Russian, the phrase is "Тамбовский волк тебе товарищ", or "a Tambov wolf is your comrade". It rose in popularity from the 1956 Soviet film The Rumyantsev Case.

Meaning

The term's usage in a sentence is listed in the Great Dictionary of Russian Nicknames, where it describes Vasily Ivanovich, a member of the Soviet Duma, as a Bryansk wolf for working as a "bright representative".

Artistic usage

Russian poet Yuz Aleshkovsky mentions Bryansk wolves in his poem "Comrade Stalin, You're a Real Big Scholar" in order to contrast the life of Stalin with that of the Russian people.

"Comrade Stalin, you’re a real big scholar,
You know what’s going on in linguistics,
I'm a simple Soviet convict
And my friend is a gray Bryansk wolf."
Bryansk wolves are also mentioned in Leonid Filatov's fairy tale “The Tale of Fedot the Strelets” and in the song “Parcels” by Lesopoval.

Tourism

Bryansk wolves no longer exist in the wild, and the remaining 49 wolves remain at Bryansky Les Nature Reserve. This is due, in part, to farmers seeing them as a nuisance.