Another peculiar word that follows Russian halyava is Russian avos’. Dictionaries define this word as ‘perhaps’, ‘maybe’, ‘happy-go-lucky attitude’. However, it is far more than that; it is inside the very nature of Russian character. It means the motivation of a Russian man to let it all hang out in the hopes that everything will fly by happenstance owing to unknown supernatural forces and any mistake will be corrected, as well as grief will never come close.

Relying on odd stroke of luck, belief in Russian fairy tales (when all the problems are solved mysteriously), light-heartedness and lack of self-confidence, tender-mindedness (as an opposite to German ‘Ordnung’ and pedantry) are not only determinative features of the national behavior, but also one of the basic ideas of Russian world-image. To my mind, avos’ also deals with idleness, when one doesn’t feel like doing something, but they have to do that (because it’s their job responsibilities or domestic workload, or education, etc.) So the Russian solution to this problem is doing those things by halves, or not to do them at all in hopes that the problem with go away, or no one will notice, or someone else will do the task, or, as it was mentioned above, it will be solved by mysterious forces. 

The examples of Russian avos’ are met on daily basis. One of them is historical. Reflecting on the promises to build the communism back then and to conduct international revolution, these days we realize, that back then the Russian avos’ didn’t work out, as there was obviously a lack of luck, energy, resources, courage. 

When I went to school and later to college, and eventually to University, I have noticed this streak of ours related to avos’ among Russian students of all ages. The majority of them hoped they'd pull a Jonah not only dealing with homework, but even with final tests! For example, they can either study 10 topics out of 20 counting on avos’ (and generally they pass) or study nothing hoping to get off the hook somehow. 

Meanwhile in Soviet Russia an avos’ joke had appeared, which later was transformed into another cultural phenomena. What do you think is this? 

This is a shopping bag, which has been used in Russia for about 80 years by now. What does is have to do with avos’, you may ask. The thing is that the bag is called avoska (in Western Europe it was used as well, but had the names of 'string bag', 'fishnet bag', 'maybe bag'). The Russian name for this bag is not just a coincidence. You see, in 1930s in Soviet Russia there was product shortage. And one of the greatest Russian comedians, Arkady Raikin, told almost untranslatable to the English language joke:

This is avoska (holding the bag in the hand). Avos-ka (=hopefully) I will bring something in it.

Therefore, the situation was so bad, that people counted on supernatural forces (aka avos’) to get some food or other consumer goods in the shops. Today Russians use avoskas very rarely, although a lot of babushkas (old ladies in this context) give the preference to them over plastic bags.