Russian Spies. Or, rather, foreign spies and Russian scouts.

The recent Russian Spy Ring affair has been getting quite a buzz - on both sides of the Ocean...  Whatever that story is really about -  I grant you, we will never know. But it reminded me of something...  I remember asking what the difference was between "shpion" (spy) and "razvedchik" (scout or intelligence officer, depending on the context). How would you answer a question like that from a -say- five-year-old?  The answer I got was that when they are ours, they are "razvedchiki", intelligence officers.  When they work for the enemy's side, they are, of course, "shpiony", spies. Other than that, the unspoken assumption was that they are the same. My first lesson in semantics... lol. On a more serious note, once my mother - who understood some basic English - helped a confused foreign couple discover the store they were in did not sell "halva"... or rather was (rather permanently) out of that supposedly-Russian supposedly-delicacy. All she said was, "Halva? Halva - no! Halva no here."  The following morning (!) she was called to drop by "Department One", where a non-uniformed officer asked her if she remembered the papers she had signed... about not talking to foreigners, you know, those papers... I guess Big Brother was watching.