I’m binging on the second season of The Americans and am hoping any Russian speakers out there can comment on the Russian accents and dialogue. How good are the actors’ accents? Do they seem like real Russian speakers or do they sound like they learned their lines phonetically? How idiomatic/natural is the Russian dialogue? Was it translated by a native speaker or run through a translation machine?
I am not an expert in Russian but I do have a limited (but practical) fluency and have worked with Russians and Ukrainians. The use of Russian is limited to fairly basic exchanges (not a lot of use of idiom) but it does appear to be fairly authentic and using the informal “conversational” Russian rather than the more formal “literate” Russian that is taught in college courses. Several of the actors portraying Russian Embassy officials are actually Russian or of Russian heritage, and their accents are at least passable as native speakers to my ears (whether they reflect regional variations from which the characters come beyond my ability to assess).
When any of the American actors portraying Russian ‘illegals’ (agents without cover, e.g. Keri Russell, Matthew Rhys) speak Russian, however, it is clear that they have learned the lines phonetically, but they do so with such limited frequency (almost exclusively in flashback scenes) that it doesn’t really mater. (To be fair, Rhys conceals his native Welsh accent masterfully and never sounds less than the neutral American his character is supposed to be portraying.)
Whether actually ‘illegals’ would have mastered the American accent so perfectly is another question. Usually illegals will have some cover that explains the not quite perfect mastery of idiom and accent that could be expected of any non-native speaker. Of course, that goes hand in hand with the (rather absurd) premise of deep cover operatives which have functioned for decades and been allowed (or apparently even encouraged) to establish a family in country with minimal supervision but are used for high risk assignments which regularly compromise their anonymity. This makes for exciting stories, but isn’t even remotely plausible insofar that not only would discovery of their true history compromise the substantial investment in their covers but would also compromise the small army of other ‘illegals’ which apparently exist, and also invite the ever-present institutional paranoia about officers with inside knowledge defecting in order to enjoy the material spoils of Western life. In reality, most agents (e.g. people who actively collect intelligence or perform other covert activities) were not directly trained or employed by the KGB but were Americans recruited by case officers based upon ideology, financial need, or entrapment (or some combination thereof, as with Christopher John Boyce and Andrew Daulton Lee) which limited the exposure of active KGB officers in the country under legal or covert covers.
It is an entertaining show and makes a great effort to replicate both the appearance and feel of the early 'Eighties, but it is not a remotely accurate depiction of actual espionage.
Stranger
Awesome show. Not all the Soviet characters are played by Russians. Vasili is played by Peter Berg and Nina’s actress is an Afghani Tajik. Of course, this is the USSR not Russia, so having a foreign accent in Russian can be explained by not being Rusisian. I did think that Matthew Rhys’s Welsh came out when he was angry.
As for the agents being married and all, IIRC they were not paried up by the KGB as in the show but were either agents already married to each other or spouses of agents who had been recruited.
I have never seen the show. If you have a link to some segment, I can tell you if the accents are authentic.
I’ve lived in Russia for most of the last 25 years, and I have yet to hear a bad Russian accent on The Americans.
This is something I’m particularly sensitive to; when Gibbs or Callan try to speak Russian on their different versions of NCIS, the results are embarassingly bad.
Two things to keep in mind: When you go to live in a foreign country after some formal instruction in its language, you pick up idioms and the accent of the locals fairly quickly, provided you’re in a situation where you’re forced to speak the language. After living in Moscow for just five months, Russians usually identified as a Balt or a Bulgarian, never as an American. (I had the equivalent of six years of college-level Russian when I arrived, but a bad accent. It quickly disappeared.) Now I’m often taken for a native Muscovite.
Conversely, living in a foreign country can affect your accent in your native language. My ex, born and raised in Siberia, has lived in Canada since 2005, and the Russians she speaks to on the phone now tell me she speaks Russian with a Canadian accent.
My daughter, who grew up perfectly bilingual, was often criticized by her Russian teachers for having a “weak ‘R’,” probably because she learned Midwestern American English from me as an infant. She normally talks with her mom in Russian, but I can’t testify as to how well her accent has held up after nine years in Canada.
Another note: When I came back to Minneapolis after living in Britain for 14 months in the '70s, my friends repeatedly commented on my unconscious use of “British-isms.”
Henry Kissinger has said that he speaks English with a German accent and German with an American accent so there’s nowhere on Earth where he sounds like a local.
Google says the actors - I looked at Nina and Arkady - are Russian or Russian-speakers.
So …actually, their English-American accents are quite good.
Such a smart show - such tight scripting.
Thanks for your answers, all – esp. terentii! My impression was that they sounded fluent and real, but since I don’t speak Russian, I have no way of telling. (It’s like Reynard’s French on Grimm – sounds fluent to me, but … )
I thought of looking that up, but was too lazy, given the large number of Russian-speaking characters – so much faster just to ask here. 
But their accents speaking English sound like people speaking a non-native tongue, so, yeah, that in itself is an acting skill to avoid sounding like Boris and Natasha if you are a native-English speaker, as a couple of them are.
And agree that it’s a well-written, well-plotted show – looking forward to the third season!
There was at least one scene early in the series that showed Elizabeth and Philip meeting for the first time as teenagers at KGB headquarters. When they were debating the merits of Philip seducing Martha, Elizabeth said something like “Well, we were never really married, were we?”
I’m sure there have been other such references during the course of the show.
Incidentally, I once met a Scottish immigrant who spoke with a perfect Minnesota accent. When I mentioned it to him, he said “Thanks; it took me twenty years to lose my Scottish accent.”
After nine years in Canada, my ex still has a slight Russian accent, but her English has always been excellent as long as I’ve known her; her accent was barely noticeable even when we lived in Moscow.
I feel like some Russian accents are fake and Elizabeth’s a Philip’s is half fake, half real. Probably because of Philip’s actor being Welsh.
The Russian being spoken sounds native to me. I’m not an expert, but I studied in Moscow and lived in Russia for a time. Phillip and Elizabeth only speak a few words here and there, but they don’t sound native.