Peas In A Pod

The other day I snarked about Russian President Putin telling Bush that he was the pot calling the kettle black, using the Russian idiomatic phrase. I also mused about what the idiom is for "two peas in a pod", so I wrote my friend Dima in St. Petersburg, Russia.  He replies:

didn't see much of bush/putin's summit on television but it also seemed to me they are very much alike - at least they both want us think this way. have not heard about this "like two peas in a pod" idiom before but in russian we have something similar which is "odnogo polya yagody" (berries fm the same field)¹.

In Cyrillic, it's одного поля ягоды.  Uh...let's dust off my Russian synapses here.  I think literally that's "from one field, berries".  Odnogo²  is the genitive form of the adjective "one", polya is the genitive singular of "field" and yagody is the nominative plural of "berry". 

Now let's use the phrase in real life.  Here's the chief of Russia's security police, Nikolai Patrushev, speaking to Putin in 2003:

"Volodya, Bush likes strong, law-and-order leaders who shoot from the hip. Besides, ever since Sept. 11, the Texas cowboy has cut corners on human rights in his own country in the name of fighting terrorism. Who is he to criticize you? You and Bush are two 'berries from the same field.' "

Indeed.

ntodd

1 - yes, damn it, his English is infinitely better than my Russian these days.  It wasn't that way when we were in college.  It's not really fair because he has a job that requires him to speak English in the international business arena.  Not much call for Russian in mine.

2 - actually pronounced odnovo.  Normally Russian words are said exactly as they are spelled, but this is one of the language's quirks.