ROIKA (from word "three").
According to the dictionary TROIKA is three horses harnessed abreast. But for Russian TROIKA is more than only three horses harnessed abreast. Russian likes driving on TROIKA /usually with tinkling of bells/ on high days and holidays, while celebrating weddings and after carousals; also TROIKA is the mean of conveyance while travelling over boundless Russia. No wonder that TROIKA for Russian is the symbol of national character: driving on TROIKA shows recklessness and fervor of Russian, allows to feel how boundless is Russia and to meditate on theme of unpredictable development of Russia.
Nikolay V. Gogol wrote about TROIKA: ...And what a Russian is there who doesn't love fast driving? How should his soul, that yearns to go off into a whirl, to go off on a fling, to say on occasion: "Devil take it all!"- how should his soul fail to love it? Is it nor a thing to be loved, when one can sense in it something exaltedly wondrous? (...) Eh, thou troika, thou that art a bird! Who conceived thee? Methinks'tis only among a spirited folk that thou couldst have come into being, in that land that is not fond of doing things by halves, but that has evenly smoothly spread itself out over half the world... (...) And art not thou, my Russia, soaring along even like a spirited, never-to-be-outdistanced troika? (...) Way to, then, Russia? Give me the answer! But Russia gives none. With a wondrous ring does the jingle bell trill; the air, rent to shreds, thunders and turns to wind; all things on earth fly past and, eyeing it askance, all the other peoples and nations stand aside and give it the right of way.
