Preved Medved (ПРЕВЕД МЕДВЕД)

About

Preved Medved (ПРЕВЕД МЕДВЕД) is a Russian exploitable deriving from a painting by American actor, musician, and painter John Lurie entitled Bear Surprise combined with a Russian play on words. In the painting a bear pops out of a forest and yells “Surprise!” upon approaching a couple having engaging in sexual intercourse on a blanket in the forest.

Origin

On the Russian site leprosorium.ru, the user Lobzz (Roman Yatsenko) created the first appearance of Preved Medved in February 2006.

Lobzz simply changed the word “Surprise!” to “ПРЕВЕД!” in Russian or “Preved!” in English. The word “preved” is a corruption of the word “privet”, which means “hello” in Russian. The reason for doing so is because the russian word for “bear” is “medved” (МЕДВЕД). Therefore, the bear was named “Preved Medved”, the Hello Bear.

Derivatives

The original picture was heavily circulated on the Russian internet (RuNet), leading to many derivatives and extreme popularity. In addition the bear’s arms and position make him look like a Y. A translation of the Russian Wikipedia states the relevance:

In forums, blogs, chat rooms and other interactive means of communication becomes widespread smiley in the form of the Latin letter «Y», showing the characteristic gesture of a bear, as well as "Gg ^ Y», denoting both a bear and a pair of lovers.

More uses of this exploitable include a promotional poster for Russian Newsweek, in which the chief editor yells the iconic phrase while multiple bears fly in the background.

In an online conference with Vladimir Putin, the most popular voted-for question was “PREVED, Vladimir Vladimirovich! How do you regard MEDVED?” with 28,424 votes. The Preved Medved also showed up on “automatic payment services” according to the Russian Lurkmore wiki.

The bear has also been shopped into many pictures and is common among Russian Photoshop contests.

Insight

Searches for “preved” (ПРЕВЕД) spiked in 2006. Since then, it has been in slow decline but still shows interest. Most of the articles written on the image occurred in 2006-07.