You Say you Want a Revolution?

“It is either the revolution – which the Russians have managed to avoid so far, and which can be worse than reforms – or the lack of such.”

– Russian First Vice-premier Anatoly Chubais

Only a lazy man hasn’t blamed the Bolsheviks for what they did to Russia, its economy, its culture, its people, and last but not least, its language.

Clumsy Bolshevik idioms still resonate: революция (revolution), октябрята (Children of October), ленинец (Leninist), меньшевик (Menshevik), завод Красный Пролетарий (Red Proletarian factory), кулаки (kulaks), раскулачивание (dekulakization), советы (councils), колхозы (kolkhozes), etc. ad nauseum.

But little do most students (or teachers) of Russian know about the ways Soviet-style slang is still used in Russia today, by almost all strata of the population. Most usually it is applied in a humorous context. For this is how the pathetic revolutionary idioms sound like today.

If you are saddened by something meaningless, those older and “lucky” enough to have lived under socialism may reassure you with this version of “don’t worry, be happy”: Это всё ерунда / фигня по сравнению с мировой революцией (this is nothing compared to world revolution).

Speaking of revolution, you might find a humorous context to employ a common rephrasing of the revolutionary song, The International. The original goes like this: Мы старый мир разрушим до основанья, а затем... (We’ll tear down the old world and then ...) In the new interpretation, it is rewritten as: Мы старый мир разрушим до основанья, а зачем... (We’ll tear down the old world, but why?) Why indeed?

One idol that has been torn down in the post-Soviet world is the positive connotation of the adjective “proletarian.” It is now clearly a pejorative. Thus, if someone criticizes something for no apparent reason or uses physical force immoderately, it is common to comment that this person acted “with all proletarian hatred” – со всей пролетарской ненавистью. This can also be said of clumsy, forceful mistakes that may not be malicious, i.e. a strong kick in a soccer match going way high of the goal.

Recently, a revolutionary catch-phrase – one of the “good old idioms” – was resurrected in a Nezavisimaya Gazeta front page commentary forecasting the eventual dismissal of the influential Kremlin politician, Anatoly Chubais. Революция пожирает своих детей (The revolution is devouring its own children), the headline read.

Yet New Times have also introduced their own neologisms which sound suspiciously like those of bygone days. Thus, the “red” (pro-Communist) press called privatization (приватизация) чубайсизация страны (chu-bais-ization of the country), after the father of privatization. Similarly, Chubais’ followers/adepts are pejoratively called чубайсята (hearkening back to the word “октябрята”, a combination of the words октябрь and ребята, meaning the Octobrists). Better yet, some call privatization “прихватизация” (from the word прихватить – to grab), perhaps best translated as “grabization,” which of course hints (not so subtly) at the less than legal way Russian entrepreneurs were and still are grabbing state assets for peanuts. 

We owe to the political star of perestroika, former St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak (who, according to the press, was allegedly engaged in corruption) another great turn of phrase: Собчачье сердце (the heart of Sobchak). This is how quick-witted left oppositionists, “with all proletarian hatred,” condemned some of Sobchak’s schemes. The allusion, of course, is to the title of Bulgakov’s famous novel Собачье Сердце (The Heart of a Dog), where, in a masterful allegory, a professor transplants parts of a criminal into a dog, and gets a despicable proletarian. [This phrase now has an additional, quite poignant allusion, as Sobchak died an early death after heart trouble.]

Russian democrats, for their part, excoriate their adversaries with the widespread idioms краснокоричневые (red-browns) and коммуняки (little communists), which, while accurate, are far from as witty as the remarks of the old communist guard.

This is not to say the rulers of the New Russia are only capable of lackluster phrases. Suffice it to mention Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin’s historical phrase, “Хотели как лучше, а получилось как всегда” (“We meant it to be the best ever, but it turned out the usual way”). This contemporary idiom is being quoted and paraphrased throughout the media since the prime minister voiced it two years ago, and no other politician/art figure/writer has so far come close to this linguistic tour de force.

Another more recent pearl is семибанкирщина (copied from a period in Russian history called semiboyarshchina). Such is the epithet given by Russian observers to the period of Russia in late 1990s – characterized by the creation of an oligarchy, where power and finances are controlled by seven major banks.

Unfortunately, the new political language has also been impregnated with argot from the milieu of mafia and bandits. Thus, back when President Boris Yeltsin’s bodyguard, Alexander Korzhakov held sway in the Kremlin, the press used such phrases as его заказали (he was contracted), derived from the notion of someone being the object of a contract killing. And the recently dismissed chairman of the National Sports Fund, Boris Fyodorov, was said to be “put on a meter” (поставить на счётчик). This is a loan-sharking term which means that, from now on, the debtor will daily pay the compounded interest on his debt.

The newest slang relating to New Russians is the odd term, новарищи, invented by acrimonious French hotel managers in the Cote d’Azure. By combining the words nouveaux-riches and tovarishchi (comrades) they gave a very apropos assessment of the novarishchi’s “distinguished taste and fine manners.”

So, as you can see, not only the October Revolution but also the new era of wild capitalism a la Russe has had a negative impact on the “great and mighty” Russian language. But, of course, “this is nothing as compared” to what might have been the impact of an eventual world revolution.