Maxim Sokolov
The Prime Minister is known to be allergic to the word "crisis." In fact, he admitted that much the other day: "We must get our terminology straight. I would like to say that many use the word ‘crisis' very loosely. It has affected the world financial system, while Russia is experiencing its consequences. The source of the problem should be traced to the US, where the collapsed system was born. The waves of that collapse are reaching us."
Few would challenge that the problem was triggered by the financial bubble in the world, and in the American market first and foremost. So far, this view has been challenged only by Mr Putin's former economic adviser Andrei Illarionov, who has argued that Russia experienced all the horrors of the crisis - "richly deserved fruit of ill practices" - while in the U.S., it was just ripples on the water. He later abandoned that concept and admitted that America, too, was in a crisis. It was not for nothing that it was called a world crisis, since it affected everyone.
Undoubtedly, it is important to identify the source, but that is not enough. The great plague of the 14th century, which cut the European population by half, started in Asia, but that didn't make things any easier for the French King or the German Emperor. Wherever the plague originated from, as of 1349, it was wreaking havoc on their subjects and that, rather than the Asian origin of the plague, was the most important fact at the moment. Even if one could have imposed a quarantine on the source of the epidemic (which has been and is unrealistic) it would have been of little help, since the disease had already spread throughout the world.
Speaking of the use of terms, loose or careless language is totally inappropriate when discussing such a serious and dangerous phenomenon, and should be condemned, but cleaning up the lexicon does not get you very far. The Soviet experience offers proof of this point.
In the U.S.S.R., official political vocabulary was very carefully selected, sometimes with amazing ingenuity. During the unrest in the GDR in June 1953, which was accompanied by strikes (obviously a word that could not be used at the time since, by definition, there could be no strikes in the first state of the workers and peasants on German land), Soviet newspapers wrote: "The Rigmarole Continues." However, the U.S.S.R. was not the trailblazer in this matter. Another country described a military retreat as "an elastic straightening of the frontline," and even in the citadel of democracy, the words "crisis" and "depression" have been studiously avoided, not even being mentioned in the future tense or the subjunctive mood. Instead, they have been replaced by euphemisms that do not carry such odious and unambiguous historical analogies. The verbal prudery of American leaders and analysts does not seem to have helped.
Part of it has to do with the nature of language. First, language tends to be economical, so that the two-syllable word "crisis" is sure to be preferred to the "fallout from the American meltdown". Second, language works on the basis of replacement. The loss (or ban) of a certain word that designates an unpleasant or indecent object, and its replacement with a euphemism result in these euphemisms quickly becoming indecent and scary themselves. For example, consider the various words for lavatory or the devil. There is no reason to believe that the designation of the world crisis will not suffer the same fate as the designation of "lavatory".
Granted, the crisis has something to do with irresponsibility, but it does not consist in the use of the word, but rather in the way the media gloats over any reports of crisis phenomena: "Here it comes, what did we tell you?" (translation: "We have been waiting for it for a long time.") Provoking a panic is bad, but it cannot be kept at bay by banning a word.
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