Aleksandra Samarina
The Prime Minister is watching his language, while Medvedev is becoming increasingly outspoken
I recall how Russians were stunned early on in Putin's presidency when he used the expression "we'll waste them in the shithouse." It signalled the start of the invasion of street slang into Russian political vocabulary. Encouraged by the popular masses, the President made a point of peppering his speech with vernacular expressions. He did not care whether he was addressing home or foreign audiences: let the translators figure it out. The translators struggled indeed. They tried to fit his Russian vernacular into the framework of Western political correctness. The result was lamentable, with Putin triumphing over political correctness.
Foreigners were not the only ones who fell victim to Putin. On one occasion, our harassed translators rendered Putin's words about high-profile billionaires in the following way: "You should obey the law always, and not only when they grab your rear part." The Daily Telegraph was more forthright in its translation. The chances are that if Russians studied English better at school and read the foreign press, they would have admired their President even more. However, his reference to "a certain body part" was probably enough.
Putin was artistic. He never went over the top. He had a sense of proportion. Two or three "vernacular expressions" were enough for these expressions to be widely quoted the following day, while the commonplace statements and impossible promises contained in the texts written by his diligent speechwriters attracted much less attention.
People were proud of their President. It was a special kind of pride, akin to the pride of the voters in California when the "Terminator" won the election. However, Putin pursued a very pragmatic goal. A couple of words could endear him to entire social strata. When the Government was contemplating cutting social benefits for the military, he responded swiftly: "There will be no experiments there. Let them experiment on rats". After that, retired servicemen, who had always held the President in high regard, came to regard him as a guru. And they were not the only ones: teachers, doctors and other public sector employees found solace in the President's remark: "We are not rats..."
When Dmitry Medvedev became President he was faced with a dilemma. He could stick to his image of a soft-spoken intellectual ruler committed to the rule of law for whom "freedom is better than non-freedom," holding out a promise of a liberal Russia. However, the electorate looked forward to a sequel to the soap opera.
Vladimir Putin, preoccupied with his chores as Prime Minister, the impending crisis and the party that he patronised, had less and less inclination to use snappy and vulgar expressions. People have been watching the new leader more and more closely. With a sigh, Medvedev cast aside illusions: he opted for a kind of language that the electorate expected him to use.
The "first spoonful" was his now famous phrase: "stop causing nightmares" for business." It went down well. That was only the beginning. Addressing the entrepreneurs who might have taken to heart the promise to rid them of bureaucratic nightmares, he said: "I am aware that it is hard to do business and that our bureaucracy is still cumbersome, but you shouldn't whine."
Fate presented Medvedev with a chance: the war presented citizens with a new President, whose voice was subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) similar to that of his predecessor. I caught myself entertaining such an illusion on a couple of occasions. For example, when I heard him say that "President Mikhail Saakashvili does not exist; for us, he is a ‘political corpse'" and an entirely Putinesque "he was wagging his tail."
While Medvedev was building up his "streetwise" image, Vladimir Putin, who had assumed the heavy burden of running the Government, unexpectedly became more reticent in his speech. He has not given up these expressions completely, for otherwise he would not be himself, but he sounds like Dmitry Medvedev might sound if he were the head of the Government. He uses slang more sparingly. When Medvedev urged the need to change the European security structure, Putin made no comments, the reason being that the statement was vague and probably rash. After becoming Prime Minister, he gained new insight into the meaning of the word "change". He wants to work in the conditions that exist today and play according to present-day rules. He wants to be aggressive, but reasonable. Whenever he uses strong language, it is usually addressed to foreign leaders for whom Russians have little sympathy: "some jerk hijacked a plane" (a reference to Yushchenko). Many of our citizens shared the opinion expressed by the Prime Minister, but, for them, it was a matter far removed from their daily concerns. They just remarked nostalgically that it had been a long time since they last heard Putin use such language.
Let us imagine for a moment that the harsh language the President used during his visit to the Far East had been used by Putin. Such behaviour would have ended the careers of the local bosses. Yet nothing happened after Medvedev's visit. Nobody believes that the gentle Medvedev could "rub somebody out". It is another matter if Putin makes the same threat in his soft voice and not necessarily before the broad public.
All this is not to say that Russian political slang is becoming history. It does not persist only because of the President. Citizens are all too ready to imitate their President; nowadays even utilities officials can be heard reacting to complaints about the lack of central heating by telling people "to stop whining." In a police precinct, when you complain that your petition filed a year ago has been lost, they might very likely tell you "whose rights are you talking about? Give me their names, safe houses and passwords." Try to file complaints against officials who regularly fine your small shop on the corner and you are likely to hear something like this: "You have the option of having your license withdrawn."
Slang is contagious. Beginning at the grassroots level, it climbed to the top of the power pyramid and found that it was welcome there. It meets people's perception of the world, as long as citizens are happy and cheerful. When people have to tighten their belts - as they will have to do it very soon - they use strong language to describe not only foreign "jerks", but also their own.
In general, it is not strong language that makes history, but dismissals, appointments, and also reforms, or at least decisions. But most of all history is made when the people themselves want to change the existing order. When a politician tries to change things at the verbal level, he must be aware that this is only the beginning, a kind of hypnosis that helps to make an operation painless. The important thing is to know where to make the incision.
Medvedev is changing. He is no longer seen "pumping flesh," and a new metamorphosis may be on the horizon. All the President has to do is become his old self, revert to his language, his thoughts and his personal baggage. Clearly, he is not a wimp.
"Our goals today include not only a qualitative upsurge of the economy, but the transformation of the entire social structure, including support for the rapidly growing middle class. This group alone can provide a solid basis for the development of democracy and for sustained development in general." These were the words Medvedev uttered in Germany last summer, and though there is no slang usage, the sentence is no less expressive.
The war in South Ossetia is becoming history, and hopefully so is the overly bellicose military rhetoric of our leaders. Perhaps as a result, those who imitate them will likewise become less bellicose.
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While Medvedev has been learning slang, Putin has become more reserved in using strong language.
