Linguistic Highlights of the Putin Presidency. By Michele A. Berdy.

[Elena Gapova]

Charles,

I also think that the author has a keen ear (or eye) and is very witty, but
I would disgaree with "my theory is that he owes his great popularity with
the Russian public to the way he speaks. He's the first Russian president
who sounds like the guy next door".

Some presidents definitely have a special relationship with their tongues.
When Alexandar Lukashenka  was elected president of Belarus in 1994, he (a
countryside dweller with "typical" education of a low-rank party
functionary) spoke "trasyanka", and people immediately recognized him as
“one of our own.” Government media began calling him “the people’s
 president”. Some of his pearls will stay with the nation forever. Once,
adressing a committee (whose work he considered unsatisfactory), he said "Я
тут вас всех буду перАтрАхивать", meaning перетряхивать (I am going to shake
you up). But being a native Belarusian and having difficulty with Russian
мягкое "р" (like in перЕтрЯхивать), which does not exist in Belarusian, he
actually said: I am going to f--- you all up. This is now a popular idiom.

Apparently, though, Lukashenka’s popularity results not from the style of
speech, but from what he says: his main point is a non-withdrawal of the
state (and him personally, as an incarnation of an “l’etat c’est moi” case)
from the social policy arena and control of resource allocation in general.
Capitalizing on fatherly concern for the people, he tries to save the
centralized system which gives him control over resource allocation. What he
really did--at least how he preached it and how it is presented in the
government media-- He paid wages, pensions and allowances, however small, He
resisted unemployment by forbidding to fire “surplus” workers or close down
bankrupt factories, He insisted on fixed prices, He “preserved” free
healthcare, paid maternity leaves and socialist welfare structure. He
distributed resources, and having a need was reason enough for getting at
least something. For the proponents of Western-type restructuring, these
values look anti-market and anti-democratic. For those who vote for them,
though, they entail social justice. (I wrote about it in more detail in “On
Nation, Gender and Class Formation in Belarus… and Elsewhere in the
Post-Soviet  World”, Nationalities Papers 30: 4, 2002.)

I think it is much the same way with Vladimir Putin.
e.g.



----- Original Message -----
From: Charles Price <charlesprice_50 at YAHOO.COM>
To: <SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU>
Sent: 18 May 2004 4:16 AM
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Linguistic Highlights of the Putin Presidency. By
Michele A. Berdy.


> Elena
>
> thanks for sending this round. I read this column re
> Russian idioms, aphorisms and word groups in the
> Moscow Times quite often and it is really excellent.
> Somebody ought to publish a collection of the articles
> - they would be very useful for advanced prose
> translation classes.
>
> CP.
>

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