Political Correctness in Russia

[Alina Israeli]

I think what is missing in Russian understanding and at times in our  
discussion is a basic definition of what PC is. I suggest PC is  
naming a person to his/her face (or those who empathize with him/her)  
in a non-offensive way. If you want to call them names in the privacy  
of your bedroom, that's up to you, just don't do it to their face.

Why does PC exist? Very simple: the dominating groups used to (and  
sometimes still do) call all kinds of minorities all kinds of names.  
Minorities just do not want to be referred to them in a pejorative  
way. Sometimes people confuse naming a spade a spade with being  
abusive. But in this case it's the minorities that should be the  
judge: is being called "cripple" offensive or not? Is being called  
"fat" to your face offensive or not?

What evokes jokes is that people do not like the sheer mention of  
some handicap or trait and came up with the forms such as BLANK- 
challenged to refer to it euphemistically: circumferentially- 
challenged, vertically-challenged and so on. It is an easy way to  
make a joke: an idiot is intellectually-challenged, a klutz is  
balance-challenged. Just take any of shortcoming, use the opposite to  
it and add "challenged", or use the skill a person not good at and  
add "challenged" (craft-challenged). Done.


Regarding the ever changing name of the Negro-Blacks-African-American  
term in American English, this has been done in order to achieve  
respect and self-respect. Since the previous term did not bring the  
appropriate respect the new term eventually was appropriated.  
Interesting enough that it was happening approximately every 20  
years. It would be time for another term now, but instead we managed  
to overcome at least some of the stigma and elect a President who  
himself does not use any such terms, BTW.


All of the above should not be confused with the Soviet Orwellian  
language where things were called by their opposite: be it Prague  
1968 — bratskaja pomoshch' (please in this context refer to a new  
film "Zharkoe leto 68-go"), internatsional'nyj dolg (in Afghanistan)  
and so on. But faithfully to "1984" so was most everything in the  
USSR, beginning with its title Sojuz sovetskix socialisticheskix  
respublik which was neither. A dictatorship was referred to as  
demokratija, and so on. As once was said about Lillian Hellman "every  
word is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'", we could say the same  
about Soviet press (just replace "the" with any preposition or  
particle).

What I am trying to say is that that misnaming had nothing to do with  
PC. PC may exist only in a society where not just the minority in  
question find it offensive that they be called by an offensive  
moniker in their presence. As soon as the US reached a critical mass  
of people who felt offended by such language PC could take hold.

In Russia the majority has a long way to go to start feeling offended  
if a Tajik is called something in their presence. Quite the opposite,  
new terminology appears to prop up the Russians, titul'naja nacija,  
for example. Its use implies the de-facto higher status of an ethnic  
Russian.


>

Alina Israeli
LFS, American University
4400 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington DC. 20016
(202) 885-2387 	
fax (202) 885-1076
aisrael at american.edu




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