Paul Goble
Staunton, Nov. 4 – Since Vladimir Putin launched his expanded war against Ukraine, Tatyana Shakhmatova says, “the Russian language has added new words and meaning via ‘the usurpation’ of both by the supporters of the war and their opponents, a process that simultaneously reflects changes in society and produces them.
The use of the Latin script “V” and “Z” in place of Cyrillic letters to underscore support for the war effort is the clearest example of this, the philologist who works at EKSMO Publishers says. But it is far from the only one that is dividing Russians and making their future return to greater community far more problematic (idelreal.org/a/32093682.html).
Also significant is the introduction of new meanings for old terms like “fascism won’t pass” and “no to war” and even of the titles of classics like Tolstoy’s War and Peace or Biblical injunctions “thou shalt not kill.” Those who back the war accept one meaning; those who oppose it give these terms a very different one.
But this process creates a set of palimpsests in which the original meaning remains below the surface, opening the way for rapid and even unpredictable shifts on terms as basic as “we” and “they,” Shakhmatova says, especially since all this is part of “the weaponization” of language by the regime and its opponents.
She points out that even “the monumental categories ‘we’ and ‘they’ work only when the discourse of propaganda is more or less stable.” That was true between the invasion and the declaration of partial mobilization, but the latter action had the effect of “sharply changing” who supporters and opponents of the war included in each category.
Overcoming these linguistic divides and the deeper social and political divides they reflect and cause is going to be difficult, the philologist says, because these usurpations have taken place in wartime and each side has become especially intolerant of the other and even of any dissent within its own ranks.
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