Paul Goble
Staunton, Nov. 21 – According to the new Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language prepared by the University of St. Petersburg under the direction of the Russian government, a constitution is “not the fundamental law” of a country and authoritarianism is the best form of government in difficult times.
The new dictionary, which replaces the one released in 2000 just after Putin came to power, explicitly reflects his defense of traditional Russian values, involved the Russian Orthodox Church, and drops words like gulag which had been included in the earlier edition (ru.thebarentsobserver.com/slovar-tradicionnyh-cennostej-kak-kreml-perepisyvaet-russkij-azyk/441006).
An electronic version of the book is already (publishing.spbu.ru/catalog/novinki/tolkovyy_slovar_gosudarstvennogo_yazyka_rossiyskoy_federatsii_v_2_tomakh/) and hard copies will be available soon at 2600 rubles (26 US dollars) each. And the book is intended in the first instance as a guide for officials doing their work.
But both the definitions it provides – and there are thousands of new ones – and the examples it offers in support of them – and there are even more – are certain to affect teaching and thus the values inculcated in the younger generation and thus have an impact far exceeding what many might expect a dictionary to have.
Of course, the new dictionary’s influence may not be exactly what its authors and their Kremlin backers hope. Russians are unlikely to give up the curse words that the dictionary doesn’t include, and many of them may not accept the definitions and examples it gives as the only reasonable ones.
To give only one example of the latter: the dictionary asserts that life begins at conception. That is the view of the ROC MP, but it is not the view of many Russians, including not only those who get abortions but also the much larger number who believe that such operations are justified practically and even morally.
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