Pushkin Institute Says Russia’s Word of the Year is ‘Victory;’ Russian People Say It is ‘Anxiety’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 7 – At the end of October, the Pushkin Institute declared that Russia’s word of the year was “victory,” a decision that beyond any doubt conformed to the wishes of the Kremlin. But now, a poll shows that the Russian people believe say that the real word of the year for them is “anxiety.”

            More than a third of Russians told a poll conducted jointly by the Lingua Company, the World and Education publisher and the Skvortso Reading project that “anxiety” should be listed as word of the year, far outpacing all others, including “victory” (nazaccent.ru/content/44898-slovom-goda-po-itogam-narodnogo-golosovaniya-stalo-trevozhnost/).

            Such declarations and surveys are hardly scientific, but it is striking that the preferred choice of Russians is so different from what the Russian government clearly prefers, yet another indication that when polls are crafted so that answers are not explicitly anti-Kremlin, Russians are quite ready to indicate how much at odds with the regime they really are.