Russian doublespeak is alive and well – witness this Sergei Mironov quote published by RIA Novosti:
Sergei Mironov, speaker of
the Federation Council (Russian parliament’s upper house), does not
regard the latest developments in Kyrgyzstan as a revolution.In his opinion, the people whose interests
had long been ignored were driven to despair and simply had to take to
the streets in protest.
Hmm, so what exactly is a revolution, Mr Mironov?
Oh, and in case you were wondering about the whereabouts of Askar Akayev, ex-President of Kyrgyzstan, according to source that was reliable enough for Interfax to believe, he’s in Moscow, via Kazakhstan and the Urals:
"Akayev arrived by plane from Kazakhstan last night," the source
said.Akayev’s plane landed in Moscow, the source said. "On the way from
Kazakhstan, Akayev’s plane made a stopover in the Urals area," he said
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‘Revolution’ has very bad connotations in Russian. Loot, rape, ‘heads on pikes’, etc. The breaking of an old regime leading to the establishment of a new tyranny, much more bloody than the previous one.
Most probably Mironov, in his clumsy manner, wanted to say it’s a ‘good’ revolution.
Yes, a lot of things like this get lost in the translation, not just because of the difference in the words themselves, but because of the different connotations words have in different societies.
Although Mironov’s comment actually seems to me to underscore an important point about the different ways Russia and the US (or at least, the pro-democracy blogosphere) see the Kyrgyz ‘revolution’.
For people looking for a flowering of democracy in Central Asia there is a temptation to see what has happened in Kyrgyzstan as a real revolution, one that will not just change one government for another, but one that will bring a whole new democratic political culture to the region.
Wheras for many in Russia, and specifically the Russian government, there is much more of a need to see this as a simple change of government. If the new government is essentially underpinned by the same principles as the last, just with different faces at the top, it means that relations with Kyrgyzstan will remain much the same as before. A situation far less threatening than a fully fledged ‘revolution’.
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