Наши в Украине, Ваши на Украине

 [Ours in Ukraine, Yours in Ukraine]

The semantic weight of letters and prepositions

In our winter issue, we addressed the linguistic codes that Russians use to signal their political position without being too explicit. That discussion involved words and phrases. But in our heightened state of tension, we Russians have continued to fine tune our hearing to pick up on the subtlest aspects of language – down to the level of suffixes and prepositions. Earlier this year, for example, it came to our attention that the government had strong opinions about feminitives – the suffixes (most commonly -ка or -ица) that identify members of a particular profession as female. Feminine endings on professional designations have long been common for certain jobs such as журнали́стка (journalist) or проводни́ца (train conductor), but others are being treated as insidious neologisms, such as режиссёрка (film/theater director) and психологи́ня (psychologist), terms that have come into fashion among liberal Russians.

Pretty much everyone knows that you’re not supposed to call the current war a war (even if President Putin himself and his press secretary Dmitry Peskov have started dropping the W-word on occasion), but what about other words? How can we avoid making a slip of the tongue that brings a police search team to our home? Here’s a primer on the safe use of the Russian language, right down to individual letters.

“В УКРАИНЕ” VERSUS “НА УКРАИНЕ”

A classic example of a subtle difference with big implications is the case of the locative preposition used for Ukraine. For centuries, the norm in Russian has been to use the preposition на in reference to Ukraine, and this is still the preposition used by Russian officialdom. But usually, when we talk about being “in” (or going “to”) a country, we would use в – “в Амéрике” (в Америку), “в Казахстáне” (в Казахстан) (in/to America, in/to Kazakhstan). On the other hand, when we talk about some territory that is not an independent country or part thereof, we would use на, as in “на зáпаде” (in the west). The word Украи́на (Ukraine) is etymologically tied to the word “окрáина” – an area on the outskirts of some sovereign entity. So the formulation “поéхать на Украи́ну” (to go to/in Ukraine) has lexical and semantic parallels with поéхать на юг Росси́и (to go to the south of Russia) or поéхать на окрáину” (to go to the borderlands/outskirts [of Russia]), as in “to go to an outlying area of something that is a real country or empire.”

The preposition debate has been going on for some time, but it came to the fore in 2014, when Ukrainians started insisting on the use of the preposition в in recognition of the country’s sovereignty. At first, even Russia’s liberal media stuck with the familiar на formulation, but soon it became clear that the preposition proposition was as fundamentally important as the distinction between “аннéксия Кры́ма” (the annexation of Crimea) and “присоединéние Кры́ма” (присоединение is also often translated as “annexation” or “incorporation,” but its etymology suggests joining or merging and this is the term used by the Russian government and pro-government media). “Аннексия” implies the criminal usurping of another country’s territory (престу́пный захвáт чужóй территóрии) whereas “присоединение” sounds more like the legal return of rightfully possessed lands (закóнное возвращéние принадлежáщей по прáву земли́). Most Russians continue to say “на Украи́не” out of habit, although politically-attuned and oppositionist Russians consider it their duty to switch to the preposition в.[1]

The different ways in which Russians refer to other former Soviet republics is somewhat analogous, such as “Белорусси́я” versus “Белару́сь” (Belorussia/Belarus) and “Кирги́зия” versus “Кыргызстáн” (Kirgizia/Kyrgyzstan), where the former is the standard Russified term used during the Soviet period and the latter is the term used within the given country. Using “Belarus,” “Kyrgyzstan,” and the в preposition for Ukraine recognizes the sovereignty of the former Soviet republics and their right to freedom from Kremlin control. At this point there is no legal prohibition against using the indigenous forms, but the choice of “Kyrgyzstan” over “Kirgizia” in public, for example, could attract unwanted attention from the authorities and lead to unpredictable consequences.

“директорка” versus “директор”

A new wave of feminism swept Russia in the 2010s. Russian feminists were not just after equal rights: they saw themselves as a political force, and suffixes were on their agenda. For many, the question of feminitives – the suffixes feminizing the names of various professions – became a heated political issue (see “Feminized Job Titles Should Be a Shooting Offense,” Russian Life, November/December 2020).

In some cases – say, “учи́тель” (male for teacher) versus “учи́тельница” (female) – there’s really no debate, since the feminine form has long existed, although the masculine form was used when discussing educators in general and had a more respectful ring to it. But in others, the feminine form sounded rather strange, at least at first. And in certain historical contexts, some had developed rather negative connotations. One example is “поэтéсса” or “поэ́тка” (poetess), which in contrast with “poet” hints at lightminded dilettantism.

The debate over whether these feminine job titles should be adopted raged on for years. Then came 2022 and the meme “покá мы спóрили о феминити́вах” (while we were arguing about feminitives) started to circulate on liberal social media. This was a jab at some members of the intellectual elite who had spent too much time worrying about their self-development and linguistic subtleties and not enough worrying about how less privileged people were living. While they were reading their books, attending their art exhibitions, and discussing the niceties of gender-affirming grammar, there was a whole society removed from these conversations that was ready to go kill people just like them in the country next door.

However, recent events have shown that the debate over feminitives has real-world relevance. In late January, journalists managed to get access to the judgment the Russian Supreme Court issued the previous November affixing the “extremist organization” label to the international LGBT+ movement (as if any such “organization” exists!). The ruling contained the following sentence: “The movement’s members are united by certain morals, customs, and traditions (such as gay parades), a similar lifestyle (in particular, the manner of choosing sexual partners), general interests and needs, a specific language (the use of potential feminitive words, such as руководи́тельница, дирéкторка [both feminine forms of the word for “director”], áвторка [as opposed to the male áвтор or author], психологи́ня [female psychologist])”. In other words, adding feminizing suffixes to grammatically masculine professional designations – using “психологи́ня” for a female psychologist or “редáкторка” for a female editor – would not only signal an oppositionist mindset but violate Russian law. Whether or not people will actually be prosecuted for extremism for doing so is not yet clear. As of this writing there have been no such legal actions.

“За мир” versus “Za мир”

We will not delve into the question of why Russia’s Ministry of Defense chose the Latin letters Z and V as symbols of support for the war against Ukraine – explaining that weird choice would take an article of its own. Suffice it to note that, by now, substituting these Latin letters for their Cyrillic counterparts з and в (and putting them in upper case) is a sure sign that the writing in question is the work of a “z-патриóт” (usually pronounced as zed patriot).

For example, the phrase “я за мир” (I’m for peace) is somewhat ambiguous, since, on one hand, it represents a call for an end to the war, but on the other, it’s a phrase that often crops up in Russian propaganda to express the hypocritical idea that “We’re for peace, which is why we’re fighting.” To understand where someone using this phrase is coming from, it helps to see how it’s written. If, instead of the Cyrillic з, we have a capitalized Latin Z, you’re dealing with someone ready to kill in the name of peace. There’s a similar situation with the СВО acronym (for Специáльная Воéнная Оперáция) – the so-called Special Military Operation. Hearing someone refer to the war this way doesn’t tell you whether the speaker supports official rhetoric or is using this euphemism just to stay out of trouble. But if you see it written as СVО, you know where the writer stands.

Officials work hard to demonstrate their loyalty, coming up with all sorts of slogans and formulations incorporating these symbolic letters. Using the Latin Z or V can turn the most innocuous of phrase into an expression of rah-rah patriotism: an innocent call to “вы́полнить задáчу” (fulfill the objective) turns into “Vы́полнить Zадáчу” (the rough equivalent of “wipe Ukraine off the face of the earth”). In March of 2022, the governor of Kemerovo Oblast, more commonly referred to as Kuzbass (based on the Kuznetsk Basin coal deposits it overlaps), called for the region to be henceforth designated “КуZбасс”.

СВОи versus свои

Sometimes you don’t even need to change a single letter to change a word’s meaning – you just have to write it a bit differently. For example, if you take the hard-to-translate pronoun “свои́” (our own, our guys, our dear ones) and capitalize the first three letters, you now have the Z-patriotic “СВОи”, combining the acronym for the Special Military Operation with this common word to refer to anything from “нáша áрмия” (our army) to “нáши лю́ди” (our people) or “нáша стрáна” (our country).

Meanwhile, on the Ukrainian internet, the practice has taken root of not only refraining from capitalizing proper nouns associated with Russian statehood, but even putting the initial letter in a smaller font size: росси́йская импéрия (the Russian Empire), москвá (Moscow). In the fall of 2023, a Ukrainian linguistic commission even recognized the practice of not capitalizing such proper nouns (albeit not in official documents and not reducing the font size).

“наши” versus “ваши”

Pronouns generally require special care. Turns out that when the state stubbornly divides the world into “СВОи́” и “чужи́е” (our folks and the others/outsiders – чужóй has always been pejorative), you can accidentally look like you’re in the wrong camp. A number of oppositionist newscasters and public figures have gotten themselves in hot water by referring to the Russian Army as “нáша áрмия” (our army). In principle, if you are a citizen of Russia, the Russian Army is indeed your army. But in the current context, referring to it with a first-person plural possessive pronoun could be interpreted as support for what that army is currently doing.

The now ubiquitous meme “нáши мáльчики” (our boys) has taken on some complicated semantic baggage, since it is usually used by people who are far from enthusiastic about the invasion but openly express sympathy for the men who’ve found themselves at the front and feel that they should be protected and helped, which means supporting the war effort, so long as it’s been started.

Another problematic pronoun is “мы” (we). If you make a general statement such as “мы бои́мся репрéссий” (we are afraid of repression), “мы не поддéрживаем войну́” (we don’t support the war), or “мы живём так-то и так-то” (we are living this or that way), it’s not at all clear who you are including in that мы – all Russians or just some specific subset?

“мышебратья” versus “мы_же_братья”

The subtle mangling and phonetic slurring of words and catchphrases for ironic effect has created another category of language that has to be navigated with care. The rather silly мы́шебрáтья (literally mouse brothers) is a play on the Z-patriot slogan “мы́ же брáтья!” (We’re brothers, after all!), referring of course to the Russian and Ukrainian people, who are feeling oh so much brotherly love these days. The subtle shift in this case has to do with the Russian language’s voiced and voiceless consonant pairs, including ж and ш. A simple disengagement of the vocal cords turns ж into ш and a patriotic catchphrase into a mockery.

A similar slurring and devoicing of the letter д turns the propagandistic catchphrase “оди́н нарóд” (one people, as in Russia and Ukraine) into “адиннарóт”, a rather disrespectful word with obscene connotations that won’t be explained here. Suffice it to say that рот is the Russian word for mouth.

A darker but masterful play on words is the transformation of “изнаси́лование” (rape) into “изросси́лование”, with the underscored letters being the first four in the word Росси́я (Russia), implying “rape by means of Russia.” In 2023, street artist Philippenzo congratulated his compatriots on Russia Day (June 12) by inscribing this word (topped by Russia’s two-headed-eagle coat of arms) on the foundation of a Moscow bridge. Already known for his protest graffiti art, Philippenzo swiftly left the country, but the neologism he coined remains.

The best-known war-related play on words by means of a single letter switch is the word “мóгилизация”, which replaces the third letter in мóбилизация (mobilization) to coin this new word, based on моги́ла or grave, turning the process by which Russia fills the ranks of its army into the process by which a shocking number of those men are buried in the ground (see “Endless February,” Russian Life, spring 2023). Be careful with this one: replacing the б with the г could earn you a charge of “discrediting” the Russian Army, earning you a fine for the first offense and a criminal conviction for the second.

Over the past two years, many red-hot neologisms have been bubbling up out of the seething lava of wartime linguistic reality. Our next column will be devoted to some of the most intriguing among them.

[1] The Russian-language preposition debate has parallels in and helps explain the switch in English from “the Ukraine” (which hints at “the borderland of…”) to simply “Ukraine,” placing the country among the vast majority of sovereign states that do not require a definite article.