BOB GARFIELD: Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law a bill that will require popular Russian bloggers to register themselves with the government. Stripped of their anonymity, they’ll be subject to the same increasingly Draconian laws that govern the country’s newspapers and television. Putin’s justification, that the internet is little more than a long-running CIA project.
But the crackdown against polluting influences does not end there. Last week, Putin also signed a law prohibiting swearing in public performances, as well as films and television, but why? To reckon with this question, says New Yorker Editor-in-Chief David Remnick, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lenin’s Tomb, first you have to understand that the vulgarities at issue are part of a shadow language that runs deep in Russian culture. David, welcome back to OTM.
DAVID REMNICK: It’s great to be here.
BOB GARFIELD: The shadow language is called Mat. Tell me about Mat.
DAVID REMNICK: We have cursing; every language has cursing and – or obscenity, or whatever you want to call it. Russian Mat is that much dirtier, that much nastier. A lot of the roots come from prison language, but everybody knows these words. And Mat is built around four basic words, the verb of copulation, the male organ, the female organ and a nastier version of “prostitute.” And the permutations of it, the ways to fiddle around with them grammatically and with prefixes and suffixes and parts of speech is so creative that in a lot of literary texts it's the source of a singular fascination.
BOB GARFIELD: And, by the way, it has roots going back to like the 18th century?
DAVID REMNICK: It finds its way into Pushkin, It finds its way into Lermontov. Look, it's not as if school teachers are using in their everyday speech in class in the third grade, and my Russian friends, if I ever make the mistake of using a word like this, they will blush, for two reasons. One, invariably, I will slightly misuse it and then, therefore, it's embarrassing because they know me but also the texture of ‘em is just that much rougher and more obscene. I don't mean to be Russian chauvinist [LAUGHS] about this, but we’ve got nothing on the Russian language when it comes to this kind of shadow language. BOB GARFIELD: So how do you prosecute Pussy Riot or some movie director or a blogger or a writer for using a phrase that has been – applied by Pushkin and Lermontov? How do you square that circle?
DAVID REMNICK: Well, because you don't have to. You don't have real rule of law in Russia. You just make it up as you go along, and everybody knows what the Kremlin wants. It's not as if the original trial for Pussy Riot was held under some rule of law that you and I would recognize. Now they can just say, you're using the word “pussy” and that’s [LAUGHS] the pretext.
BOB GARFIELD: Among the things that anti-profanity laws are reminiscent of is the Soviet Union, when precisely such laws were in place. Is another dimension of this Putin’s creation of a nostalgia for Mother USSR?
DAVID REMNICK: There's a kind of creation of an anti-Westernism that is not only a matter of foreign affairs, it’s also a kind of – a setting of a moral difference, saying, we are not like the vapid West, we are not morally dissolute. We are no longer going to allow this kind of stream of obscenity into our cultural lives, into our media lives. We are going to set limits. And it's for this reason that conservatives, even in this country, like Pat Buchanan, can ask themselves, is Vladimir Putin one of us? And they ask it approvingly.
BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHS] Putin has some domestic issues. His moves in Crimea and in Eastern Ukraine have cost him the toll of Western sanctions, and the economy is suffering. He has political opposition, though very much suppressed, nonetheless existent, based on his increased authoritarianism. And the public, for whatever reasons, and I know they’re complicated, David, seems to still support him. I'm wondering what happens [LAUGHS] if you take away their Mat?
DAVID REMNICK: Well, people are still gonna use it in speech. It's just a vivid detail in this ominous wave of events, legislation and moves. Why is it all happening? Well, what does a president do to maintain a very, very high popularity rate or, or increase it? You begin a policy of foreign adventure, the rousing of patriotism, chauvinism, xenophobia, and you start formulating this kind of highly conservative reactionary policy at home. So the cursing is, again, it's, it's fun to, to, to read about. It’s there to lay down a pretext.
In other words, 99 percent of the time if people use these words, even in public, nobody’s gonna care. But if somebody that the Putin regime wants to find a pretext to arrest, to fine, to make trouble for, here’s a handy excuse.
BOB GARFIELD: I have a comment but I can't say it in Russian, for fear of Putin, and I can’t say it in English, for fear of the [LAUGHS] Federal Communications Commission.
[LAUGHTER]
But David, thank you so much.
DAVID REMNICK: [LAUGHS] Thank you very much.
BOB GARFIELD: David Remnick is the editor-in-chief of the New Yorker Magazine.
BOB GARFIELD: Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law a bill that will require popular Russian bloggers to register themselves with the government. Stripped of their anonymity, they’ll be subject to the same increasingly Draconian laws that govern the country’s newspapers and television. Putin’s justification, that the internet is little more than a long-running CIA project.
But the crackdown against polluting influences does not end there. Last week, Putin also signed a law prohibiting swearing in public performances, as well as films and television, but why? To reckon with this question, says New Yorker Editor-in-Chief David Remnick, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lenin’s Tomb, first you have to understand that the vulgarities at issue are part of a shadow language that runs deep in Russian culture. David, welcome back to OTM.
DAVID REMNICK: It’s great to be here.
BOB GARFIELD: The shadow language is called Mat. Tell me about Mat.
DAVID REMNICK: We have cursing; every language has cursing and – or obscenity, or whatever you want to call it. Russian Mat is that much dirtier, that much nastier. A lot of the roots come from prison language, but everybody knows these words. And Mat is built around four basic words, the verb of copulation, the male organ, the female organ and a nastier version of “prostitute.” And the permutations of it, the ways to fiddle around with them grammatically and with prefixes and suffixes and parts of speech is so creative that in a lot of literary texts it's the source of a singular fascination.
BOB GARFIELD: And, by the way, it has roots going back to like the 18th century?
DAVID REMNICK: It finds its way into Pushkin, It finds its way into Lermontov. Look, it's not as if school teachers are using in their everyday speech in class in the third grade, and my Russian friends, if I ever make the mistake of using a word like this, they will blush, for two reasons. One, invariably, I will slightly misuse it and then, therefore, it's embarrassing because they know me but also the texture of ‘em is just that much rougher and more obscene. I don't mean to be Russian chauvinist [LAUGHS] about this, but we’ve got nothing on the Russian language when it comes to this kind of shadow language. BOB GARFIELD: So how do you prosecute Pussy Riot or some movie director or a blogger or a writer for using a phrase that has been – applied by Pushkin and Lermontov? How do you square that circle?
DAVID REMNICK: Well, because you don't have to. You don't have real rule of law in Russia. You just make it up as you go along, and everybody knows what the Kremlin wants. It's not as if the original trial for Pussy Riot was held under some rule of law that you and I would recognize. Now they can just say, you're using the word “pussy” and that’s [LAUGHS] the pretext.
BOB GARFIELD: Among the things that anti-profanity laws are reminiscent of is the Soviet Union, when precisely such laws were in place. Is another dimension of this Putin’s creation of a nostalgia for Mother USSR?
DAVID REMNICK: There's a kind of creation of an anti-Westernism that is not only a matter of foreign affairs, it’s also a kind of – a setting of a moral difference, saying, we are not like the vapid West, we are not morally dissolute. We are no longer going to allow this kind of stream of obscenity into our cultural lives, into our media lives. We are going to set limits. And it's for this reason that conservatives, even in this country, like Pat Buchanan, can ask themselves, is Vladimir Putin one of us? And they ask it approvingly.
BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHS] Putin has some domestic issues. His moves in Crimea and in Eastern Ukraine have cost him the toll of Western sanctions, and the economy is suffering. He has political opposition, though very much suppressed, nonetheless existent, based on his increased authoritarianism. And the public, for whatever reasons, and I know they’re complicated, David, seems to still support him. I'm wondering what happens [LAUGHS] if you take away their Mat?
DAVID REMNICK: Well, people are still gonna use it in speech. It's just a vivid detail in this ominous wave of events, legislation and moves. Why is it all happening? Well, what does a president do to maintain a very, very high popularity rate or, or increase it? You begin a policy of foreign adventure, the rousing of patriotism, chauvinism, xenophobia, and you start formulating this kind of highly conservative reactionary policy at home. So the cursing is, again, it's, it's fun to, to, to read about. It’s there to lay down a pretext.
In other words, 99 percent of the time if people use these words, even in public, nobody’s gonna care. But if somebody that the Putin regime wants to find a pretext to arrest, to fine, to make trouble for, here’s a handy excuse.
BOB GARFIELD: I have a comment but I can't say it in Russian, for fear of Putin, and I can’t say it in English, for fear of the [LAUGHS] Federal Communications Commission.
[LAUGHTER]
But David, thank you so much.
DAVID REMNICK: [LAUGHS] Thank you very much.
BOB GARFIELD: David Remnick is the editor-in-chief of the New Yorker Magazine.
