In one thuggish and vulgar phrase, a history of turmoil in Putin’s Russia
Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko. Photo by Getty Images
A video clip of Belorussian President Aleksander Lukashenko boasting about what he supposedly said to Vladimir Putin got writer Gary Shteyngart and a bunch of scholars and Russian translators talking — about Lukashenko’s crude language and what it really means.
In the clip, strongman Lukashenko brags that he supposedly talked Putin down from killing the man who recently launched an extraordinary short-lived revolt inside Russia, which Vladimir Putin called “treason” and threatened would result in quick punishment.
Prigozhin, a former hot-dog seller who rose to get lucrative Russian government catering contracts, became the leader of the Wagner Group and was a major figure in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He has now moved to Belarus, according to a report from the Associated Press. Prigozhin’s father, who died when he was an infant, was Jewish and so was his stepfather, according to The Jerusalem Post.
Of course, journalists are all over this story. Shaun Walker, a reporter for The Guardian and author of The Long Hangover: Putin’s New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past, posted a video clip of Lukashenko bragging along with an English translation.
“I said to Putin, yes we could take him out, it wouldn’t be a problem, if it doesn’t work the first time then the second. I told him: don’t do this,” Walker tweeted.
But does that translation — “take him out” — say enough?
“’Zamochit’ is closer to ‘whack’ which is pure Putin gangsta talk. Lukashenka is living his best life,” Shteyngart tweeted in response.
And then there’s the history of the term. Poet and translator Boris Dralyuk immediately heard echoes of Putin circa 1999 in Lukashenko’s word choice.
“Indeed, Putin first used the phrase “v sortire ikh zamochim” (“whack them in the latrine”) in 1999, when he was PM, in reference to the Second Chechen War. Though the use of this prisonhouse slang by a politician shocked some, it appealed to many others. It has been normalized,” Dralyuk tweeted.
But is “whack” the only way to put it?
“It could be wipe them out, it could be rub them out, beat them to a pulp. It’s thuggish,” said Sasha Senderovich, who teaches at the University of Washington and is the author of How the Soviet Jew was Made.
And it’s not that easy to translate.
“This slang word is hard to capture in English. The root word is soak. Could also translate as “rub him out,” Maria Repnikova, associate professor at Georgia State University, tweeted.
Beyond the exact meaning — “whack,” “rub him out,” “beat him to oblivion” — what matters here is how the term Lukashenko chose goes back to a crucial moment in 1999.
A complete unknown
The phrase goes back to the moment when Putin first rose to power.
“In 1999, Putin was appointed prime minister by Boris Yeltsin. One of the first things that Putin did is start the Second Chechen War,” Senderovich said.
“In the fall of 1999, there was a series of apartment bombings, including in Moscow where hundreds of people were killed. Most likely these bombings were staged by the FSB — the successor to the KGB — so that they could be blamed on Chechen terrorists. This gave Putin the ability to start the war just as he started the Ukrainian war, and to rise in prominence,” Senderovich said.
In their book The Man Without a Face, Masha Gessen describes the first bombing in what became three weeks of bombings: “The first occurred in a crowded shopping mall in the center of Moscow. One person died, and more than 30 people were injured. But it was not immediately clear that this explosion was anything more than a giant prank, or perhaps a shot fired in a business dispute,” Gessen wrote.
“Five days later, another explosion brought down a large part of an apartment block in the southern city of Buynaksk, not far from Chechnya,” wrote Gessen. “Sixty-four people were killed and 146 injured.”
At the time of the bombings, “Putin was a complete unknown,” Senderovich explained.
“No one had ever heard of Putin, and he needed to gain rapid national attention. On September 24, 1999, in a speech, he said after the apartment-building bombings, ‘we’ll find these terrorists everywhere, if we find them in the airport, we’ll get them in the airport, and if we find them in the outhouse, we’ll get them in the outhouse. We’ll pound them into nothingness.’ It’s very crude language.”
That verb for “pound” is what Lukashenko chose to use.
“And that was one of the first, if not the first, episode of that kind of language being televised,” Senderovich said.
Gessen analyzes that language in their book.
“This was the language of a leader who was planning to rule with his fist. These sorts of vulgar statements, often spiced with below-the-belt humor, would become Putin’s signature oratorical device. His popularity began to soar,” Gessen wrote.
Putin-esque language
That signature Putin-esque language, this time from Lukashenko, is what grabbed the attention of translators, scholars and novelists, all watching this morning.
“Fast forward to today,” Senderovich adds. “Here I was, listening to Radio Liberty, in Russian, and they’re reporting on this Lukashenko thing — he’s trying to present himself as a hero, as if he was the one who saved Putin.”
On social media, Lukashenko’s framing was treated with humor. Russian-language Twitter even has a meme of a smiling Lukashenko holding a phone and the words: “Better call Lukashenko.”
Lukashenko harkening back to that very famous Putin moment in 1999 is making people compare the tumultuous 1990s to right now, when Russia is clearly in crisis.
“Putin’s whole shtick — his rise to power, and later how he presented this stability as an answer to the chaos of the 1990s — it’s really fascinating to see the country descending to a worse version of that chaos because of the war in Ukraine,” Senderovich said. “So now there is the recycling of that phrase from the middle of the troubles that Putin claims he has ended. And it’s fascinating to see that phrase return at this moment.”
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