Let's talk about the main thing

Before the events on Bolotnaya Square, Vladimir Putin knew well how to talk to people, and entertained them with aphorisms for 12 years. During this election campaign, he had to conduct a dialogue with “angry” Russians. How did the prime minister persuade us to elect him president for the third time?

The apotheosis of the past election campaign of Vladimir Putin’s headquarters was his speech in Luzhniki, when the speech in front of a crowd of 130 thousand was not a self-confident leader who is not afraid of a harsh word, but a former president who, with a tear in his voice, asked the people for a new credit of trust. "Do we love Russia?" — he asked the stadium several times, as if the answer “Yes” meant the crowd’s declaration of love for him personally.

Reducing a propaganda speech to a call to join the fight for Russia, like the miraculous heroes of Mikhail Lermontov in the Battle of Borodino, was a technique on the verge of a foul. In this regard, the saying “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel” comes to mind. From the prime minister’s phrase: “We are a victorious people. It’s in our genes... We will win now,” it follows that it is in our genes (that is, all Russians) that we must ensure Putin’s victory in the elections. The military metaphor tends to impose confrontational stereotypes of problem solving on society. Putin asks those who are not part of the army of his supporters not to look beyond the hill, otherwise this is tantamount to treason. According to the research of linguist K. de Landscher, the use of metaphors in politics is a sign of crisis thinking. The military metaphor that Putin resorts to should be considered an indicator of social tension. He began mobilizing Russians back in May last year, creating the All-Russian Popular Front.

However, the most interesting thing about his speech was the addressee. One got the impression that these were not state employees, members of trade unions who made up the bulk of the audience, but a simple man from the Russian classics. He called on both “the big boss and the ordinary citizen” to “live in truth, according to conscience,” “not to run to the left, to the side,” and talked about “our problems,” including “injustice, bribery, rudeness of officials.” The choice of such words can be explained by Putin’s desire to reach those very “genes” at the bottom of which the Russian mentality lies.

Dialogue with a stadium-sized crowd is a new form of speech for Putin. Before Luzhniki, he entered the boxing ring at the Olimpiysky to congratulate Russian Fedor Emelianenko, who defeated Jeff Monson. Then, let us recall, according to one version, the prime minister was booed. Also an extremely unusual platform for him is newspaper publications. He translated the dialogue with the opposition, which the protesters on Bolotnaya Square and Sakharov Avenue demanded, into written form. “This article is an invitation to such a dialogue,” Putin wrote in the article “Russia is Concentrating – Challenges We Must Respond to.” In the article “On Our Economic Tasks,” he indicated one of the recipients—“especially for representatives of the opposition.” Every week after the New Year holidays, Russian newspapers published his election articles, which replaced the candidate’s participation in television debates.

In the prime minister's publications, Putin's referents preserved the traditional content, composition and some speech techniques for his speeches. As before his last presidential election, Putin warned in articles about "serious threats." This time, among the first challenges is “the desire of some of Russia’s elites to make a breakthrough, to revolution.” As follows from the author’s words, on the eve of the elections there were more external and internal threats than ever before. He made it clear that only with him the country could successfully cope with challenges and maintain stability. Putin’s classic answer, containing the history of the issue, the known state of affairs, supported by figures, and an understanding of what it should be, has already become the basis for the birth of jokes. Talk about “one of the highest rates of economic growth in the world,” about reducing poverty, growing incomes of Russians, overcoming the crisis, a multipolar world, Russian sovereignty, “the broken ridge of terrorism,” “restoring the territorial integrity of the country” wander from one Putin’s speech to another . Moreover, he still returns to the starting point, comparing the results of his reign with the state of affairs in the country after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Ever since the first election campaign (starting with the programmatic article “Russia at the turn of the millennium”), Putin has been parasitizing on the ideas of the strong hand of the head of state, the consolidation of society and high patriotism. The calculation is obviously this: frequent mention of “great history” and “strong power”, the use of expressions “hard answer”, “clearly”, “specifically” should keep around him the electorate that he won when he came to power.

The fundamental feature of Putin’s speeches is the narration on behalf of a certain “we”, and in some cases he and all Russians are meant, in others he and his “like-minded people”, members of the team. An unambiguous message that I am all Russians, that “we” have the same goals and objectives and the same responsibility.

It is noteworthy that Putin’s characteristic speech is most recognizable in the excerpt of the article “On our economic tasks” under the heading “Where can I get capital?” — the author noticeably perked up here. So, here there is a popular phraseology that is replete with Putin’s oral speech - “they will pay off handsomely”, and a word characteristic of his colloquial vocabulary is “cheap”. The word "wiseguys" is used to describe people with whom he disagrees. When it comes to the negative experience of Russian politics during his reign, he avoids words with a negative connotation: “Today we see what was done successfully, what worked effectively. And vice versa, what needs to be adjusted.” There are also expressions from his vocabulary - “suppress competitors”, “clear the field for business”, “it is necessary to make concrete proposals in this regard by the end of this year.” In addition, those who are sure that Putin did not participate in writing the articles may doubt this after the phrase in the article “Democracy and the Quality of the State”: “We are with Dmitry Medvedev, working as the president of the country.”

Putin’s sympathy for the monarchical system and the idea of ​​God’s chosen head of the Russian state was manifested in a passage from an article on democracy, where the author talks about corruption. It mentions a conversation between Nicholas I and Benckendorf, “in which the tsar threatened to “eradicate bribery with a hot iron,” to which he received the answer: “Who will you stay with, sir?” To Benckendorf’s question, Putin undertook to answer: “We know who we’ll stay with.” Thus, a historical parallel is drawn in which he is compared with the sovereign.

The articles contained examples of the most common Putin metaphor - anthropomorphic, when the world is likened to the human body - “the nerve of democracy”, “hands of the authorities”, “paralysis of enterprises”, “reanimate the state”. He will apply the categories of morality to politics and business - “shamelessly using the state,” “unscrupulous behavior of entrepreneurs,” “deceiving the state.” We can conclude that he personifies all political phenomena, considers them as the result of the activities of specific people who correspond or do not correspond to his value system.

Thus, today Putin speaks in general the same way as four years ago, his speech demonstrates that Putin in version number two, which his press secretary Dmitry Peskov predicted, should not be expected. Words such as “dialogue”, “discussion”, “discussion” appeared in his vocabulary. Today, such expressions of his about dispersing rallies would no longer be appropriate: “Where it’s not allowed, they hit you on the head with a club. You can’t? Have you come? Get it, you’ve been sold,” “decorously, clattering their hooves, they retired towards the sea” (August 2010). However, at a meeting with political scientists in early February, he made it clear what significance such words had for him: “Legislative decisions were needed there, which had to be made, of course, professionally, but without unnecessary chatter and without politicization. And with the help of United Russia "We managed to do it."