Terrain feature

So, as they say, the summer passed as if it had never happened. September came, and we noisily celebrated the anniversary of the Beslan nightmare with songs and dances, fireworks and brass bands (well, why couldn’t City Day and the celebration of the Borodino anniversary be scheduled for the next weekend?). And in August, as usual, they remembered the putsch: Yanaev’s shaking hands, Yeltsin on a tank.

And for the umpteenth time in the State Emergency Committee’s appeal I was struck by this formulation: “in certain areas of the Soviet Union.” She's kind of awkward. It is no coincidence that when this statement is retold, the word locality is usually unconsciously replaced with some other word. For some reason, I always imagined how the conspirators composed their manifesto, how they chose a word, even how they argued about emphasis in strangely shaped places.

I was wrong. That is, they may have argued about emphasis. But they simply copied the wording itself from the Law on the State of Emergency. Actually, the current Federal Constitutional Law of May 30, 2001 No. Z-FKZ says: “Article 4. Introduction of a state of emergency. 1. A state of emergency throughout the Russian Federation or in its individual localities is introduced by decree of the President of the Russian Federation" ( http://poisk-zakona.ru/151987.html ). So, if anything happens, we’ll hear about certain areas again. It is interesting that this word is used only in Art. 4, in the rest of the text the word territory appears .

So, why does the word locality look so awkward in the law on a state of emergency? How is it usually used? Well, it immediately comes to mind: cross-country running, connection to the terrain, navigating the terrain, good for rural areas. Brodsky also remembers: “This area is familiar to me, / Like the outskirts of China.” In general, terrain is a word that is, so to speak, landscape, topographic and rather natural. A terrain is not just a piece of territory of a certain area or configuration, it is a territory filled with hillocks and streams, as Gogol would say, and with a fairly homogeneous landscape. The area does not have clear boundaries, but it does have character - swampy or mountainous terrain, for example. Locality, by the way, in the old meaning is generally more of a property rather than a territory: He remembered everything, knew how to give everything a poetic shine and a stamp on the locality. [P. A. Vyazemsky. House of Ivan Ivanovich Dmitriev (1860)]. By the way, the title of my note is the title of another poem by Vyazemsky.

A locality is usually not even large or small. Although neither a too small area nor a too large region can be called a terrain. This word is not at all administrative. In this way it resembles the word place (The places there are very beautiful; Our places are remote; Forest fires are not uncommon in these places). By the way, the words locality and places are difficult to use in relation to, say, Moscow - this is related to the issue of emergency situations.

That's why it's so funny in some places. It turns out that the president, before declaring a state of emergency, seems to be mentally flying over the country on his hang glider and looking around at the forests and hills, rivers and lakes.

The optics of the word territory, for example, are completely different . The territory can be measured, it can be shown on a map, its boundaries can be clearly delineated. You can talk about the territory without knowing anything about the nature of the landscape. Regardless of whether large cities are located on it. Regardless of whether the landscape there is homogeneous or completely different.

In general, words describing places and territories are very interesting. There are, for example, words (my colleague E.V. Uryson once described them in detail) that denote territories that do not have clear boundaries and are allocated in relation to some object. These are the words neighborhood, district, and also district in one of the meanings (the area of ​​three stations). The word district is especially attractive : it necessarily implies people who live in a given territory and are united by neighborly relations. Neighborhoods, like a house, form part of the personal sphere of the people who live there. Actually, the district is distinguished not in relation to some buildings or streets (they don’t say in the Arbat district), but precisely in relation to the people living there (they say in our district). The district is the backdrop against which events take place in the lives of its inhabitants.

But the similar word district is from a completely different series. On the contrary, there is nothing personal here. A district is a purely administrative unit, allocated more or less arbitrarily (- Which district of Moscow does the Airport district belong to? - Northern).

It was funny with the word region. It came into fashion not so long ago, and obviously because other words were already overgrown with details and connotations, but something neutral was needed. But very little time passed, and this word began to have its own connotations. They say: from the regions, not from the center. From the regions - as they would previously say from the provinces, and then from the periphery.

It would seem that space is something very simple and clear. Geometry in general. But when this space is inhabited, everything turns out to be much more complicated.

In general, it should be noted that language loves to inhabit such abstract and cosmic categories as space and time, and create words that embody a private, human view of them. So, I really love the pretext (on New Year's Eve). Firstly, this preposition specifies a more or less definite time period: it is the “eve” of some event, comparable in duration: before Christmas - a day or two, in the morning - two to three hours, in old age - several years , before the store closes - a few minutes. This period is most likely already colored by anticipation of the event, “preparation” for it. Secondly, under is connected not just with time, but with people’s personal time. This preposition cannot be used, for example, when describing prehistoric events or cosmic cataclysms. The temporary reference point for the under is usually events and phenomena that are tangible in the life of an individual - holidays, the change of day and night, the change of seasons and other fairly stable, fixed elements of the universe. This differs from , for example, before: you can say both before the Eighth of March and before the Big Bang. Do you remember how in the film “Sweet Woman” Gundareva’s heroine, a factory worker, recalls: “But I just got ready for the women’s holiday.”

Irina Levontina