Vladimir Putin Brings Criminal Slang (and Attitude) to Mainstream Russian TV

During a press conference in September 1999, in response to the bombing of several apartment buildings in Moscow, the Rostov region, and Dagestan that were attributed to Chechen militants, Vladimir Putin, then Russia’s Prime Minister and a little-known politician, declared that his government would “whack terrorists in the crapper.” The bombings, which may have been orchestrated by Russian intelligence services, became one of the main motivations for the Second Chechen War (1999-2009). Putin’s aggressive handling of the crisis significantly increased his popularity ahead of the 2000 presidential race. This famous press conference, in particular, reinforced his image as a strong and even somewhat thuggish leader fit to fight the violence and lawlessness of the 1990s precisely because he himself was a product of that same violence and lawlessness. The expression zamochim v sortire (“whack them in the crapper”—rendered in the subtitled clip above as “if we catch them in the toilet, that’s where they’ll die”) belongs to prison argot. Its use on mainstream television, in such an official context, fundamentally violated established norms and taboos, but Putin’s performance was received as a refreshing move away from the ossified, awkward language of (post-)Soviet bureaucracy. The lawlessness or bespredel of the 1990s thus played an important role in defining Russian identity in the 2000s—primarily as something to be avoided at all costs. But bespredel also contributed to defining Russia as the West’s elemental Other—as a space or reality challenging the post-Cold War, Western-dominated, liberal-democratic new world order. This principle explains the prevalence of trolling in Russian foreign and domestic policy, which we can observe not only in the activity of Russian hackers, but also in official speech by Russian Defense Minister Sergey Lavrov, Putin, and others. Putin’s aggressively masculine image is a similarly calculated violation of Western moral and social norms. The Russian president’s main role models and allies include Stierlitz, the spy from the popular Soviet TV series Seventeen Moments of Spring (1973); Nikolay Rastorguev (1957-), the lead singer of the alternative rock band Lyube; and Alexander Zaldastanov (1963-), who helmed the Night Wolves (Nochnye Volki) biker gang. In this context, Putin’s September 1999 press conference is a key moment in the transition between the 1990s and the 2000s and in the definition of a post-Soviet identity through the concepts violence and chaos or, more specifically, chernukha (gore) and bespredel.