New vocabulary of the Ukrainian democracy

by Josef Tolstoj, independent ukranian journalist

Significant events, especially in politics, serve to enrich common and expert vocabulary with new notions and worded images, i.e. "iron curtain", "perestroika", "axis of evil". When it comes to Eastern European democracies, special journalistic discourse and political folklore emerge to reflect the undergoing democratic maturing processes – "dioxin", "orange revolution", "kuchmism", "multivector", "Maidan".
Democratic slang actively grows acquiring new geographic names to describe certain phenomena and processes. On the eve of the 2004 presidential elections in the Ukraine, the whole world learned the word Mukachevo.  It is a name of a small Ukrainian town, where coercive election technologies were tested, to be subsequently used by V. Yanukovich's team in 2004. Voters daunting, vandalizing ballot stations, massive falsification of voting results were brought into play. Mukachevo was spoken about in European Parliament, Parliamentary Assembly of the European Council, the US State Department. Later on, the world mass media came to know the crackjaw name of another Ukrainian town of Severodonetsk, where leaders of a number of pro-Russian regions of the Ukraine proclaimed the possibility of establishing South-East autonomy under "president Yanukovich". Nowadays, good chances of getting world famous are with Kharkov - "the first capital" of the Ukraine (20-30's of the last century) and the major industrial center of the country.
Today, discussing or writing about Kharkov, the publications and expert comments most often contain words like "bespredel" and "deriban". The term "Bespredel" emerged in post-Soviet countries in early 90's and initially described totally lawless fights between criminal groups ignoring not only common moral and sub-cultural norms, but also safety of uninvolved people. The term "Deriban" became public a bit later, in mid 90's, due to property redistribution processes in post-Soviet countries carried out by the same gangsters using the same methods as was mentioned above. These notions are commonly accompanied with such words as "Otkat" (meaning a corruption bonus to a public person supporting the "bespredel"), "Dolya" (meaning fixed share in the profits generated by enterprises controlled by local authorities), "Razryv" (meaning a number of formally legal, albeit incentive-based tough measures targeted against businesses of political opponents and their supporters. Typically, "razryv" is carried out in the form of "Raid", i.e. forceful occupation of enterprises, on the grounds of paid-for court decisions, as well as "Press" by way of simultaneous and biased scrutinizing of the target business by every imaginable control and inspection body.
Listening to the stories about "deriban" and "bespredel" in Kharkov, one may hear absolutely wild facts of lawless deeds of municipal authorities represented today by businessmen with criminal background and those, once involved in Severodonetsk events. These are stories of fraudulent privatization of municipal enterprises, and of "entrance fees" for, e.g. city's real estate market, which amount to 50% of "otkat" on project price.
The latest events in the Ukraine, related to the dismissal of the Ukrainian Parliament and calling early election, cast a ray of hope that restoration of democratic rules of the game on the state level will make regional political elite start learning new words, such as "responsibility", "law" and "justice".