Paul Goble
Staunton, December 4 – Moscow media have devoted a great deal of attention to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s plan for a massive road building effort in rural areas, but a "Krestyanskiye vedomosti” writer says that this program will do little to help the more than 10 percent of the population still living in places not connected to the outside by roads.
In a commentary posted on that newspaper’s website yesterday, Konstantin Mezentsev says that in order to understand what this program will actually do, one must look beyond the big numbers Putin announced to the specific plan the ministries of transportation and agriculture have agreed to (www.agronews.ru/newsshow.php?NId=63183).
On Wednesday, the Russian prime minister announced that the federal budget would spend 18 billion rubles (600 million US dollars) over the next three years for the construction of rural roads, five billion rubles in 2011, six ...
Misha Japaridze / AP
President Dmitry Medvedev offering his state-of-the-nation speech to parliament on Tuesday.
Не могу не сказать: I must say, literally "I can’t not say”
I used to analyze the annual Russian presidential addresses for linguistic clues to the country’s future. But then I got bored. What was the point of counting up the number of references to правовое государство (government based on rule of law) when we’re in Year 4 of the totally illegal construction project under my window? When they tear it down or figure out where 19 floors of tenants are going to park their cars, I’ll start paying attention to lofty programmatic statements.
But then I thought: Come on, Berdy. Give the guy a chance! So I spent an afternoon poring over PresidentDmitry Medvedev’s text, looking for linguistically interesting or politically revelatory turns of phrase. (Pause.) And then I read it again, thinking that maybe I missed something the first time.
In the end, what’s ...
