"The Threat of Punishment that Rhymes": Soviet Authoritative Discourse and Humor in the Modern Ukrainian Army
This text focuses on the changes in the Armed Forces of Ukraine under the pressure of decommunization after the full-scale invasion of Russia. For modern Ukraine, decommunization is often simply getting rid of vestiges of the Soviet past in the form of communist toponyms or monuments to Soviet leaders. In the context of the Armed Forces, this process means banal de-Russification. This is the limited way of thinking about reforming the Ukrainian army and the way to modernize the Armed Forces, which I am trying to expose in my work. First, by showing how the integration of mobilized citizens into the ranks of the army is accompanied by the assimilation of the bureaucratic mode of Ukrainian—clericalism which I consider in Alexey Yurchack term 'authoritative discourse.’ It is characterized by depersonalization, and there is no difference whether to use the Russian or Ukrainian version of it. Second, I reflect on the social function of clericalism for the military through the metaphor of a wrapper, a facade that seems to have to be dismantled due to its Soviet nature by political and artistics means. Clericalism relies on power mechanisms that can be deconstructed to some degree, but it can also play a positive (security) role for the social institution of the army. Finally, I suggest possible ways to work more carefully with clericalism apart from deconstructing it.
key words: clericalism, decommunization, war in Ukraine, bureaucratic lethargy, humor, army stupidity
"Standfastly endure all the difficulties and limitations associated with the service, spare no effort while performing the assigned tasks",—Disciplinary Statute of the ZSU (Armed Forces of Ukraine).
“Standfastly endure all the hardships and deprivations of military service, do not spare your blood and life itself in the performance of military duty,”—Disciplinary Statute of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union.
On the eve of the Day of the Ukrainian Language and Writing, ICTV Facts spoke with the defender of Ukraine Artur Turayev, who became one of the sex symbols of the Ukrainian army with the beginning of the full-scale invasion. Artur Turaev comes from Mykolaiv. Studied in a regular school. The environment was mainly Russian-speaking. Protects Ukraine since 2015. But it was after the full-scale invasion of Russia that he decided to switch to the Ukrainian language.
- The realization of what we are fighting for forced me to switch to the Ukrainian language. This is not only for some material values and territory, but for nationality as such. Therefore, I believe that we should switch to the Ukrainian language, especially in the military. Because this is a kind of trigger, from which we have to push back for further tasks, - says the fighter.
The nationalization of the Ukrainian army is closely related to the process of decommunization, inspired by local patriotic movements and picked up by the state. For modern Ukraine, decommunization is often simply getting rid of vestiges of the Soviet past in the form of communist toponyms or monuments to Soviet leaders. In the context of the Armed Forces, this process means banal de-Russification. Taras Kremin, Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language, in his controversial statement that "Russian-speaking Ukrainians do not exist" in an interview with Nova Khvyla, also reminded that Ukrainian is mandatory for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. "Let's not forget that the struggle is taking place at the front and over which language we will communicate. And who, if not the military, should understand this," Kremin emphasized.
This is the limited way of thinking about reforming the Ukrainian army and the way to modernize the Armed Forces, which I am trying to expose in my work. Across ethnographic study, as a civilian sociologist mobilized for officer courses in the Ukrainian army in July 2023, I will try to find out whether the translation of the Soviet statue into Ukrainian is sufficient for this process. Also I assess UA soldiers’ ability to produce satisfying and seemingly accurate authoritative discourse in Ukrainian as a signal of the decommunization, a what distinguishes ZSU from an old (Soviet-style) Ukrainian and the Russian army today.
The ability to produce satisfying authoritative discourse in Ukrainian may serve to assist mobilized persons in negotiating their new social reality, both as an energetically efficient strategy for impressing officers and as a signal of the system changes in Ukrainian society.
What I mean by authoritative discourse are meaningful systems of distinction: ideological language, military terminology, army humor and folklore, clothing, chevrons, body, behavior as signs of patriotic duty, as well as material objects of various kinds, for example, ammunition, weapons, tools. This broad understanding is close to the anthropological work of Oleksei Yurchak “Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More.” It studies late socialism, particularly the forms and rituals of authoritative discourse. For example, why are the formal procedural aspects of document management so important to officials, the clear playing of rituals (voting, meetings, etc.). According to Yurchak, “authoritative discourse included visual, practical, spatial and other components, but its most important part was language—the authoritative language of speeches, documents, appeals, slogans, plans, reports, newspaper editorials and so on.” Any authoritative discourse always contains many template structures, clichés, standard phrases, elements of ritual, and so on, which makes it a discourse with a high degree of quotation. Statements in an authoritative genre are often not perceived by the audience at the level of stating meaning, functioning rather as a linguistic ritual, the main role of which is the constant repetition of a familiar form.
The current work investigates the role which existing and new forms of authority language plays in providing decommunization in the Ukrainian Army.
Over 10 years, the war has deeply changed the Ukrainian army—but few scientific studies allow us to understand how fundamental these changes are. I have been at ZSU for more than six months. I began my journey as a cadet in the accelerated training course for tactical level officers to become a sergeant manager in the statistical service–and am trying to explore the army reality in conversations with colleagues who are at the front, in the rear after being wounded, and in headquarters offices.
Also I want to use 2 tests in order to investigate forms of military folklore. In the first one, I will ask the cadets to evaluate and explain ten statements made by senior officers and instructors. Statements in Russian, Ukrainian and combinations of them. They were collected during the sergeant and officer courses in August-September 2023. These expressions are humorous and folk in nature. Some of them migrated to the Ukrainian army from Soviet times and showed amazing resilience. More often they are voiced in the original language, Russian, or modified taking into account regional linguistic characteristics. Such expressions serve several purposes: emotional release for better mastery of educational material; discipline and reputation building. In the second task, I asked another group of military men to evaluate the cadets' answers, highlighting the most original interpretations. The cadets value the producers of the best jokes more highly.
I have a sample of cadets of officer courses, consisting of representatives of different regions of Ukraine and operational commands, people with higher education, middle age, which was a condition for their enrollment in officer courses. These theses contain a lot of obscenities. If this is unacceptable to you, do not read the next text.
Statements:
1. «Не суй пальцы куда собака хуй не сунет» (“Don't put your fingers where the dog doesn't put his dick”)
2. «У каждого додика своя методика» (“Every idiot has his own method”)
3. «Во избежание пиздежу, обращайся к чертежу» ("In order to avoid being fucked up, refer to the masterplan")
4. «Матня» (matnya) (slang word meaning trouser fly or intricacy, complexity of some life situations, confusion of army regulations)
5. «Будешь схвачен, – отпездячен» (“If you are caught, they will beat you.”)
6. «Воїне, вставай. Нагібайся» ("Warrior, get up, bend over")
7. «Уляна лежить. Хуй стоїть» ("Ulyana is lying down. The dick is standing")
8. «Последнее убежище для людей без фантазии» (“The last refuge for people without imagination”)
9. «Вещество, которое восстанавливает все поверхности» (“A substance that restores all surfaces”)
10. «Чем отличаются мужские яйца от женских?» ("How do male eggs differ from female eggs?")
Instructions for the humor test
“Your task is to try to give the most original and witty explanation for each statement of the instructors.
For terms you are familiar with, we ask you to explain them creatively (i.e. in the most non-standard way).
For terms or expressions that are unfamiliar to you, we ask that you be creative and come up with an explanation that you think will be interesting and understandable to others.
Don't worry about the truth of your statements when creating your explanations, rather you can think of it as a creative writing exercise.”
Why Humor
There is an ironic notion of army humor in the common sense. Indeed, it can be "rough," "peppered," "barracks," but it is characteristic of a temporary, mostly male society and plays an important role as a compensator for the difficult living conditions of a soldier's life and helps to absorb the fear of death. On the one hand, humor is built on the constant monitoring of contradictions and ambiguities. Despite the efforts to unify the lives of soldiers, the army is full of uncertainty, and war does not forgive patterned actions, so humor in some way can help creatively solve the order. On the other, army humor is more about the unsettling encounter with a fractured reality and the conflicting emotions that grip us even in dark times.
"No matter how broken this world is, we respond to it taking into account our imperfect human capabilities. The coexistence of these emotional extremes is part of the contradictory human essence," says Clemens Poole, co-curator of the "Even if" exhibition at the DCCC (Center for Contemporary Culture, Dnipro). Clemens comments on Yevhen Korshunov's work "Ho ho" presented at the exhibition. In it, the artist explores the emotional instability and contradiction of humor during the war. Korshunov managed to visit the city of Shostka on the Ukrainian-Russian border, where he happened to find a dilapidated building with a "hohohoho" (like a laugh) ornament on the facade and filmed it, reading these patterns aloud, sometimes funny, sometimes disturbing, sad.
Similar to artistic work, military humor became more self-deprecating and black. And the lion's share of it is occupied by meetings with the Ukrainian "paper" army—the bureaucracy. Paper is used here literally, ZSU (the Armed Forces) still use a lot of paper, the processes of digitalization have only just begun. This becomes a significant obstacle for cadets on the path of integration into the army together with the military bureaucratic language— clericalism. Clericalism is the official language in the army and the target of many jokes. The abbreviation "ПХД", for example, which means cleaning of public places in the place of permanent deployment, is translated by soldiers as "good day cunt" (“pizdets horoshemu dniu”).
In most of the interviews I conducted, the phrase “army stupidity” (dolboiebism) was heard. The romantic feelings that the Ukrainian Armed Forces aroused at the beginning of the war completely evaporated.
“In the army, if you take everything seriously, sooner or later your roof will leak. We must perceive everything as in the book about Schweik, because nothing has changed since then”.
“I found myself in the impenetrable world of Kafka.”
Clericalism is a clerical-bureaucratic style of speech that penetrates into the environment of wider use and deforms colloquial speech and literary style, which is perceived by some native speakers and, above all, the literary community as a danger, cultural damage, cancer of the language. The term was introduced by Korney Chukovsky in the book “Alive as Life” (1962) and was modeled “on the model of colitis, diphtheria, meningitis”. Nora Gal’s book “The Living and the Dead Word” was largely devoted to the further struggle against this modern analogue of the salon language of the nobility, which, in particular, stated:
“Сlericalism is carrion. It penetrates into fiction, everyday life, and oral speech. Even in the nursery. From official materials, from newspapers, from radio and television, clerical language passes into everyday practice. For many years, lectures were given this way, textbooks and even primers were written this way. Fed on linguistic quinoa and chaff, teachers, in turn, feed new generations of innocent children with the same dry food of stale and dead words.”
When discussing clericalism, Nora Gal uses the metaphor of infection. A living, “healthy” language becomes infected with a bureaucratic disease: because of it, simple structures turn into syntactic labyrinths. Ukrainian journalist Otar Dovzhenko agrees with her, who directly calls clericalism "a dead Soviet language," and the transformation of empty bureaucratic gibberish into the norm of a living language is the worst direction of changes.
“And the least anyone can do to prevent this is to use human language in all areas and formats of communication. That is, to know what you want to say, and to say exactly that and exactly in the words that you would use to formulate it to another normal person. At the same time, when they address us in a dead Soviet language, we should not take it for granted, but demand a translation into human language.”
When you see how the army works from the inside, it is very easy to agree with Dovzhenko, Gal and Chukovsky. Army stupidity is a derivative of the hegemony of form. With so many unnecessary approvals, procedures and permits, I still don't understand how everything works. I have no rational explanation for how foreign equipment and military tactics are accepted. Two-thirds of the tasks that career officers deal with do not correspond to anything at all. ZSU as an organization is terrible - it maims and kills people simply because of the terrible paperwork. The wildest bureaucracy, all processes are so arranged that even smart people cannot do anything useful. Mobilized civilians from business are accustomed to attributing this stagnation to poor working conditions and low wages. “Between 2014 (the beginning of the ATO) and in this war, the military had very low salaries. The captain and major received 12–15 thousand hryvnia, so the stupidest remained in the army. If you meet an officer who hasn't retired since 2005, he's a guaranteed bastard. Because it was impossible to live on this money and not steal.” To the pragmatic middle-class professional, the army is a quagmire that needs to be reformed by firing most of the staff officers and replacing them with phone apps.
D.Z.: Did the knowledge from the officer courses help you on the battlefield?
K.: Well, actually, all this doesn’t work here.
V.: It’s not clear how everything works here. (“Tut vse cherez khuy znayet chto rabotayet”)
“Hi. This is POET (nickname)
I eventually transferred from OSHB SKALA (storm brigade), and as far as I remember do you work in sociology? Something needs to be done about this army pizdets’ (terror) that I have observed. At least try.”
Changes towards solidification of form occur in different types of language if standard phrases of the language acquire the role of ritual practices—for example, in army language that is limited by strict professional boundaries. Yurchak calls the acquisition by a language of many standard, repeating structures, lexical elements and stylistic features normalization.
“—Sentences became longer, the number of verbs decreased, and the number of nouns increased. These nouns were increasingly chained together to form long nominative phrases that contained many modifiers, especially comparatives and superlatives. Statements formulated in this way became increasingly difficult to understand at the level of ordinary literal meaning; form in them increasingly prevailed over meaning. Therefore, in this case it is appropriate to talk about the process of not just normalization, but hyper-normalization of language. In the language, not only a large number of standard phrases and phrases appear, but also a gradual complication of these standard phrases and phrases occurs. The ascertaining component of the meaning of such statements is extremely vague.”—this is how Yurchak describes normalization.
The result of normalization is the emergence of a highly predictable and ritual language, which began to take shape in the late Soviet period including the army. Since then, it has only been translated into Ukrainian, which further complicates its perception for the average soldier. Official Ukrainian in the army is a bloated, clumsy language, spoken awkwardly and with errors.
Thus, Dovzhenko correctly described these frozen forms as a “dead Soviet language.” However, he was wrong about one thing – this language is not dead. Moreover, these Soviet forms of authoritative discourse, in Yurchak's terms, are experiencing a renaissance in the modern Ukrainian army. In the first months of the war, the ZSU received an electric shock. For several months, volunteers enlisted in the army in droves, volunteer battalions appeared with their own command, warehouses, and logistics. The Army was in an incredibly open state to change. It was a transformative experience. Then, with the success of Ukrainian counter-offensive operations in 2022, the atmosphere and affairs in the army changed completely. Nothing remained of the heroic tension of the first months. The regular military men, still with Soviet service experience, returned and began to restore an institutional order. Instead of decommunization, in reality the army is being re-communized.
Cadet testing results
18 cadets took part in the testing. Based on the variety of languages and local dialects in cadets’ responses, I should underline that the army, at least at the language level, is the most democratic territory in Ukrainian culture now, where the possibility of representing diversity and differences remains.
I had the opportunity to observe the dynamics of cadets' use of language from the moment they were drafted until they entered combat positions as an infantry platoon commander. At the sergeant courses, Russian was predominantly spoken. Only one person spoke Ukrainian, a young man, a poet from Kharkiv. But after three days he switched to Russian. The non-commissioned officers speak russian. The officers of the battalion also speak russian, even during formations. With high authorities, the chief of staff, battalion, they speak Ukrainian. Senior officers speak Ukrainian, but between themselves in Russian and Surzhik. For example, at one of the first classes, one of the officers who fought for several years described the language issue in the army in this way.
“I speak Russian myself. Half of our army speaks Russian. I don't like this kind of bullshit. There in the academy you will most likely have to speak Ukrainian. But here and on the front, don't give a fuck what language you speak. Ours is a multinational country. This right is enshrined in the Constitution.”
These observations are contrary to the statements of the cultural and political elite. The language ombudsman is convinced that Ukrainian prevails in all spheres of social life, however, he is ready to help military personnel who are just switching to Ukrainian. "In 2023, 60% of us use only Ukrainian at home. During the war, 10% of Ukrainians switched to speaking Ukrainian at home. Only 9% already speak Russian at home. And this means that it is still a shame," said sociologist Oleksiy Antipovich, head of the Rating sociological service. He also reminded that before Volodymyr Zelensky's election victory, 15-18% of Ukrainians supported the status of Russian as the second state, and after it—about 22%. "Now it is 3%. Therefore, politically, we can no longer talk about any Russian language." The sociologist concluded that Russian "has become the language of kitchens, communication between people who do not know Ukrainian, who are Russian-speaking in their heads."
Cadets, presumably Russian-speaking in their heads, started learning Ukrainian at officer courses. During combat, almost everyone spoke Ukrainian, with errors and regionalisms. See for examples of the use of language in the cadets' explanations of the phrase "Budesh shavachen, otpezdyachen" (If you are caught, you will be beaten):
Ukrainian
Russian
Mixed
Будь готовий до наслідків якщо тебе спіймають.
Будешь наказан, жёстко
За свої поступки, готовся получити по їбалу.
Настанова бути завжди в тонусі і думати виключно про старшого начальника та Статут
Украл, выпил, в тюрму - романтика
Якщо попався - неси покарання.
Погроза покарання, яка має рифму
действовать не по статуту
Получиш пизди за якісь дії.
Не попадайся на очі
Полагаю что имеется ввиду то что конкретную личность ограничат в свободе передвижения и выполнении каких либо действий, затем окажут физическое воздействие
Невздумай попасти в плєн
Біжи з села - тобі пизда
Твои неправоправные действия могут привести к ухудшению здоровья!
Описаний приклад методики додіків
Досада
It is difficult for many Russian-speaking people and people who communicate in the regional Urkainian to switch to the official language of orders. But at least everyone tries. No one in the army is ashamed to speak incorrectly, in contrast to civil society, where there is a fight with the warlord for "purity of speech", a return to authentic words. It turns out that a bunch of Ukrainian words are not Ukrainian enough. Often it ends with the fact that a person lacks either the time, or the desire, or the opportunity to learn true Ukrainian perfectly, and in the end he remains a Russian speaker.
At second, what is most noticeable in the cadets' answers is the attempt to give an interpretation in the genre of bureaucratic language. Sometimes this sounds ironic, but more often the cadets seriously try to provide the literal meaning of army memes. It is precisely this turn of interpretation towards standardization and repetition that Yurchak associates with the emergence of authoritative discourse. It is also noteworthy that all the answers in the genre of military bureaucracy were in Ukrainian. This feature opposes language freedom in everyday life in the army outlined above. The decommunization of the Army is thus accompanied by a semantic shift, as a result of which the Ukrainian language acquired the task of creating the impression that only this and no other type of representation is possible. It is paradoxical how, through the Ukrainian language, the restoration of the Soviet authoritative language is achieved. Mastering Ukrainian is one of the stages of the adoption to a systemic identity that marks progress in the moral career of a soldier.
The humor test was to offer an original, funny and interesting description of confusing army memes. All originality and wit seem to be leaving the cadets. Although there is irony behind the dry formulations, more often the language of the interpretations is becoming increasingly repetitive and predictable.
Clericalism in the cadets' answers:
humor mems
cadets’ clerical interpretation
1.
“Don’t stick your dick where the dog doesn’t stick his fingers.”
"You should not try to do something for which you do not have the competence or the necessary tool" / "There are quite a lot of creative personalities in the ranks of the Armed Forces, for whom the usual safety training is not enough. Therefore, instructors are also quite creative in informing servicemen about possible dangers. In simple words, before sticking a finger or a dick, think three times."
2.
“Every idiot has his own method”
"Each person develops and adheres to his patterns of behavior throughout his life." / “Each individual person has their own approach to solving certain issues” / “Everyone can have his own approach to the same task” / “Bright and concise definition of the way of presentation of educational disciplines by instructors of the MP2/KV-7 course"
3.
"In order to avoid being fucked up, refer to the drawing"
"In order to perform the assigned task well, you need to familiarize yourself with and follow the instructions." / "I assume that this means that sometimes you will have to refer to the instructions for something if you have questions" / "Since bullshit is an integral part of army life and not everyone likes it, the instructor tells how to avoid it. In other words, you need to refer to the army "Bible" - the Statute."
4.
Matnya (fastener)
"The obtained result does not meet the teacher's expectations. And what are the expectations of the teacher? Also some kind of slop" / "The part of the jeans that is distant from the body in the area of the beginning of the legs"
5.
“If you are caught, they will beat you.”
"I believe that what is meant is that a specific person will be limited in freedom of movement and performance of any actions, then they will be subjected to physical influence" / "The threat of punishment that has a rhyme" / "The instruction to always be in good shape and think only about the senior boss and the Statute." / "Your illegal actions can lead to deterioration of your health!"
6.
"Warrior, get up, bend over"
"This phrase implies that a specific person made a mistake as a result of which he should be punished" / "Addressed to military personnel who were not vigilant and did not faithfully follow the rules of the Charter. They can expect a surprise in the form of a spanking, washing the toilet and other punishments." / "Irregular relations between a commander and a soldier" / "Reminders of subordination, punishment or instilling the habit of obedience in a subordinate."
7.
"Ulyana is lying down. The dick is standing"
"Some prepared, but not started business" / "Addressed to a military serviceman who dreamed and fell out of the training process" / "Surrealism. The male genital organ cannot stand from Ulyana lying down. It is necessary to know the additional conditions of what is happening."
8.
“The last refuge for people without imagination”
"I believe that in this sentence we are talking about the Army" / "It is quite clear that we are talking about the army"
9.
“A substance that restores all surfaces”
Apparently, my level of intellectual development is much lower than that of the instructors (or vice versa