Russia celebrated, Monday, May 9, the end of the Second World War and the victory against Nazism. The occasion of a great speech by Vladimir Putin, in which he once again refused to pronounce the word “war” to qualify the invasion of Ukraine. Is it really communication, or should we rather speak of an operation… of propaganda? Since February 24 and the offensive of Russian troops on Ukrainian territory, Vladimir Putin has never spoken of war. He prefers to speak of a “special military operation” which would have the justification of protecting himself against a Ukrainian neighbor presented as belligerent and under neo-Nazi influence.
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Monday, Alexander Makogonov, the spokesperson for the Russian Embassy in France was the guest of franceinfo. The opportunity to ask him the question directly: why refuse to use the word “war”? “Using the word war, the term war in the traditional sense of the word, is a bit out of place to characterize the current situation in Ukraine, affirms Alexander Makogonov. You know, when it comes to war, it’s war between armies, between peoples, it’s whole peoples who suffer. In the case of Ukraine or Russia, no one declared war on anyone: neither Russia on Ukraine, nor Ukraine on Russia.”
Russia is not talking about war in Ukraine ➡️ “Using the word war is a bit out of place to characterize the current situation in Ukraine” for Alexander Makogonov. “Nobody declared war on anybody.” pic.twitter.com/eJwwrxyKGo
— franceinfo (@franceinfo) May 9, 2022
For him, the situation is clear: to speak of war would be inappropriate. His justifications do not seem convincing. We can briefly review the three arguments he uses. To speak of war implies a confrontation of armies. This is exactly what is happening on Ukrainian territory, where all actors speak of a high-intensity conflict. To speak of war implies the suffering of peoples. That of the Ukrainian people, in Boutcha, Mariupol and elsewhere has been, alas, amply documented, even if the Russian power continues to deny it. As for the absence of a declaration of war, it is in no way a proof. The history of the 20th century has many undeclared wars, which are wars nonetheless. In short, when Vladimir Putin speaks of a simple “special operation”we are clearly in the presence of an understatement, a voluntary attenuation of reality, with the aim of making it less shocking.
Why persist in denying the obvious? This is the right question to ask. And the answer, it seems to me, comes from history. It is not the first time, far from it, that a war has led to the massive use of euphemisms by the authorities. Starting, moreover, with the war in Algeria, which France tried to modestly call the “events in Algeria”. More recently, starting with the Gulf War, the United States willingly evokes “surgical strikes” and “collateral damages” to evoke, in fact, the bombings and civilian deaths. Each time there is, of course, the will to try to keep up appearances before the international community.
But it goes beyond that. Discourse analysis researcher Alice Krieg-Plancque notes that often these types of euphemisms are aimed primarily at the military itself. The objective, for the power, is to try to make the reality bearable in the eyes of the soldiers involved in the operation, who must be able to continue to perceive themselves not as the aggressors, but as the attacked. This is why Alexander Makogonov does not give up, even on French radio where everyone is talking about war. In the context of globalized information, he knows that what he says can have repercussions as far away as Russia.
In this sense, it is possible to speak of propaganda. Contrary to an operation of communication, turned towards the international, the propaganda aims above all to direct, even, manipulate its own public opinion. And from this point of view, what we observe in Vladimir Putin’s speeches can, paradoxically, remind us of the practices of Hitler’s totalitarianism. This has been well studied by a German philologist, Victor Klemperer, in a book written during the Nazi period, The language of the Third Reich. Klemperer remarks that Nazism, the real one, makes systematic use of euphemisms which, by dint of being repeated, end up distorting the reality perceived by the German people: the “final solution”, for the extermination of the Jewish people; the “special treatment”, for the gassing of the deportees. In this sense, the twist in language, which we observe in Vladimir Putin, could lead us to question ourselves above all about the reality of the power he now wields. Is it still just authoritarianism? Or does it, in reality, incorporate elements that could be totalitarianism?