Nov 03 2010
“We hoped for the best but it turned out like usual”
R.I.P. Viktor Chernomyrdin.
Chernomyrdin’s chief virtues in his five-and-a-half years as Russian Prime Minister were his steadiness and unflappability–qualities sorely needed during the Yeltsin years. He never had the gift of eloquence, and routinely featured in mid 1990s in a brutal Moscow News feature that presented the most ridiculous or nonsensical things to emerge from politicians’ mouths in the past week.
Despite that, he will forever be known for the phrase in the title of this post. Though he said it in the specific context of monetary reform in 1993, its clear applicability to Russian politics since 1985 (and in an expansive mood, to all Russian history ever) has made the phrase immortal. I haven’t seen or been able to come up with an English translation of the Russian “khoteli kak luchshe, a poluchilos’ kak vsegda” that does justice to the original. In Russian, the phrase is almost poetic, with an air of fatalism and resignation in the falling stress of the final “kak vsegda” that’s heartbreaking and funny at the same time.