“We wanted the best, but it turned out as always” - one of the most famous winged expressions of Viktor Stepanovich Chernomyrdin , uttered during his tenure by the Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation at a press conference on August 6, 1993, thus characterizing the preparation and implementation of the 1993 monetary reform [1 ] .
Content
Origin
On July 24, 1993, the Central Bank announced that banknotes of the 1961-1992 type from Monday 26 July 1993 will not be accepted from the Russian population, and therefore they can be exchanged for new ones until July 27 . The exchange limit was set at 35 thousand undenominated rubles (at that time - about $ 35). The country began to panic. Two days later, Boris Yeltsin issued a decree where the amount of exchange was increased to 100 thousand rubles. per person, and the exchange period is extended until the end of August 1993 .
The first part of this phrase “We wanted the best ...” became the title of a book about Chernomyrdin [2] and about the Yeltsin era. The book is dedicated to the seventieth birthday of Viktor Stepanovich.
The phrase itself has become popular in colloquial Russian and is often used to describe actions that involve positive intentions, but either do not give any effect, or lead to devastating consequences. A close synonym is " The road to hell is paved with good intentions ."
The phrase was translated into English as “We wanted the best, you know the rest” (or “We tried our best, you know the rest”) [3] . The German version is “ Gut gemeint ist das Gegenteil von Gut gemacht ”, good intention is the opposite of good work.
Ratings
On June 30, 1994, Kommersant’s columnist Maxim Sokolov wrote: “Bon mot Chernomyrdina -“ We wanted the best, but it turned out as always “- an epigraph to the entire history of the Russian centralized state.” And on August 6, 1994, he marked on the pages of the publication the first anniversary of a historical phrase.
In 1999, Yuri Mikhailovich Luzhkov admitted: “It is now pointless to compete with this formula. She entered the gold fund of Russian management folklore. It can be knocked out on the gables of government buildings. Today it takes the first place in citation frequency ” [4] .
Konstantin Dushenko notes that judging by Yandex statistics from quotes from post-Soviet politicians, only Putin’s saying “ soak in the toilet ” rivals this phrase in popularity [1] .
Alexey Shmelev cites this aphorism as a vivid example of an impersonal construction characteristic of the Russian language picture of the world, suggesting that what happened to a person as a result of his own actions happens “as if by itself” [5] .
Other versions of origin
According to Kompromat.ru , the catch phrase: “We wanted the best, but it turned out as always” does not really belong to Chernomyrdin, but to the last pre-August Chairman of the USSR Government , Valentin Pavlov [6] . However, Konstantin Dushenko , a cultural scientist, translator and well-known composer of aphorism collections, does not confirm this version [1] .
Phrases of similar construction have been periodically encountered since the 19th century - for example, P. A. Kropotkin ’s Diaries of Different Years contains the following sentence: “The state is obsessed with bad habits and willy-nilly: it wanted the best, but it turned out as always ...” [7] . However, there is no evidence that Chernomyrdin borrowed this phrase from anywhere.
The long-term predecessor of the expression “We wanted the best, but it turned out as always” can be considered the phrase that Louis XV said about the failure of the next initiative of his ministers: “They thought it would be better” [1] .
See also
- Putinism
- Lapalissiada
- Chernomyrdinki
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 Konstantin Dushenko We wanted the best ...
- ↑ Gamov A.P. They wanted the best ... Nineteen evenings with Viktor Chernomyrdin, or How winged words of the era were born. - M .: International relations; Chero, 2008 .-- 239 p.
- ↑ How to say "how, what" in Russian
- ↑ lecture "Russian" Laws of Parkinson "", delivered at the International University in February 1999
- ↑ Alexey Shmelev, Doctor of Philology, Head of the Russian Speech Culture Department of the Russian Language Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Russian language picture of the world // Teacher’s newspaper . - March 3, 2009.
- ↑ Krotov N. Archive of the Russian financial and banking revolution (1985-1995). Eyewitness accounts. Documents. T. 1. - M .: Triad, 2001
- ↑ Kropotkin, P. A. Diaries of different years / Entry. Anikina A.V .; Comp., Text preparation, note. and names. Lebedeva A.P. - M.: Sov. Russia, 1992 .-- 462 p.
Links
- We wanted the best ... , Konstantin Dushenko about the history of the aphorism