Two Words Meaning “Deep” in Russian
Two Russian adjectives translate as deep. A method to explain the difference surfaced for me the week after a set of Ukrainian strikes on targets in Russian-held territory in what is internationally understood to be the Kursk Province in Russia. It was a span of days when a Russian conversation partner incidentally angled to have a chat with me about the Amazon Prime series The Boys, a show that I was dimly aware featured an antagonist named the Deep. The unofficial translation of the name of this superhero into Russian are instructive. Whereas I get the sense that much of the humor in English related to this character has to do with a mystique consisting of the term Deep not being disambiguated, there are several translations of his name into Russian. He is Подводный (Podvodnyi), the Submarine or the Underwater. He is Бездна (Bezdna) in another translation, the Abyss. And in yet another the name for him is a term that means a certain kind of Deep (Глубина (Glubina)). This form of depth is not depth all the way down, but a term for a layer that occurs way, way down in something like a core or a body of water. (That specific fictional character did not in and of himself interest me. I found the show targeted a much different kind of person than me. An irony that is maybe supposed to be splashy and fun that the effort required to construe this show as containing a profound layer of meanings is far beyond what I am willing to put up with.)
In addition to глубинный (glubinnyi), that depth that more often connotes the exclusively deep-down, there is an adjective in Russian for a kind of depth that refers to a depth that is deep by virtue of it containing the whole range of layers down to the bottom: глубокий (glubokii). Note that this other word contains -ок- which looks like the root from окно and очки (okno and ochki), window and glasses. This is the kind of depth that as it happens is appropriate to describe Lake Baikal in general—or a river. The depth is the penetration of a volume from the surface all the way down. (In passing, I would note that subtle depth, as in thematic profundity, is often denoted with a term like мудрый (mudryi), as though to say that it is simply wise, without recourse to a spatial or temporal metaphor. Glubokii is often used in that context, too, though.)
Integral to the Special Operation in Ukraine would not only be some overarching vision like a Duginian Eurasian Strategy that defines the Russian World, but also more to the point of this post, a paradigm like “Deep Operation” (глубокая операция - glubokaya operatsiya). This term is more present in US military contexts in the guise of the term deep battle. Deep Operation as perpetrated by Russia in Ukraine is rightly understood as those operations far beyond the physical front between the armies. It is, for instance, the bombardments in western locations like Lviv. The currency of the term in the Ukrainian context surely has much to do with the strategic advantage of a war of attrition. The concept of Deep Operation has in truth been in the Soviet lexicon since the 1920s, Because this is that Baikal-like type of “deep,” it means that the theater of war stretches continuously beyond the front into the depths of opponent territory. Another way of denoting Deep operations in Poland and the US that do not rise to the level of open war is hybrid war.
The Ukrainian bombardment of targets inside Russia also bespeak an awareness of the benefits of fighting beyond the front.
The morning of August 8, I had to ask myself if I was in the presence of Deep Operation by virtue of the fact that I was being forwarded a post about military operations in the Kursk region from a Russian guy, a veteran who had once served in what I gather was Ukraine. The very use of the term Лонгрид made me initially think I was in the presence of the name of some Ukrainian settlement founded by a Scotsman or German in some nineteenth-century push to make money off a factory—something related to the term “Lohengrin.” The fact that gelled only after about an hour was that it was the word “long read”—a term that appeared in English in what felt like my own lifetime, a long wordy post whose relationship to the established forms of essay, article, op-ed, and so on was not specified in advance—and which is stated upfront perhaps as an apology for minds accustomed to dopamine hits and the general brevity of posts on the Internet. It was indicative of that part of the Russian population that is especially cosmopolitan and aware of what is going on in the West, like this particular conversation partner, who has encouraged me to watch the Amazon Prime series The Boys so that I can talk with him about it and who also this past week mentioned seeing Deadpool and Wolverine in a theater—it was indicative more specifically of that part of Russia that has continued to absorb American culture in part as an act of defiance to studios and specific creators like the composer Philip Glass, who issued a statement decrying the planned performance of some of his work in Crimea under the auspices of a ballet called Wuthering Heights. A Russia penetrating far beyond its borders—but maybe is not always locked into profundity.
This “long-read” blog post shared with me is more analytical and clearheaded than what Putin had to say. When Putin called this attack in question a “provocation” and talked about Ukraine hitting targets in a large-scale attack, it was an instance of his leadership, but it was vague. The front has not shifted much overall. Whatever “large-scale attack” or large-scale provocation means in Putin’s speech writer’s mind, it does not give much insight into the operations to come of the Russian military, only that the operations will retaliate and will be tough.
This long read, by contrast, sheds new insight for me into the concept of depth in Russian (and perhaps on Deep Operation in a very broad sense of the word, though the term that the post used was маневренная война (manyovrennaya voina) or maneuver warfare). The key buzzword pertaining to this essay about depth comes with the idea that the moment of this incursion into Russian territory brings with it a “puzzle for the глубинный народ (glubinnyi narod) Deep People of Russia.”
? Почему нам нужны Бресткие крепости, сожженая Москва Наполеоном, Крокус, Нарва 1700, крейсер Варяг, Ракеты по детским площадкам Белгорода и вот теперь агрессия на Курскую землю…чтобы начать включаться ВСЕЙ страной в Победу - Я НЕ ЗЧАЮ.
Это загадка глубинного народа России.
Why do we need the Brest Fortresses Moscow burned by Napoleon, Crocus City Hall, the Battle of Narva in 1700, the Battleship Varyag, rockets on playgrounds of Belgorod and now aggression on Kursk territory...to begin to include THE WHOLE country in Victory? I DON'T KNOW.
This is the mystery of a Russian nation concealed beneath the surface.
Deep People is not so much a philosophical subpopulation as it is a way to understand a counterpart to a “Deep State” that is not formally connected with the Russian government. The term is a calque from the Turkish concept of a Deep State, for some abyssal depth of military power not only secret but perhaps in some sense located outside the formally defined government. The term in this piece is used to describe a Russia that digs “deep” and finds a strength within itself; it is a sense of resources far beyond some 5-10 million allegedly committed to the struggle in Ukraine. TThis is precisely a way of saying that the Russia that has only committed a few million souls must reach and commit much more of itself in the further extension of Deep Operation behind its own lines far out into its hinterland, in the immensity of the Great Bear. The true field of operation is both far to the west and far to the east of its center in the East of Ukraine and even on the device publishing this post. There is surely quiet within this framework is an immense capacity for delusion.
The term Deep People incidentally came into use with an essay by Kremlin ideologist Vladislav Surkov in 2019; it was used to describe a base of support for Russian autocracy.
Глубинного государства в России нет, оно все на виду, зато есть глубинный народ…Народность, что бы это ни значило, предшествует государственности, предопределяет ее форму, ограничивает фантазии теоретиков, принуждает практиков к определенным поступкам. …Своей гигантской супермассой глубокий народ создает непреодолимую силу культурной гравитации, которая соединяет нацию и притягивает (придавливает) к земле (к родной земле) элиту, время от времени пытающуюся космополитически воспарить…Умение слышать и понимать народ, видеть его насквозь, на всю глубину и действовать сообразно – уникальное и главное достоинство государства Путина.
There’s no deep state in Russia, everything’s out in the open, but there is a deep people (glubinnyi narod). … With its gigantic supermass the deep people creates an insuperable force of cultural gravitation, which unites the nation and brings the elite down to earth. … Narodnost’, however defined, precedes statehood, predetermines its form, limits the fantasies of theoreticians, and forces practitioners to take certain steps. … An ability to hear and understand the people, to see through it to its depths, and to act accordingly, is the unique and primary quality of the Putin state. [translation via the blog Irrussianality]
Putin is plugged into the reality of this Deep People. The implication of its usage in this subsequent blog post engaging with this Surkovian frame of mind is eerie because it functions as a pronoiac term for a conspiracy of the masses that this user of the term is somehow included in; it is meant to refer to a base that defied any superficial sense that Russians had problems trusting their government. It is a kind of higher truth of the nation that the Russian government may understand and channel.
I thought I was close to publishing this post with the tone of certain Kremlin critics in my mind, much as this previous paragraph would indicate, but surely I can push further. I opened my parallel edition of the Bible in Russian and the King James to John 6:41-51 on Friday August 9, 2024, as it was the passage for one of the best translation-related parts of my life, my weekly scripture class with other Catholic men. It dealt with Jesus just after the Transfiguration helping the people balance in their minds the need for the Jewish Law and need to understand the insights of the prophets. I realized that there was a way in which Jesus was anticipating future nations that would have it within themselves to be receptive to the prophets, a receptiveness with a kind of depth, like the women who came up the empty tomb. The idea that I would fall into clichés involving bitter sense of a tragic Otherness possessed by the Russian political system was subsumed in a subsequent moment by my recollection that Russians think about prophets. Short of excusing Russian authoritarianism, there is plenty of room for analysis that is aware of this prophetic potential in Russia. Depth that is not insipid, although this statement may make me sound like an Orthodox holy fool or юродивый (yurodivyi). But indeed, what might go unseen is how this particular blogger makes use of the concept of a Deep People and makes it out to be the whole people digging deep in a tangible way, from the surface down to the depths, albeit in a fashion in which they are part of a system of total control and concerted effort. The message may be a bit dark, this being part of a war and all. But just as a matter of analysis, I would say I see how this writer is playing around with canonical terms.
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But to conclude and allow the final notes of this post to be about language on the level that I deal with professionally, I will reiterate that the adjective in the terms Deep State and Deep People in Russian is not a depth that extends like Baikal to some abyssal point way down. This is a depth that can be more aptly described as consisting of a mysterious layer below the surface. A good way to remember it is that it contains a root inside it—инн—like the inn in истинный (istinnyi)—true. The nature of the word for higher “truth”— истина in Russia is that it names a kind of metaphysical truth or even merely truth as named in high style. It is quite often far from the transparency of a different kind of depth and also contains an opacity distinct from the (semblance of) earthly truth of the newspaper Pravda. Insofar as one of these terms most definitely is aimed at projecting opacity forward, it is not all that appropriate to propose a translation that fixes its vagueness. The other term is more limpid. Common English parlance lacks a term that would clarify what kind of depth is being described. A term like the deep-down people or, even more natural—the underlying people—may be called for.