Re: psychoceramics: the mir-acle of medjugorje

[c--@s--.net (Christopher R. Maden)]

>Back in my pre-digital days (and therefore I can't back this
>up with an archive), I saw a rant on TV from an American
>senator who insisted that "Mir" meant both "Peace" and
>"World" in Russian;

The senator was exactly right, according to my freshman Russian textbook.
I remember discovering this while looking one or the other up in the
glossary.  It's not that hard to see the possible etymological connections;
both words can be seen as aspects of the concept "whole".

>therefore, when Russians said, "We want
>mir," they were actually saying "We want the world". His
>point being that the Red Menace was everywhere, even right
>under our noses.

Uh-huh.  The problem is that Russia was isolated enough from the rest of
Europe that idiom often fails to translate.  Khrushchev's "we will bury
you" comment was more like "we will see you buried", i.e., "we will outlast
you".  An entire generation of paranoia from one mistranslation.

-crism

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