Nominative/ Accusative

Lenin once wrote that morality in politics is essentially a matter of kto-kogo: who is doing it to whom. When we’re the ones doing it, we are working for progress, justice, the iron laws of history. But when we’re the ones it’s being done to, we immediately become victims of plots nefarious, injustice cruel, atrocities inhuman —and worse.

Brezhnev may not be the linguist Lenin was, but everything he’s done since coming to power indicates that he has a good working understanding of the difference between the nominative and the accusative of the pronoun kto (who). In the famous Brezhnev Doctrine enunciated in 1968, for instance, this student of Lenin demonstrated such a mastery of the principle of kto-kogo that he managed to convince nearly all his countrymen (and a surprising number of ours) that the benevolent Russian liberation of Czechoslovakia bore no resemblance whatever to the criminal American invasion of Vietnam, and that people of conscience throughout the world should overlook the necessarily firm measures employed by the liberators, while continuing to demonstrate fresh moral outrage at every atrocity committed by the invaders.

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About the Author

George M. Young Jr.

Lenin once wrote that morality in politics is essentially a matter of kto-kogo: who is doing it to whom. When we’re the ones doing it, we are working for progress, justice, the iron laws of history. But when we’re the ones it’s being done to, we immediately become victims of plots nefarious, injustice cruel, atrocities inhuman —and worse.

Brezhnev may not be the linguist Lenin was, but everything he’s done since coming to power indicates that he has a good working understanding of the difference between the nominative and the accusative of the pronoun kto (who). In the famous Brezhnev Doctrine enunciated in 1968, for instance, this student of Lenin demonstrated such a mastery of the principle of kto-kogo that he managed to convince nearly all his countrymen (and a surprising number of ours) that the benevolent Russian liberation of Czechoslovakia bore no resemblance whatever to the criminal American invasion of Vietnam, and that people of conscience throughout the world should overlook the necessarily firm measures employed by the liberators, while continuing to demonstrate fresh moral outrage at every atrocity committed by the invaders.