According to Hans-Georg Gadamer, language is more powerful than history. (This is a somewhat free translation of his idea, but it gets to the point.) That is to say, words are more powerful than people — especially in Russia, both for the better and the worse.
Take ‘perestroika’, for example. For the first couple of years after its appearance, in 1985-1987, ‘perestroika’ was just a word rather than a real thing, but it had a powerful material force nonetheless. In the early 1990s, the word ‘reforms’ had roughly the same, albeit slightly weaker power, although there was nothing new about it: the phrase ‘post-reform Russia’ could be found in Soviet history textbooks.
In Russia, words can often trigger change. People attach themselves to them, using them like an Archimedean lever. But the word ‘liberal’ was never widely used here, let alone popular.
