Currently topping our reading list: "Politically Correct Bedtime Stories," by James Finn Garner, who purges traditional fairy tales of their inherent "discriminatory, unfair, culturally biased" influences.


The results are intriguing. When the woodcutter tries to rescue the politically correct Little Red Riding Hood, Red exclaims: "Sexist! Speciesist! How dare you think that womyn (politically correct spelling) and wolves can't solve their own problems without a man's help!"


How does one explain this concept of "politically correct" in Russia, so recently the center of an entirely different kind of political correctness? And how does post-Soviet Russia, stripped of its Leninist imperative, meet the standards defined by Mr. Garner? The answers are "not easily" and "not too well."


If being PC means avoiding cultural bias, then locals fail whenever they call people from the Caucasus chyorniye, or blacks. What should they say? The official Soviet term for non-Russians was natsional'niye men'shinstva, national minorities. But the word "minorities" is taboo for the politically correct, so this term is disqualified, as is the popular combined form, natsmen.


The expression litsa kavkazskoi natsional'nosti, or people of Caucasian nationality, sounds potentially PC, but unfortunately it is only used in police reports about crimes allegedly committed by Caucasians.


Then there is sexism. In 1987, one professor insisted that Marx argued that womyn belong in the home, (she also believed men who wash dishes become impotent). Recently, Russia saw the publication of an encyclopedia for devushki, which teaches young girls how to cook and clean. Not much progress there.


Perhaps it is too early for recently-Soviet Russia to take on political correctness. Take the way people address each other. For 70 years, calling a Russian gospodin, or mister, earned the defiant response Vsye gospoda v Parizhe -- all the misters are in Paris. Russia was the home of tovarishchi, comrades.


Times have changed. Judging from the cars former Party members are driving now, it looks like quite a few tovarishchi have spent at least some time in Frankfurt. "Comrade" and "Mercedes" don't juxtapose very well, and so the new business class has sought to revive the prerevolutionary gospodin and gospozha (Mrs.), denounced by the Soviets as "bourgeois" forms of address.


Still, tovarishch comes more easily for everyone from ordinary folk to Moscow's political elite. As one legislator lamented as he struggled to address a colleague during a recent session of the State Duma, "I can't decide whether I should call you 'Mr.,' 'Comrade,' or 'Mr. Comrade.'





Next week: Is a Lada more politically correct than an Audi