Recently, a fellow scribe penned a sharp-tongued missive about a certain mining town above the Arctic Circle. One leading resident of that polar community took umbrage at the colleague's words and threatened to sue, punctuating his displeasure with the phrase: V tsivilizovannykh stranakh za takiye veshchi b'yut po morde, "In civilized countries they hit you in the muzzle for those kind of things."


The offending writer, who will remain anonymous out of consideration for the safety of his muzzle, calmly brushed off the challenge. When he told us, our first thought was, "Haven't we heard that line before?"


Indeed, Valentin Pavlov, former Soviet prime minister and a leader of the abortive 1991 coup, said the same -- on national television, no less -- to a journalist who called him "crap" after his release from prison early last year.


V tsivilizovannykh stranakh za takiye veshchi b'yut po fisionomii, said the porcupinal Pavlov. "In civilized countries they hit you in the physiognomy for that kind of thing."


If you account for Pavlov's use of a more polite term for face -- the man was a prime minister after all -- then the two utterances are absolutely identical. This coincidence started us thinking: What is civilization? Do Russians think it is really such a violent place?


The Soviet Encyclopedic Dictionary, which usually provides the final word on such issues, was of little help: It defines tsivilizatsiya as "culture," a word with, at best, ambivalent connotations in Russia, as anyone who has been to Park Kul'tury can see.


Another definition, borrowed from Engels, is "the level of societal development following barbarism." That allows for the pugilism in the words of Pavlov and Mr. X, but it's still not much of a definition.


The best answer comes from everyday speach. Listen carefully and you can hear that phrase, v tsivilizovannykh stranakh, at least once a day, as Russians practice the age-old tradition of comparing their lives to something better somewhere else, enshrined by that watchword of cultural ogling, tam khorosho gde nas net, "Things are good in the place where we are not."


Some Russians' idea of civilization is as outlandish as that implied in the bellicose musings of Messrs. Pavlov and X. While standing in an anti-Semitic cluster at a recent hardline rally, we overheard: "In civilized countries people of different races live separately."


Sometimes, v tsivilizovannykh stranakh is the prelude to a rather reasonable suggestion, such as "In civilized countries the traffic police actually direct traffic," something repeated to us about 150 times a year by frustrated local drivers.