I remember exactly the date when the cup of my philological patience, so to speak, was overflowed: this happened on December 23, 1992. In the morning I heard from the mouth of a Russian radio announcer something like this: "But the main benefit of those in power is the lack of freedom of speech and publicity." And in the evening of the same day, the handsome host of Vesti with a charming smile said from the TV screen: "However, the balance of interests of the press and those in power is possible." I remembered how many times I had recently heard or read about these very "powers that be", as a venerable academician mentioned them from the rostrum at a recent scientific conference at the Academy of Sciences - and inwardly exclaimed: "For God's sake, how many can you do?! Why does Alexander Solzhenitsyn read Dahl every day, but our newsreaders and journalists don't even look at Ozhegov?" And what should they open, for example, the 23rd edition of this dictionary on page 578 and read: "the ruler, - aya, - ee (obsolete): 1) the powers that be -persons invested with power; 2) the power that is the highest power." Almost the same interpretation is found in the " Dictionary of the Russian Language in 4 volumes: "Outdated. those in power - persons relieved by the authorities; authorities. The ruling power is the highest governmental power" (Ed. 2-E. T. III. M., 1984. p. 365). So what does that mean, you might ask? And this means that the word "ruler" in modern Russian is outdated and occurs only as part of two phraseological, that is, stable, combinations; there are authorities (which ones?) powers that be, there is power (what?) Preeminent, but there's no preeminent (what?) power. Having inwardly raged and complained about the fact that so few people, even by profession obliged to speak normalized Russian, consider dictionaries as their desktop books, I continued- page 37 I cooled down and wondered why the distorted form of this phraseology has spread so much. The result of ... Read more