К-165

КОЗЁЛ ОТПУЩЕНИЯ NP fixed WO

a person (or group) blamed for the faults or misdeeds of others

scapegoat

whipping boy.

Они узаконивали беззаконие, наши песенные двадцатые годы. Поиски козлов отпущения становились привычны (Свирский 1). They legalized illegality, our much-vaunted twenties. It became customary to look for scapegoats (1a).

Говорили, что бериевцы то ли между собой, то ли с кем-то из обслуги судачили: «Ну, что Лаврентий Павлович? Будто он один, а другие, нынешние, ни при чём? Все решения были общие. Просто нужен был козёл отпущения!» (Марченко 1). They also said that the Beria men had been heard to say, either among themselves or to someone doing orderly duty: "Well, what about Lavrenty Beria? Do you think he was the only one and that those men up there now had nothing to do with it? All decisions were taken unanimously. He's just the one they used as a whipping boy!" (1a).

From an ancient Jewish rite described in the Bible. On Yom Kippur the high priest laid his hands on the head of a goat, symbolically transferring the sins of the people to it, and then let the goat loose in the wilderness (Lev. 16:5-22).