Monday, February 27, 2012

Esenin-Volpin Article


It also set them apart from one of the twentieth century's most distinctive forms of resistance to state power, the civil disobedience campaigns that flourished in places as diverse as Birmingham and Bombay. Civil disobedience, to quote the Dic tionary of the History of Ideas, presupposes a "formal structure of law" and consists of "publicly announced defiance of specific laws, policies, or com mands."1 It was Soviet dissidents who invented the less well known but, in the Soviet context, equally provocative technique of radical civil obedience: engaging in or insisting on practices formally protected by Soviet law?such as freedom of assembly or transparency of judicial proceedings—but frequently subject to the wrath of the regime.  (630)
For Vladimir Bukovskii, who met Vorpin at the Maiakovskii Square poetry readings in 1961 and later be came an international cause c?l?bre in the campaign against Soviet abuse of psychiatry for political purposes, Vol'pin was "the first person in our life who spoke seriously about Soviet laws. [... ]W e laughed at him: 'what kind of laws can there be in this country? Who cares?' 'That's the problem,' re plied Alik, 'Nobody cares. We ourselves are to blame for not demanding fulfillment of the laws.' " 631

Connection between language and legality

In contrast to the antimetaphysical thrust of analytic philosophy in its origi nal Oxbridge setting, Vol'pin's search for a "scientific" language is explic itly directed against the Soviet Union's reigning doctrine of materialism: Materialism consists in the conviction that all phenomena may be re duced to the material state. That this very reduction is unthinkable with out the aid of the intellect is shyly ignored. [ . . .] What shall we say about the obvious error of so-called historical ma terialism, which sees in economically grounded relationships the basis for all others and, in particular, the basis for moral and juridical rela tionships? This cannot for instance be applied to Soviet society, where a powerful state authority can change the economic system from an agrar ian to an industrial one. How then can the state authority remain the "su perstructure over the economic base"?70 Vol'pin's skepticism regarding "materialism" extended to the sacred cow of "realism," the notion that thought and representation ought to orient themselves exclusively to "reality" and lived experience, or as Russians like to say, to "life itself." In the Bolshevik lexicon (but with roots extending back to the nineteenth-century Russian intelligentsia), "estranged from life" was a stock rebuke for perceived formalism or abstraction?or cer tain kinds of ideological rigidity. In two separate instances the "Free Philo sophical Tractate" invokes Vol'pin's adolescent crisis (now two decades old), that allegedly fateful day in April 1939 when he pledged himself to reason over emotion. Now, however, he tellingly recasts it as a "break with my belief in realism, [to which] I never returned again. [ . . . ] Intuition usually makes us lean toward realism, but here we must not trust intui tion until such time as it has been emancipated from language."71 The primacy of metaphysical truths (ideally formulated in the language of mathematical logic) over the "real" world of emotion and experience was encapsulated in a phrase that appears again and again, mantra-like, across Vol'pin's writings: "Life is an old prostitute whom I refused to take as my governess."72 Like the repeated retelling (and reworking) of his adolescent crisis, this phrase, with its suggestion of heroic resistance against tempta tion and struggle for intellectual autonomy, forms a leitmotif in Vorpin's ongoing fashioning of his life story. These recurring vignettes did not, however, form part of a narrative of self-realization or self-emancipation. Just as the "Tractate" describes real ity and thought as amorphous and unbounded, so it rejects the idea of a unitary self: Why must I believe in the unity of my own personality? [ . . . ] I do not imagine myself at all as something unitary! There is within me an entire chain of experiences that are unrelated to each other. They so little re semble each other that no philosophical desire arises to consolidate them into a single ego. [ . . . ] Does not my ego die and revive every minute? I am certainly not the same man who will die at about the age of eighty. My present "I" will be hopelessly lost by that time.73 If read against the background of the Bolshevik crusade to forge a new "Soviet person," this statement can be understood as rejecting not only the goal but the possibility of fashioning a coherent self. …In effect, Vol'pin is replacing the Utopian dream of creating a new type of human being with an analogous dream of creating a new type of language: transparent, ra tional, and unambiguous. Until that time, it seems, we will not be able to "trust our own thoughts," our intuition?or our self from all forms of belief via the con struction of an ideal language. Specifically, it calls for a reform of the Rus sian language so as to make it conform more closely to the requirements of "modal logic"?the branch of logic that classifies propositions accord ing to whether they are true, false, possible, impossible, or necessary.  (646-647)

Vol'pin's most important contribution to the rich interdisciplinary debate taking shape in the USSR during the thaw was based on a practical deployment of the Utopian project of fashioning an ideal language. Rather than developing such a language from mathematical proposi tions, or "reforming" the Russian language as a whole so as to rid it of am biguous meanings, Vol'pin sought to apply modal logic to two human istic fields that he considered most susceptible to "exact methods": jurisprudence and ethics. 648
Acting on the moral imperative "not to remain silent" in the face of perceived injustice?and encouraged by interrogators trained in the art of extracting information?arrestees often used the opportunity to argue their positions, with occasionally catastrophic results for themselves and their acquaintances. For Vol'pin, interrogations provided rich material for thinking about language and ethics: when to tell the truth to one's in terrogator and when to remain silent; how to refuse to answer a question, even under pressure; and how to avoid lying, that is, how to avoid com promising oneself. Most dissidents, it should be noted, regarded lying as a perfectly legitimate technique of self-defense vis-?-vis the KGB and other state organs.79 By contrast, more than a decade before Solzhenitsyn issued his ringing injunction to Soviet citizens to "Live Not by the Lie," Vol'pin had concluded, in his quest for a language free of ambiguity, that "the fundamental task of ethics" was the eradication of lying.80
The code had undergone a major revision in the late 1950s in response to the rampant abuse, not to say complete lack, of procedural rules in the administration of justice under Stalin. Vol'pin found in the revised code a surprisingly dense web of protective measures designed, at least in theory, to constrain the power of prosecutors and ju dicial investigators over defendants and witnesses. It explicitly banned "leading questions"; it granted individuals under interrogation the right to write down their own responses (rather than have an official transcribe their words), to request explanation of terms used by their interrogators, and in certain cases, to refuse to answer questions. In other words, this cat and-mouse game had rules, a kind of formal grammar governing speech between the citizen and representatives of the Soviet state. They were im perfect rules, to be sure, and often ignored in practice, but nonetheless they were designed to regulate verbal exchanges a nd the meaning of spe cific words. One could learn and exploit them. Vol'pin's strategies for successful interrogations (649)

Vol'pin's strategies for successful interrogations eventually found ex pression in his renowned 'Juridical Memorandum," one of the most widely circulated samizdat texts in the Soviet Union in the late 1960s and 1970s?so widely, in fact, that there were cases in which frustrated KGB investigators abruptly cut off interrogations with the words, "They've read too much Vol'pin!"81 )649-650
Vol'pin had special reason to react strongly to the arrests: he himself had published abroad works critical of Soviet society and had earlier been imprisoned for allegedly "anti-Soviet" poems. And yet his response dis played a curious combination of boldness and restraint. He refused to read works by either writer, considering their content to be at best irrele vant and at worst a distraction from the real issue, which was juridical rather than literary.100 Bypassing the all too familiar drama of state perse cution of writers, Vol'pin focused instead on a single issue: forcing the re gime to obey the Soviet Constitution's provisions regarding public access to judicial proceedings. "Let them go ahead and convict those fellows 97. [Siniavskii and Daniel'], but let the words, such as those expressed by Shatunovskii at my court case against him?'From our party-minded point of view, the conventional definition of "slander" is irrelevant'?let this entire pseudo-argumentation be heard loud and clear. [ . . . ] The more such occasions [arise], the more quickly will an end be put to simi lar repressions."101 If this agenda struck many of Vol'pin's acquaintances as strangely minimalist, the means by which he proposed to realize it did not: a public "glasnost' meeting" in advance of the trial, demanding judi cial transparency. Together with his friend Valerii Nikol'skii, Vol'pin be gan to plan a gathering in Pushkin Square, across the street from?and thus offering the hope of media exposure by?the office of the newspa per Izvestiia (News), to be held on 5 December, the official holiday cele brating the ratification of the 1936 "Stalin" Constitution by the Congress of Soviets. The meeting itself would exemplify strict obedience to the Constitution (Article 125 of which, "in conformity with the interests of the toilers and in order to strengthen the socialist system" guaranteed "free dom of assembly and meetings"), restricting participants to the single de mand for an open trial for Siniavskii and Daniel' (as per Article 111: "ex amination of cases in all courts shall be open, in so far as exceptions are not provided for by law") ,654-655

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Hayward, Max, translator. On Trial: The Soviet State versus "Abram Tertz" and "Nikolai Arzhak." New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1966.

Intro:

made it to WEst by "undisclosed channels, but is of indubitable authenticity." (1)

on Sinyavsky: "It is true that, like most Russian intellectuals of his generation, he was deeply affected by Khrushchev's revelations at the 20th Party Congress in 1956 about the horrors of the Stalinist past, and reacted with all the inevitable outrage of one who had, albeit with some qualms of intellect and conscience, beleieved. This was a turning point for many younf Russians, who had hitherto tended to excuse the excesses of the Stalin era on the grounds of revolutionary expediency." 4

arrested on Sept. 13, 1965

"For the next two months, numberous anxious inquiries, both public and private, from leading Wester writers and organizations were addressed to Kosygin, Surkov (Secretary of the Union of Soviet Writers) and others. They were met by silence. Only on November 22 did Surkov (Secretary of the Union of Soviet WRiters) and others. They wre met by silence. Only on Novemeber 22 did Surkov admit the arrests at a press conference in Paris, at the same time giving a solemn assurance that 'legality' would be observed. (22)

"Ivestia tried to run a follow-up campaign of 'massive indignation' in response to Eremin's article. but it could produce only three or four rather unconvincing expressions of outrage from an ill assorted collection of 'average citizens.' The classical orchestration was lacking." (25)

"There were several unusual features about it and in one respect it was unprecedented, namelt, that it was the first time in the history of the Soviet Union that writers had been put on trial for what they had written." (26)

"The second unusual  feature was a striking difference in the way the case was reported in the fovernment newspaper Ivestia and the way it was reported in the party newspaper Pravda....The pieces are writeen in the classical style of the Russian satirical feuilleton, speak with heavy sarcasm of the accused, quote their words in order to mock them, and in general assume the guilt of the two men before the court reached its verdict. The defendants are presented as cowwardly felons who squirmed under the withering attack and the iron logic of the prosecution." (27)

More available about illegality of trial on 27

"The third unusual feature of the trial is that the accused did not plead guilty. This evidently took the prosecution by surprise and may partly explain the the very maladroit handling of of the trial, and the gingerly way in which it was reported by Pravda." (28)


"What is tragic about this trial is not only that the two men have been tried and sentenced for heresy, sacrilege and blasphemy, but that the trend toward and improvement in the administration of justice, the frequently expressed desire to do away with 'distortion of justic; as part of Stalin's legacy-- all this has recieved a sever setback. Sinyavsky and Daniel's trial could have been a test case to show that 'socialist legality' had really been established, that the earnest debate among Soviet jurists in recent years about the need to see that due legal procedures wer observed really counted for something." (32)

Article 70: "Agitation or propaganda carried out with the purpose of subverting or weakening the Soviet refime or in order to commit particularly dangerous crimes against the state, the dissemination for the said purposes of slanderous inventions defamatory to the Soviet political and social system as well as the dissemination or production or harboring for the said purposes of literature of similar content, are punishable by imprisonment for a period of from sic months to seven years  and with exile from two to five tears, or without exile, or by exile from two to five years." (42)

"In the novel The Trial Begins, Sinyavsky, under the guise of criticism of the cult of personality, sneers at the Soviet system and the principles of MArxism-Leninism." (45)

Daniel: "Stalin had not been dead all that long. We all remembered well what were called 'violations of socialist legality.' And I saw again all the symptoms: there was again one man who knew everything again one man who knew everything, again one person was being exalted, again one person was dictating his will to agricultural experts, artists, diplomats and writers. WE saw again how one single name appeared on the pages of newspapers and on posters, how the most banal and crude statement of this person was being held up to us as a revelation, as the quinesence of wisdom."  (61)

Daniel: "Even the statutes of the Writers oUnion don't require writers to write about only novle, intelligent people." (68)

Daniel: "I was asked all the time what I wrote my story This is Moscow Speaking. Every time I replied: Because I felt there was a real danger of a resurgence of the cult of personality. To this the answer was always: What is the relevance of the cult of personality, if the story was written in 1960-61? To this I say: It was precisely in these year that a number of events made one feel that the vult of personality was being revived. This was not denied; I was not told. 'You are lying, this is not true'--my words were simply ifnored as though I had never said them." (150)

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Jacoby

Jacoby, Susan. Moscow Conversations. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1972. 


"Moscow is one of the easiest places in the world for a journalist to become dishonest with himself and his readers."  15


"Dishonesty becomes a part of journalism in Moscow when correspondents fail to tell their readers about these inhibitions and the profound effect they have on a reporter's perceptions of Russian life. The reluctance of the Moscow press corps to write about its working conditions is less a conspiracy of silence than a product of frustrated resignations; an abnormal situation begins to seem quite normal after only a few months of life in Russia."  15


"Foreign correspondents do not travel as much as they would like to, partly because editors at home demand a steady flow of political news from the capital and partly because each trip involves endless bureacratic snags. A correspondent must obtain special permission from the press departmente of the Soveit Foreign Ministry if he wishes to travel outside a twenty-five mile radius of Moscow and even for some points inside the circle" 19


"THe dissenters are a small, diverse collection of people who disagree strongly on long-range goals for Russia; their main area of agreement is their determination to make the Soviet authorities observe their own laws. Their chief activity is publicizing official actions against other dissenters; they view the publicity as an important guarantee that no one will quietly  disappear into prison or exile, as in the Stalin years. The dissenters naturally need foreign journalists to transmit the news of their activities to the outside world. Stories about Soviet political dissent published in foreign newspapers ensure that many Russians also hear the news." 22-23


"Some journalists are happy to consider dissidents friends as well as news sources; relationships with dissenters involve somewhat less strain and prestense than relationships with ther Russians. The skepticism about absolute truth that is characteristic of most truly educated minds in the west is completely foreign to the majority of Russians; only with a few of the dissidents did I find a common approach to intellectual questions that had nothing to do with politics."  23


"Khrushchev abolished formal censorship of correspondents outgoing news dispatches in 1961. Foreign journalists are now free to transmit their articles by telephone, Telex or cable without prior approval of a Soviet official. The authorities now attempt to censor news dispatches indirectly, through post-publication earnings, KGB harassment and the ultimate sanction of expulsion from the country. Officials in the press deparment in Soviet embassies throughout the world read articles that appear in newspapers and magazines with Moscow correspondents. If an article is both highly important and abrasive, a correspondent may receive an officialwarning from the press department in Moscow within two or three days of publication." 23


"Soviet officials are clearly furious about being unable to prevent contacts between foreign correspondents and political dissidents. The press department has established a pattern of harrassing and trying to get rid of correspondents who see dissidents frequently." 23


"Four foreign journalists were expelled from the Soviet Union during 1970; three of them had been particularly active in gathering news about political dissent and relaying it to other correspondents. Because it is difficult to arrange meetings and also because only the most urgent news is relayed over tapped phone lines, it is impractical for every correspondent to track down rach piece of dissident news himself. One or two correspondents usually meet with a dissenter and pass the news on to the rest of the Moscow press corps. Unfortunately, many spineless Moscow correspondents are only too happy to acquire the news of political dissent from their colleagues but are unwilling to incur official displeasure by meeting dissidents themselves." 23-24


26-most of the sources are intellectuals 


"The reluctance to talk about Stalin today is deep and wide-spread, even amonf people who recognize the dimensions of spread, even among people who recognize the dimensions of the tragedy that befell their country under his dictatorship. Admissions of Stalin's evil, which meant the death and imprisonment of millions of Russians are not forthcoming from most Soviet citizens who grew up during that period. To acknowledge the full extent of the tragedy would be to admit complicity in horrors too great for most people even to think about: The refusal of many middle-aged Germans to admit they knew about the Nazi concentration camps is a similar reaction." 42


"Stalin was never fully toppled from his pedestal, even when Khrushchev's de-Stalinization campaign was at its height. Too many officials still in power had been the executors of Stalin's policies; indeed, many Western analysts believe Khrushchev's seriousness about de-Stalinization was the major gavtor that led to his loss of support within the Party Central Committee. After Khrushchev's partial cleansing operation, the new Brezhnev-Kosygin leadership said in effect, 'Enough is enough,' and clamped hte lid back on the sewer. " 42


"I never met a student in any part of the Societ Union who did not listen to the VOA. Although reception is hampered by jamming, Russians patiently persevere. For obvious reasons, English language broadcasts are interfered with less than Russian language runs. Many students also listened to the BBC, saying they preferred its news broadcasts because the reports were less slanted by American government propaganda. (I prefereed the BBC for the same reason in Moscow.) The student consensus, however, was that the VOA offered better music than the BBC." 94

"The girls said they did not believe everything in Soviet newspapers 'any more than you believe everything in yours.' Tanya's favorite paper was Komsomolskaya pravda, the organ of the Komsomol Central Committee.

Oskar Rabin- Unofficial painter

on Hope against Hope: "He felt that one of its greatest strengths was its recognition that what happened under Stalin was not a passing aberration--the product of one man's insanity--but a national sickness that permitted the Stalinist terrror to develop and may appear in mutant forms for generations to come." 171

"Realism is a word that loses its meaning in such an ideological context. If a painter chooses to depict a shabby apartment or a drunk, he is being a "critical realist" rather a Socialist realist, and the authorities frown on critical realism. In the Soviet Union, realism refers to reality as Soviet ideologues think it should be--not to a reality that an individual artist might perceive." 173

"Soviet papers--like books, magazines, canned food labels and every other form of printed material--are subject to official censorship. The existence of censorship does not, however, mean that every statement in every newspaper represent the official policy of the Soviet government. Pravda, the organ of the Party Central Committee, and to a slightly lesser extent Ivestia, the government newspaper, are forums for top-level statements on foreign and domestic policy. To use a favorite phrase of Stalin's, 'it is not by accident' that articles appear in Pravda and Ivestia. Columns by important political commentators sometimes reflect the official government position on important matters."  213

"Ideas for articles are initiated by party authorities, editors, reporters, outside specialists and sometimes by readers. Letters-to-the-editor columns are extremely important in Soviet newspapers; they provide what is essentially the only public forum for complaints about the way various institutions are run." 216

"Government offices often take percautions to prevent their typewriters from being stolen or used for nefarious purposes. At Vera's newspaper, every typewriter had to be locked away before the staff went home at night."234

Dmitri-college student
"At the same time all of this was rumbling around in my head, One Day came out. I thought things might have changed enough so there was actually a possibility of publishing honest writing." 237

"Dmitri's attitude toward the official writers is, quite simply that they are prostitutes. It is an attitude shared by all committted samizdatchiki and political dissidents." 242