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