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

Conversations in Exile- Sinyavsky

Glad, John Ed. Conversations in Exile. Translated by Richard and Joanna Robin. North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1993.

Conducted 1983

Interview w/ Sinyavsky

how discovered his identity

AS: "Keep in mind that we first started sending manuscripts to the West in 1956. They were published in 1959. That wasn't our fault. The person who smuggled out the manuscripts and had them published help them up so as to first clear the way for Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago." 


"Helene Zamoiskaya, an old French friend, whom I had met back in the years I was a student. I met her in 1947 at Moscow State University. And we're still friends to this day.

After it was published the KGB began an investigation, and I was given some idea as to their progress. For instance, I learned that the Soviet ambassador to France asked the publisher where he got the material, who gave it to him, how it was gotten out, and so on and so on. So they were on the lookout.

...

It was the courier they had to identity. They had to find hte route being used. There were attempts to bribe some foreigners, particularly French and American, to establish the route. They had to establish the courier's contacts in Russia, and usually the contacts of a person like that are limited to a small at Mosxow State University. The rest was easy. Our rooms were bugged, Daniel's and mine, for at least six months and I think it was more like nine months." (G, 152)

Post- arrest:

"I think too that in a situation like this it's important to be true to yourself. And for me it would have been a lie to admit some sort of guilt for art. Moreover (I learned thins only later) ours was the first public political trial--with the possible exception of the Penkovsky trial--since the Stalin era. So you can see, deep down in my consciousness were the show trials of the thirties where the accused were always repented. And I loathed all of that. So it would been stupid if I had repented. It would have been stupid if I had repented. It would have been unnatural.

What this is natural. I really am a proponent of pure art. Even if I have political motives, I don't believe you can try a writer for that. In the interrogations everything was reduced to long and sometimes ludicrous theoretical arguments. I might have read a short story to someone. That counted as agitation and propaganda, as "distribution" of material. (G, 155)

Radio in prison:

"And they all knew about me before I arrived. They practically lifted me up onto their shoulders! They realize that the more a person is criticized in the Soviet press, the better a person he must be. Because the papers said that I wasn't remorseful, the other prisoners realized that I wasn't an informer or provocateur. They were impressed that I was writer. Of course, they had never read any of my books. They probably would have been horrified if they had. But a writer who was imprisoned because of his books must have been writing the truth. So they treated me very well. " (G, 157)

One Day in the Life

"'You're wrong, pal,' Caesar was saying, and he was trying not to be too hard on him. 'One must say in all objectivity that Eisenstein is a genius. Now isn't Ivan the Terrible a work of genius? The opirchniki dancing in the masks! The scene in the cathedral!'

'All show-off!' K-123 snapped. He was holding his spoon in front of his mouth. 'To much art is no art at all. Like candy instead of bread! And the politics of it is utterly vile--vindication of a one-man tyranny. An insult to the memory of three generations of Russian intellectuals!' (He ate his mush, but there was not taste in his mouth. It was wasted on him.)

'But what other treatment of the subject would have been let through...?'

'Ha! Let through, you say? Then don't call him a genius! Call him a toady, say he carried out orders like a dog. A genius doesn't adapt his treatment to the taste of tyrants!'

Caesar looked around and streched out his hand for the mush, as if it had just come to him out of thin air. He didn't even look at Shukob and went back to his talk.

'But listen! It's not what but how that matters in art.'

Kh-123 jumped up and banged his fist on the table.

'No! Your how can go to hell if it doesn't raise the right feelings in me!'" (Sol, 67)

Solzhenitsyn Participation and the Lie

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander. "Participation and the Lie."I Must Speak Out: The Best of The Voluntaryist. Edited by Carl Warner. 200-202. San Francisco: Fox and Wilkes,  1999.

published in 1975 by Little Brown and Company in Under the Rubble


"Our present system is unique in world history, because over and above its physical and economic constraints, it demands of us total surrender of our souls, continuous and active participation in the general conscious lie."  (Sol, 200)


"The most important part of our freedom, inner freedom, is always subject to our will. If we surrender it to corruption, we do not deserve to be called human."(Sol, 200)

"But let us note that if the absolutely essential task is not political liberation, but the liberation of our souls from participation in the lie forced upon us, then is requires no physical, revolutionary, social, organizational easures, no meetings, strikes trade unions-things fearful for us to even contemplate and from which we quite naturally allow circumstances to dissaude us. No! IT requires from each individual a moral step within his power- no more than that.  200


"Do not lie! Do not take part in the lie~ Do not support the lie!" 200


"It is an invasion of man's moral world, and our straightening up and refusing to lie is also not political, but simply the retrieval of our human dignity." 200

"It simply means: not saying what you don't think, and that includes not whispering, not opening your mouth, not raising your hand, not casting your vote, not feigning a smile, not lending you presence, not standing up, and not cheering." 201

"We all work in different fields and move in different walks of life. THose who work in the humanities and all who are studying find themselves much more profoundly and inextricably involved in lying and participating in the lie- they are fenced about by layer after layer of lies. In the technical science it can be more ingeniously avoided, but even so one cannot excape daily entering some door, attending some meeting, putting one's signature to something or undertaking some obligation which is a cowwardly submission to the lie. The lie surrounds us at work, on our way to work, in our leisure pursuits--in everything we see, hear and read." 201

"It will cost you canceled dissertations, annulled degrees, demotions, dismissals, expulsions, sometimes even deportations. But you will not be cast into flames. Or crushed by a tank. And you will still have food and shelter." 202

"This path is the safest and most accessible of all the paths open to the average man in the street. But it is also most effective! Only we, knowing out system, can imagine what will happen when thousand and tens of thousands of people take this path--how our country will be purified and transformed without shots or bloodshed." 202

"But this path is also the most moral: we shall be commencing this liveration and purification with our sown souls. Before we purify the country we shall have purification with our own souls. Before we purify the country we shall have purified ourselves. And this is the only correct historical order; for what is the food of purifying our country's air if we ourselves remain dirty."  202