How to Read Soviet Scholarly Writings Without Going Insane
Are you starting out as a scholar of Soviet History? Maybe you are a graduate student of Russian linguistics? Or an archaeologist interested in Central Asian cities, perhaps? Whatever the case, if you are reading this text, you have probably found yourself trying to make your way through dozens of pages of ideological constructions to be found in Soviet scholarly writings in any given field of science or humanities.
Sometimes right in the introduction, sometimes in the first chapter, and sometimes scattered all over the text the reader of Soviet scholarly books and articles will discover references to Lenin, Marx and Engels. A lot of times these references appear in the form of short, out-of-context citations, interpreted by the author of a study in a desperate attempt to relate the citation to the rest of the text. These ideological, or if you wish propagandistic, constructions are in most cases rather similar and irrelevant to the umbrella question of the study. When these ideological scribbles appear in the beginning of the text it often confuses the reader and discourages him or her from further reading. So, why on earth did Soviet scholars en masse add these seemingly unnecessary and cumbrous chunks of text to their research?
Why did Soviet scholars have to put propaganda into their texts?
In the Soviet Union, Marxism-Leninism was considered to be the only true framework for scholarly thinking; scientific or humanitarian research that happened outside of Marxist-Leninist Dialectic Materialism was automatically considered as being false (and malignant). Therefore, the relationship of a study to Marxist-Leninism automatically made it that much more publishable, than if no such relationship had been found. The Soviet scholars, especially the ones outside of the fields of political science, did not necessarily want to put Marxist-Leninist propaganda into their studies. Soviet scholars might have publicly claimed that Marxist-Leninist philosophy had greatly facilitated their research, because they lived in a totalitarian country where they had to please the carnivorous system.[1]
In the Soviet Union, in which every scientific discovery had to be within the framework of a rather bureaucracy-contaminated version of Soviet Dialectic Materialism, the validity of a scholarly and especially humanitarian work was often estimated according to its ideological correctness. Unfortunately for us, a Soviet book on Central Asian archeology had to begin with praise to the “classics” of Marxist-Leninist thought, who “considered preservation and study of the cultural heritage of the past to be of great importance.”[2] What a surprise in the mid-1980s, right? Fortunately for us, this and many other books on Central Asian archeology were published; despite the propaganda, these books still delivered extremely valuable knowledge about the findings, and in the best cases the interpretations, of the Soviet archeologists.
Why did Soviet scholars always use the same citations, even if the rest of the text virtually contradicts those citations and their ideological interpretations?
This happened partially because even Lenin’s, Marx’s and Engels’ writings are not limitless. Besides, over the years of the Soviet regime scholars generated substantial experience and gut feeling about censorship. Soviet authors did not often step beyond the limits of the unknown and preferred to use citations universally accepted by the censorship apparatus. If you ever had the pleasure to ever read Soviet scientific literature, I am sure you will remember the “erasure of differences between a city and a village” or “the most important art for us is cinema” (those who cite this famous phrase of Lenin’s often forget to include its second part: “because of the mass illiteracy of the population”). My freshest experience of encountering the “differences between a city and a village” occurred while reading a 1976 book on the perspectives of Soviet dwelling, dedicated mostly to urban high-rise apartment block housing. Some of the architectural designs were futuristic enough to compete with the Japanese Metabolist (and very futurist) movement during the same time. The question of the Soviet village, that by no means could have been described as futuristic, or even ready for the arrival of the imagined “radiant future,” was never raised in the book’s subsequent texts.
After the denunciation of Stalin’s personality cult in 1956 and the ban on the construction of monuments and naming places after the living party members, the pantheon of Soviet ‘saints’ quickly shrank to three unshakable figures: Marx, Engels and Lenin. All the former heroes in the propaganda texts of scientific research gave way to these three. Only these three were perfectly safe to cite in ideologically correct scholarly texts, and it seemed that the scholars did not really mind the simplicity of this unwritten social contract. Academia, by the way, was not the only realm where this trio took over the rest of propaganda figures. Around the same time, the territory of the Soviet Union became oversaturated with the canonic monuments to Lenin, as the state still had to reproduce propaganda, but there were no other spotless icons left erect.
Why do Soviet scholarly texts often read like descriptive catalogs rather than hypotheses or speculations? What is the point in all these writings?
Answering the second question first, the point is often in the fact of the publication’s existence. If you feel like the author made absolutely no attempt to interpret their subject and instead just catalogued some cases, do not hurry to condemn the author. It may appear that the topic that the author undertook for their research was already so marginal, from the perspective of Soviet censorship, that the author only had chances of publishing it, if there was no speculation involved.
Publishing something about the topic could have become an argument of its own. I often get this sense from Soviet art history studies, especially on the subjects of the Soviet Modernist and Sixtiers Art. The memory of the Soviet Modernist generation of artists and architects in the Soviet art criticism never fully recovered from Stalin’s purges and oblivion. While partially rehabilitated by the Sixtiers, Soviet Modernism still remained a slippery slope for an art historian willing to follow a sustainable career path. The Sixtiers movement completely fell out of grace at the end of the Thaw, as being too liberal and “foreign” for the Soviet regime. The 1970s and 1980s art historians may have used their chance to memorialize the art of the Sixtiers at least in the form of descriptive catalogues of these pieces, while interpreting this art within the larger 1960s context may have been simply impossible. Many of the 1920s-1930s and 1960s art works did not survive the 70 Soviet years and the early 1990s and the only form through which we know them today are those descriptive, seemingly non-argumentative scholarly articles.
What are the consequences of this scholarly ideology?
While I am not equipped to properly answer the question of scholarly propaganda’s consequences, in this short essay I would like to suggest that an interested reader look at Loren Graham’s book Science in Russia and the Soviet Union: A Short History or Vadim Birstein’s The Perversion of Knowledge: the True Story of Soviet Science. In addition, I’d like to note that for a Soviet and post-Soviet person like myself, Karl Marx became somewhat of a humorous figure. Here I am not trying to diminish the philosophical value of his work. However, I find it necessary to explain that if you have experienced a substantial amount of Soviet scientific literature, for example texts in which references to Marx are sometimes used to create fascinating stretches between his socio-economic theory and the agricultural selective seed breeding, you cannot take Karl Marx 100% seriously anymore.[3] While this short text did not intend to cover all the peculiar aspects of dealing with the Soviet science, I hope it helped the reader realize that they are not alone in their struggle to understand the essence of research in the Soviet scholarly literature.
[1] Todes, Daniel P.. 1994. Review of Science in Russia and the Soviet Union: A Short History. The American Historical Review 99 (5). [Oxford University Press, American Historical Association]: 1726–27.
[2]Muradov, V. G. 1984. Gradostroitelstvo Azerbaiidzhana XIII-XVI vv. Baku: "Elm"., 4
[3] Lysenko, Trofim. 1949. Agrobiologiia: Raboty po Voprosam Genetiki, Selektsii i Semenovodstva. Moskva: Gos. izd-vo selkhoz lit-ry.
Citation: “How to Read Soviet Scholarly Writings Without Going Insane,” Kateryna Malaia, Post-Soviet Mind (March 13th, 2016), http://postsovietmind.tumblr.com/post/141017681924/how-to-read-soviet-scholarly-writings-without
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