K. A. Kumpan Institute of Art History at the turn of the 1920s – 1930s

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annotation scientific article on linguistics and literary criticism, the author of the scientific work - Yan Levchenko

The article traces the ways of the formation of aggressive rhetoric in the Soviet literary criticism of the 1920s on the example of discussions around the Leningrad branch of the formal school. These processes indicate that the experience of war and revolution legitimizes any form of insult and destruction of the opponent, turns bullying into the mainstream and puts an end to the discussion of ideas, switching it over to the area of ​​intergroup competition and struggle for power, both symbolic and material. In turn, literary criticism also goes to individuals, appealing to ritual formulas, but using the methods of the new hegemon. In relation to the so-called formalists, these discursive maneuvers are manifested with particular vividness, since they are directed at an ideological enemy condemned to destruction. The contrasting dualism in opposing one's own and another's, which is still characteristic of Russian linguistic behavior, is manifested here in a fundamental unpreparedness for a compromise with sides of the triumphant class. Generosity was beyond the power of the Bolsheviks after the victory of the revolution. Their tactics consisted in the cultivation of hatred, pitting various groups against each other under the slogan class struggle with the aim of further stripping and / or absorbing any phenomena that diverge from the general line. The primary motivation for tightening the screws was the atmosphere of the civil war. Then it was replaced by the demand for special vigilance in the period of the forced revenge of the bourgeoisie. The conceptualization of the NEP was not only economic and economic, but inevitably cultural in nature, and the proletariat was simply obliged to feel the threat from the surviving oppressors, whose consciousness remained the same as before the revolution. Finally, the announced long-awaited rejection of temporary cultural and economic measures legitimizes a new round of aggressive rhetoric, which intensifies the internal crisis of the "fellow travelers" of Soviet culture and allows them to end at the turn of the 1920s-1930s.

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From Dispute to Persecution: Rhetoric of Debates Surrounding the Formalist Circle in the 1920s

The present article traces the origins and forms of aggressive rhetoric in the Soviet literary criticism of the 1920s, using the example of the debates surrounding the Leningrad branch of the Russian Formalist School. The discussions around this research circle can be traced to the destructive experience of revolution and civil war, and the shift from conventional forms of debate to the abuse and annihilation of opponents, transforming the latter practices into the new mainstream. The discussion as such becomes a race for power, or a straight-up competition between political groups. In turn, literary criticism also starts reproducing the repressive methods of the victor. The so-called “formalists” represent the most prominent example of this process, as they were sentenced to annihilation as pure ideological enemies of the new hegemonic class both in a political and cultural sense. The contrast dualism that characterizes the opposition between 'us' and 'them' in Russian culture to the present day became visible during that time, as the triumphant class was fundamentally unwilling to compromise with the defeated. The Bolsheviks were not feeling magnanimous after the victory of the October revolution. Their strategy was to cultivate hatred, pitting different groups against each other under the banner of class struggle in order to further strip and / or remove any phenomena diverging from the established way forward. The primary motivation for the crackdown through terror was civil war. Subsequently, it was replaced by the requirement for special vigilance during the temporary resurgence of the bourgeoisie in the period of New Economic Policy (NEP). The conceptualization of the NEP was not only an economic and industrial, but also inevitably a cultural matter, and the proletariat simply had to feel threatened by the surviving oppressors whose consciousness remained the same as before the revolution. Ultimately, the announced and longawaited rejection of the NEP and its “restorative” culture legitimized a new round of aggressive rhetoric that reinforced the internal crisis of the Soviet “poputchiks” (primarily discriminated intelligentsia) and allowed to put an end to them on the cuspof the 1920s and 1930s.

The text of the scientific work on the topic "From controversy to bullying: the rhetoric of the controversy around the formalists in the 1920s"

From controversy to bullying: the rhetoric of the formalist controversy in the 1920s

Yan LEVCHENKO

Professor, School of Cultural Studies, Faculty of Humanities, National Research University Higher School of Economics (NRU HSE). Address: 105066, Moscow, st. Staraya Basmannaya, 21/4. Email: [email protected]

Key words: Russian formalism; literary criticism and polemics; rhetoric of controversy and competition in literature; class struggle; bolshevik revolution.

The article traces the ways of the formation of aggressive rhetoric in the Soviet literary criticism of the 1920s on the example of discussions around the Leningrad branch of the formal school. These processes indicate that the experience of war and revolution legitimizes any form of insult and destruction of the opponent, turns bullying into the mainstream and puts an end to the discussion of ideas, switching it into the area of ​​intergroup competition and struggle for power, both symbolic and material. In turn, literary criticism also goes to individuals, appealing to ritual formulas, but using the methods of the new hegemon. In relation to the so-called formalists, these discursive maneuvers are manifested with particular vividness, since they are directed at an ideological enemy condemned to destruction.

Contrasting dualism in opposition of one's own and another's, to this day characteristic of Russian linguistic behavior, manifests itself here in a fundamentally unprepared

to compromise on the part of the triumphant class. Generosity was beyond the power of the Bolsheviks after the victory of the revolution. Their tactics consisted in cultivating hatred, pitting various groups against each other under the slogan of class struggle with the aim of further cleansing and / or absorbing any phenomena that diverged from the general line. The primary motivation for tightening the screws was the atmosphere of the civil war. Then it was replaced by the demand for special vigilance in the period of the forced revenge of the bourgeoisie. The conceptualization of the NEP was not only economic and economic, but inevitably cultural in nature, and the proletariat was simply obliged to feel the threat from the surviving oppressors, whose consciousness remained the same as before the revolution. Finally, the announced long-awaited rejection of temporary cultural and economic measures legitimizes a new round of aggressive rhetoric, which intensifies the internal crisis of the "fellow travelers" of Soviet culture and allows them to end at the turn of the 1920s-1930s.

In memory of Alexander Yurievich Galushkin (1960-2014)

3 THIS article provides a number of examples illustrating the formation of a very specific discourse about art and literature, based on power rhetoric, taking consciously aggressive forms and legitimizing violence. We are talking about Soviet literary criticism, which managed to purposefully reduce analysis to harassment, and judgment to condemnation. When, in 1918, Vladimir Mayakovsky issued the Order for the Army of Art, 1 paving a dividing line between those who serve and those who evade, the first year of the revolution had not yet expired and the First World War was only turning into a Civil War. There were enough grounds for literally mobilizing representatives of any profession, including humanitarian ones. However, the militarization of labor, in particular the creation of labor armies during the period of war communism, did not mean the militarization of critical discourse. In the departments of the People's Commissariat for Education, for the time being, "specialists" from the former were sitting, while the generation of their future professional detractors had not yet matured, undergoing, with the help of the same "specialists", primary training in proletarian organizations. It took the economic and cultural achievements of the NEP era so that the intellectuals from the victorious class, who were eager to fight and did not recognize Stalin's Thermidor, learned the effective tactics of their political leaders: the ideals of the revolution should be defended in a preventive attack mode.

Since the mid-1920s, the relevance of repressive rhetoric in the field of culture has grown in proportion to its spread in the echelons of power. The revolution proclaimed culture the state's propaganda weapon, and its utilitarian functions were emphasized even more than in tsarist Russia. Relations in the cultural field turn into a direct reflection of the struggle that is practically devoid of mediation filters, which marks the transition from the politics of discussions to the politics of orders. To the XIV Congress

12/07/1918. No. 1. P. 1.

The CPSU (b), famous for the loud defeat of the "Leningrad opposition", rudeness at the top was established as a communicative norm. Lenin's "shit" addressed to the bourgeois intelligentsia, which supports the war on the German front (from a letter to Maxim Gorky on September 15, 19192), is not an accidental swear word released in the heat of polemics, but a matrix of a certain language policy aimed at eliminating a hostile group. The cleansing of culture, which was bureaucratically implemented in 1932 through the liquidation of creative associations, began, among other things, with discussions about formalism. One of such sensational controversies took place in 1924 on the pages of the journal "Printing and Revolution" and was provoked by the article by Leon Trotsky "The Formal School of Poetry and Marxism" (1923), in which the leading and, therefore, dangerous intellectual movement was declared "an arrogant pretender" 3 ... Trotsky does not limit himself to criticizing formalism in art, condemning formalism both in law and in economic management, that is, exposing the vice of formalistic narrowness in areas far from the study of literary techniques.

It was Trotsky's article that served as a precedent for an expansive and expressive interpretation of formalism, for deliberately going beyond the limits of its terminological meaning. Official Soviet criticism demagogically denounced everything that was at variance with the doctrine of socialist realism with this word. As Gorky wrote in his well-known programmatic article of 1936, which provoked a whole cycle of devastating texts on various fields of art, “formalism is used out of fear of a simple, clear, and sometimes rude word” 4. That is, on the one hand, there are rude but sincere supporters of the victorious class who are building socialism and privatizing Pushkin and Flaubert for writing clearly and to the point; they want to talk to people, but they don’t know how to talk to people. It is curious that the situation does not change even in the nineteenth year of the victorious revolution. Two decades have passed, generations have practically changed, but the bourgeois intelligentsia has not gone anywhere, it has not been possible to eradicate it by any merger of unions and

2. Lenin V. I. Letter to A. M. Gorky, 15 / IX // Complete. collection op. Moscow: Politizdat, 1978.T. 51.P. 48.

3. Trotsky L. D. Formal school of poetry and Marxism // Trotsky L. D. Literature and revolution. M .: Politizdat, 1991.S. 130.

4. Gorky M. On formalism // Pravda. 04/09/1936. No. 99. URL: http://gorkiy.lit-info.ru/gorkiy/articles/article-86.htm.

technical measures. She, as the initiators of the "great terror" believed, was well disguised and continues to poison the life of the proletariat with formalist poison. How exactly is not even important, since any formalism, right down to formal logic, is bad by definition. It is logical that no discussion is going on anymore, because the question "how" is, of course, a formalist question, and there is no need to answer it. The correct question is not even “what”, but “who”: who orders whom, who closes whom, etc.

Within the framework of this article, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that already from the beginning of the 1920s, aggressive-offensive rhetoric began to take root in the question of formalism, which subsequently supplanted by right of the strong any arguments based on scientific rationality and corresponding to the conventional manner of conducting a discussion. In the last decade, studies of the Soviet past have almost never seen a naive interpretation of the 1920s as an era of utopian idealism and pluralistic experiments, which was abruptly replaced by the large concentration camp of the 1930s with its shouts and beatings behind the facade of voluntary-compulsory happiness. It was the 1920s that helped establish a new cultural discourse based on insulting the opponent and threats against him. This was explained by the fact that for the first time in history, leadership was usurped for a long time by a social class, for which any signs of politeness marked a class enemy. In turn, for these enemies themselves, that is, the "former", "disenfranchised", temporarily hired by the new owners of "specialists", good breeding and education also served as a criterion for separating "us" and "foes". In fact, this is how a protective complex was formed, rethought by the intelligentsia in terms of a mission. These sociolinguistic markers drew a more prominent line between pre- and post-revolutionary eras than the most spectacular ideas. Speaking even more definitely and, perhaps, somewhat tendentiously, the social adaptation of rudeness and the actual legalization of swearing as a substitute for discussion became a characteristic feature of the first post-revolutionary decade, but they continue to sprout in modern public discourse.

It seems that the language of cultural polemics of the 1920s served as a kind of laboratory from which a stable standard of Russian linguistic behavior emerged, which is very pronounced today, for example, in television series, where characters either coo about something using diminutive suffixes, or ready to tear each other to pieces. Neutral communication patterns are rare, the transition from cutesy gentle

hysteria and threats is a norm that characterizes both mass TV production and social relations. The autonomy of discursive registers is associated with the contrasting dualism of one's own and another's, which is rooted in the historical dualism of pre-Petrine culture and the westernized imperial period5. The revolutionary alteration of society exacerbated the dualistic effect, but it did not diminish even later, as the economic and cultural life stabilized. It turned out to be an extremely convenient speculative form that legitimized the toughest scenarios of power and was invariably explained by the "aggravation of the class struggle." One can even assume with a certain risk that this was a kind of “end of history” in the Soviet way: if the class struggle does not weaken and enemies can always be recruited from the ranks of yesterday's supporters, then there is nowhere else to move, society freezes in the eternally reproducing “today” is emptied and degraded. The discussion of any controversial issue at a meeting of the labor collective almost inevitably turned into a "witch hunt", be it the ominous courts of the 1930-1950s or the already decayed ritual elaborations of the era of stagnation. Regardless of the degree of their physical danger, they were based on the unification of the opponent. Soviet people adapted and developed immunity, nurtured indifference, which even today is closely dependent on the level of aggression in social groups.

The participants in the formal school are here as an example, which clearly shows the transformation of the nature of a dispute with an opponent, an objectionable, an enemy - how aggression turns into a normative mode of discussion. The originality of this example lies in the fact that, being with necessity pupils of pre-revolutionary culture, the formalists consciously opposed it and at the initial stage of post-revolutionary cultural construction were in solidarity with the new government, outwardly merging with other avant-garde figures who were also seduced by the realization of utopia. The deliberately careless, passionate language of their scientific and critical speeches was supposed to bring them closer to the agents of the new culture.

But these latter were not so easy to carry out. They felt well the bourgeois origin of futurism, to which

5. See: Lotman Yu. M., Uspensky B. A. The role of dual models in the dynamics of Russian culture // Uspensky B. A. Izbr. works. M .: Gnosis, 1994.Vol. 1: Semiotics of history. Semiotics of culture. S. 219-253.

the early OPOYAZ (Society for the Study of Poetic Language) adjoined with its tinge of scandal. In 1927, the editor-in-chief of the journal "Printing and Revolution" Vyacheslav Polonsky wrote, exposing "New LEF" as a bourgeois project in the article "Lef or Bluff":

Having arisen on the basis of the disintegration of bourgeois art, futurism with all its roots was in bourgeois art.

He cannot be denied an understanding of the close connection between futurism and the objects of its attacks. Without “pharmacists,” as the poetical cabaret called “Stray Dog,” dismissively for visitors who paid for the full admission ticket, Futurism would have had no chance. In February 1914, barely appearing in The Stray Dog, Viktor Shklovsky already participated on the side of the Futurists in a dispute in the hall of the Tenishevsky School, which he described as follows:

The audience decided to beat us. Mayakovsky walked through the crowd like a red-hot iron through the snow. I walked, resting my hands right on the head to the left and to the right, I was strong - I passed 7.

Early formalism began on the same floor with the masters of calculating shocking, and at least for Shklovsky and his "marketing reputation" this genealogy remained significant. She was that part of the biography about which Eichenbaum wrote: "Shklovsky turned into a hero of a novel, and a problematic novel," 8. At the same time, it is obvious that the petty-bourgeois and any other simple public was able to throw themselves into a fight both before and after any revolutions. The difference was that, in rough times, brawl became the potential horizon for any discussion. Even having a poor idea of ​​each other, opponents were always ready to give a decisive battle9. Is it that Viktor Shklovsky, Yuri Tynyanov and Boris Eikhenbaum, as representatives of theoretical formalism, allowed themselves to talk about their

6. Polonskiy VP Lef or bluff // Polonskiy VP On literary themes. M .: Krug, 1927.S. 19.

7. Shklovsky V. About Mayakovsky. M .: Soviet writer, 1940.S. 72.

8. Eikhenbaum BM "My time" ... Fiction and selected articles of the 20-30s. SPb .: Inapress, 2001.S. 135.

9. On mutual "ignorance" and approximation of ideas about the theoretical views of the opposing side, see: Hansen-Loewe OA Russian formalism. Methodological reconstruction of development based on the principles of defamiliarisation. M .: Languages ​​of Russian culture, 2001.S. 448-449.

their opponents in a reduced form only in private correspondence, while they answered them publicly, systematically increasing the onslaught.

Here are some examples. In January 1920, "Petrogradskaya Pravda" published an editorial note "Closer to Life", where it accused the researchers of poetics, in particular Shklovsky, of escapism and inconsistency with the great era. It is necessary to write about the art of workers and peasants, and he publishes articles about the bourgeois "Don Quixote" and delves into Stern, that is, "teases" the reader and "plays pranks", as the "gentlemen" did in the old days. "Write not for amateurs-aesthetes, but for the masses!" - called the party publicist Vadim Bystryansky ™. Shklovsky responded to his opponent on the "home field" - on the pages of the newspaper "Life of Art". He stated that he was not a "literary raider and magician" and could only give

The leaders of the masses are those formulas that will help to understand what is newly emerging, because the new grows according to the old laws. It hurts me to read Pravda's reproaches and the address of the "gentlemen" is insulting, I am not "master", I am "Comrade Shklovsky" for the fifth year already. "

The controversy is notable for its directness and openness, a declarative desire to take advantage of revolutionary freedom in the expression of opinions. But characteristic reservations are already appearing: "Comrade from Pravda - I am not making excuses. I assert my right to pride." It is significant that the comparison of Shklovsky with a criminal, used by Bystryansky, liked the pre-revolutionary critic Arkady Gornfeld, who remained after the revolution in the same, albeit opportunistic, positions. loud journalism "and" circle jargon ", calling Shklovsky" a talented raider "". Of course, I meant

10. V. B. [Bystryansky V. A.] On the themes of the day: Closer to life! // Petrogradskaya Pravda. 01/27/1920. No. 18.

11. Shklovsky V. B. In his defense // Shklovsky V. B. Hamburg account. M .: Soviet writer, 1990.S. 90.

12. Ibid.

13. Gornfeld A. Formalists and their opponents // Literary thought. 1922.No. 3.P. 5.

the superficial nature of his works, however, criminal connotations could not but create additional contexts against the background of such a timely start of the trial of the Right Socialist Revolutionaries, from which Shklovsky fled to Europe, avoiding inevitable retribution for his eloquent military past.

Representatives of aesthetic criticism of pre-revolutionary origin, which Shklovsky and later Eichenbaum invariably opposed, answered the formalists correctly, but could not hide their discontent with the unusual, too eccentric style of presentation of the material. In this respect, the unanimous rejection of Shklovsky by the émigré criticism (Roman Gul, Mikhail Osorgin), which cultivated pre-revolutionary intellectual trends for obvious ideological reasons, is indicative. Shklovsky found himself under fire from the leading feathers of the emigration during his short but fruitful stay in Berlin, when two of his novels charged with literary theory were published at once: the travelogue “Sentimental Journey” and the epistolary “ZOO. Letters are not about love. " In the restrained style of emigre criticism, some adherents of traditional critical writing who remained in Russia also responded to Shklovsky. Even in the official organ of Soviet literature - the journal "Printing and Revolution" edited by Vyacheslav Polonsky - at first, articles appeared as if they were created by respectable and moderate conservatives of the Russian diaspora. Thus, Konstantin Loks, secretary of Glavnauka under the Nar-Compros, who clearly shares the views of Lunacharsky as an "educated Bolshevik", writes in 1922 in a review of Shklovsky's article "Rozanov":

Science is science, and a mixture of feuilleton and science is unnecessary.<...>

It is high time to leave this swagger of bad taste14.

In the same year, 1922, at the art department of the Glavpolitprosvet, a thin magazine "Vestnik of Arts" was published for a short time. Its editor was theater critic Mikhail Zagorsky, an employee of the Theater Department (TEO) of the People's Commissariat for Education, where he supervised the journal "Theater Bulletin":

14. Loks K. G. Victor Shklovsky. Rozanov. From the book. "The plot as a phenomenon of style." Publishing house OPOYAZ, 1921, Petrograd // Print and revolution. 1922. Book. 1, p. 286.

Of course, they are dissolute, unreliable and frivolous guys - these frolicking writers from the "Book Corner", all these Khovins, Shklovskys, Eikhenbaums and other "cheerful art historians" from the OPOYAZ community. We are not on our way with them. But they are smart people and very, very shrewd. Their group is almost the only literary group in Petrograd that has a keen sense of modernity, although they are poorly versed in it.<...>

This is the most interesting group of literary beasts that survived the flood15.

Using the biblical metaphor that was popular in the early post-revolutionary years, Zagorskiy reveals his refinement, although he willingly appropriates Bolshevik phraseology (“We are not on our way with them”). The contemptuous use of the plural in the listing of specific names, derogatory epithets on the verge of familiarity are, on the contrary, concessions to a new discourse, which the author volunteered to accept, like his idol Vsevolod Meyerhold. Theoretically, Zagorskiy is just on the path with the formalists, but for the ideologically close to him large-scale left art, the chamber review magazine Knizhnyi Ugol is not radical enough, if not petty-bourgeois.

In the 1920s, even the most insignificant conceptual differences began to be perceived as an occasion for heated statements. Since 1923, the Petrograd newspaper Zhizn Iskusstva has been published as a magazine and has shown less and less tolerance towards both the remnants of pre-revolutionary criticism and the futuristic zaum, with which formalism was identified by inertia. In 1924, the magazine provided a platform for the ideologist of Soviet literary constructivism Korneliy Zelinsky. While advocating the strengthening of the semantic component of a literary work, Zelinsky, at the same time, started from the idea of ​​the text as a construction, which partly brought him closer to the platform of formalism. Nevertheless, in the article "How Viktor Shklovsky was made", the title of which parodies the approaches of the program texts of OPOYAZ, Zelinsky confines himself to presenting personal invoices to the boss of a competing company:

15. Zagorskiy M. Book. Among books and magazines. "Peresvet". Book. 1. "Book Corner". Issue 8. "Northern days". Book. II // Bulletin of Arts. 1922.No. 2.P. 18.

From his shiny skull, which looks like the head of an Egyptian military leader, unexpected thoughts pour like moisture from a watering can onto the flower beds of Russian literature.

Unable to hide his irritation at the influence of his older, only three-year-old, but much more experienced colleague, Zelinsky continues:

In the beginning there is no word. No, in the beginning there was no Shklovsky, and then formalism. This round, shiny head, like a hammer cocked over books, acts like a master key among literary buildings16.

The head that haunts Zelinsky looms not only over literature. At this time, Shklovsky had already returned from abroad and worked in Moscow at the 3rd Goskino factory, whose name will become the title of one of his most famous books of the 1920s. It has not yet been published, but thick Soviet magazines are already purposefully and without unnecessary equivocations dealing with the remnants of formalism. "A striking manifestation of that time is the 'disintegration of genres'" - this is how Labori Calmanson, under the pseudonym G. Lelevich, writes about the beginning of the decade. ^ Now, according to him, "bourgeois theoreticians" Shklovsky and Tynyanov "are watching with horror" how strong literature appears again like Yuri Libedinsky and Lydia Seifullina. Regarding Shklovsky's "Sentimental Journey", reprinted in Moscow in 1924, Yesenin's admirer, critic Fedor Zhits, spoke in the same magazine: "The author is guided by headless automatism, mischief, nihilism" / 8. However, in response to the article “Why do we love Yesenin,” published soon after, the leading critic of the proletarian magazine “On a literary post” Vladimir Ermilov published a pamphlet entitled “Why we don’t love Fedorov Zhitse.” Critics at all times are up in arms against each other, but here the thunderous atmosphere is getting thicker, for it is provoked by constant projections into the extra-literary struggle. ”Here is a student of the Institute of Red Professors Viktor Kin writes about Shklovsky in the" Young Guard ":

16. Zelinsky K. How Victor Shklovsky is Made // Life of Art. 1924. No. 14. P.13.

17. Lelevich G. Hippocratic face // Red nov. 1925. No. 1.P. 298.

18. Zhits F. Victor Shklovsky. "Sentimental Journey". L .: Publishing house "Atheney", 1924 // Krasnaya nov. 1925. Book. 2.P. 284.

We do not risk of offending Shklovsky by saying that his book is unprincipled, that it contains someone else's, harmful ideology.<...>This muzzle is very familiar to us. In her tail she whispered about the murder of Lenin by Trotsky. I looked from the table of the Soviet institution. On buffers and on roofs I went with sacks of a seeder and cans of vegetable oil. The muzzle, one might say, is all-Russian. The same horribly familiar muzzle looks from every page of “Sentimen-

tough journey ".

Keane comments on a quote from Shklovsky's book: “It’s good to live and to feel the way of life with your muzzle” 20. Commenting, he relishes and enhances the role of this expressive word, filling the anaphora with an increasingly derogatory and then ominous meaning. The "horror" that Lelevich ascribed to the formalists engulfs their opponents - now they are simply obliged to defend themselves.

After the dispute about the formal method in the block of the journal "Printing and Revolution", which exemplarily supplied Eichenbaum's initial article "Around the question of the formalists" ^ with five negative responses, it was possible to open fire to kill. In his diary entry dated October 17, 1924, Eichenbaum characterizes the controversy over his article: “The answers are really boorish. Barking, abuse, anger, shouts ”^. After the release of Shklovsky's "Third Factory" there was no longer any need to even implicitly refer to precedents. The aforementioned Fedor Zhits writes that once Vasily Rozanov opened a new page in literature - he opened it in a formal sense. Judging by the critic's elegant rhetorical turn, he does not at all go into the assessment of his lascivious political views and the darling of Karamazism, which he carries from almost all of his works ”^ 3. Shklovsky, as Zhitz admits, following many other critics, comes entirely from Rozanov, perhaps in a petty manner:

19. Keene V.V. Shklovsky. "Sentimental Journey". Memories. 1924 192 pages. Circulation 5000 // Young Guard. 1925. Book. 2-3. S. 266-267.

20. Shklovsky V. B. “Nothing is over yet ...” M .: Propaganda, 2002. P. 192.

21. Eikhenbaum BM Around the question of formalists // Print and revolution. 1924. No. 5. S. 1-12.

22. Quoted. Quoted from: Curtis J. Boris Eichenbaum: His Family, Country and Russian Literature. SPb .: Academic project, 2004.S. 138.

23. Zhits F. Victor Shklovsky. "The third factory". Ed. "A circle". 140 p. 1926 // Red nov. 1926. No. 11.P. 246.

[He is] like a man less than his teacher.<...>It lacks the masculinity of the sight, the will to conquer the reader. Shklovsky's handwriting glides on paper without pressure or thought, his observations sway on the thin stems of a feuilleton and casual conversation. But if these features irritated and outraged when Shklovsky wrote about the revolution, events of great tragic coverage, in the "Third Factory" they played a positive role24.

One of the most effective critical techniques is used - turning against the accused with his own weapon. Indeed, some five years ago, Jacobson wrote in an article programmed for the formalist movement that the former literary science was reduced to the level of an optional causerie25. Only now, the accusations of chatter entail not methodological, but political conclusions. As Arkady Glagolev writes in his review of The Third Factory,

This is the story of the life of a typical Russian petty-bourgeois intellectual, not devoid of a clear philistine soul, a writer who still feels himself to be a semi-alien element in Soviet reality26.

It is difficult to argue with the correct class assessment of the Komsomol critic, but the characteristic word "douche" is an unmistakable marker of sanctioned persecution. Executive editor of the magazine "Soviet Cinema" Osip Beskin ex officio allows himself not only cautious instructions, but also openly sinister irony:

And where, if not in "Circle", was the next masterpiece by Shklovsky to come out, this ubiquitous figaro of our time, giving the world reactionary theories of literature, reviving the aesthetic traditions of the good old times, ennobling Soviet cinema, scattering the sparkles of his paradoxical feuilleton on the envy and corruption of the less nimble their brethren? 27

24. Ibid. S. 246-247.

25. Yakobson RO About artistic realism // Yakobson RO Works on poetics. M .: Progress, 1987.S. 386.

26. Glagolev A. V. Shklovsky. "The third factory". Ed. "A circle". M., 1926. Pp. 139. Ts. 1 rub. // Young guard. 1927. Book. 1.P. 205.

27. Beskin O. Handicraft workshop of literary reaction // At the literary post. 1927. No. 7.P. 18.

Corruption is an important motive, noticed by proletarian criticism, which at first glance takes a paradoxical, increasingly conservative position. In the same 1927, Vyacheslav Polonsky called Shklovsky a "Marxist-eater" and a "pornographer" ^ 8. The first is for the fact that he impudently defends industrial art from the Marxists in the magazine Novy LEF, which makes them laugh. The second - for the script of the film "The Third Meshchanskaya, or Three of Love", which was banned from showing in parts of the Red Army. Beskin, whom Polonsky dislikes, like all Rapids, also draws attention to "such intimacy", "a game of negligence" 29. In 1927, Soviet culture, which had just been at the forefront of gender issues (from books by Alexandra Kollontai to educational films about prostitution and venereal diseases), is a stronghold of chastity, and films like The Prostitute (1926, Oleg Frohlikh) or The Third Meshchanskaya (1927, Abram Rohm) are late in hitting the trend. Tynyanov, who submitted an article on literary evolution to the same journal, speaks very harshly about Beskin's article and his professional hypocrisy in a letter to Shklovsky:

Now, they say, the petty devil has blown you there. Meanwhile, my article was accepted there. I have not read the devil yet, but I have no doubt that I am obsessed.

It would be possible to point to Tynyanov's no less cool and even more furious phraseology, if it had not been for the space of private correspondence. The willingness to publish in a proletarian magazine suggests that in the minds of the formalists, by inertia, freedom of the press still exists. About her, the same Polonsky spoke at the same time quite definitely:

In an atmosphere of literary war, where the strongest wins, our literary disputes about fellow travelers and about which group of writers the future belongs to will be resolved.

28. Polonsky V. P. Bluff continues // Polonsky V. P. On literary themes. S. 37-39.

29. Beskin O. Decree. op. S. 18-19.

30. Quoted. Quoted from: Toddes E. A., Chudakov A. P., Chudakova M. O. Comments // Tynyanov Yu. N. Poetics. Literary history. Cinema. Moscow: Nauka, 1977.S. 519.

31. Polonsky VP To the question of our literary differences. Article one. Critical notes on the book by G. Lelevich "On a literary post" // Polonsky VP On literary themes. P. 110.

Talking about the victors, Polonsky was mistaken only in the fact that the future of literature belongs to the proletariat. The future, as is known, already in the second half of the 1920s belonged to the opportunist nomenclature. But there was no doubt about the very fact of waging the war and its transition to a decisive phase in parallel with the announcement of the course of the first five-year plan. In 1929, Isaak Nusinov tightly stringed aggressive metaphors addressed to the condemned formalist:

Viktor Shklovsky decided to hide under a redoubt - in the military terminology of 1812, to put it - Boris Eikhenbaum or,

in a modern way, in the trench of the literary environment, but plopped into a formalist-eclectic puddle33.

On Shklovsky's article "Monument to a Scientific Error" (1930), in which the author floridly and evasively renounces formalism, Mark Gelfand will issue a review with the characteristic title "Declaration of Tsar Midas, or What happened to Viktor Shklovsky." Rhetorical means are used, reflecting the utmost vigilance and disposition to expose and destroy the class enemy. The defamation of the formalists will subside a little in 1931, only to flare up with renewed vigor in the middle of the next decade, when the concept itself will turn into a stigma, fully realizing the principle of nomina sunt odiosa.

Rhetorical tightening as a prelude to repression dominated the response to formalism, but it was not its only form. The "old-fashioned" critics of formalism were generally forced to adhere to the prevailing discursive manner and subsequently sluggishly included their voice in the chorus, denouncing the renegades on behalf of the collective (Pavel Sakulin, Viktor Zhirmunsky, etc.) h4. The voice of other carriers of alternative views (first of all, we are talking about Mikhail Bakhtin and the circle of GAKhN - the State Academy of Artistic Sciences) fell silent with the disappearance of the reason in the early 1930s, if not

32. Conscious distortion of the term "literary life".

33. Nusinov I. Belated discoveries, or How V. Shklovsky got tired of eating with his bare hands, and he got a homemade Marxist spoon // Literature and Marxism. 1929. No. 5.P. 12.

34. For more details on this mimicric mechanism, see the representative reconstruction of the defeat of the science of literature in post-war Leningrad: Druzhinin P. A. Ideology and Philology. Leningrad. 1940s. M .: New literary review, 2012.S. 453-487.

Pavel Medvedev's book "Formalism and Formalists" (1934), restrained in tone, but devastating in accordance with the rules of the game. The silence of Boris Engelhardt both in the address of colleagues and in the mainstream of the science of literature was eloquent to the highest degree. In parallel with the growing persecution, he managed to offer a sample of a scientific-critical analysis of the methodological foundations of the formal school.

In his famous work Formal Method in Literary History (1927), Engelhardt tried to place his object in the broad context of aesthetic theories and came to the conclusion that there is not a method, but a completely autonomous discipline, which can be conventionally designated as formal poetics. She considers all works of world literature in no other way than from the point of view of abstruse language, constructing the object of her research so that any thematic, ideological, historical components are excluded from the field of analysis. Engelhardt, as a supporter of the aesthetics of Johann Georg Hamann, the linguistic phenomenology of Alexander Potebnya, the historical poetics of Alexander Veselovsky, does not even criticize the formalists, with many of whom he is associated with work in the same institute on related topics, as shows that they do not revolutionize the methods of literary history. Moreover, neither this applied area of ​​the aesthetics of the word, nor the more general aesthetics of the formalists, simply did not notice. Engelhardt stubbornly distances himself from the debate about formalism, which is why the formalist expressive charm vanishes by itself and leaves a fairly simple, if not primitive, theoretical framework. The height of the critical intensity for the author is the word "notorious" in relation to the "abstruse language", as well as its designation as "a declarative scarecrow, with the help of which the futurists tried to strike the imagination of the layman" ^. Below, Engelhardt uses the word “dragon” as a synonym for “scarecrow” - he must scare away from the school “all fellow travelers who are dangerous with their eclecticism” ^ 6. In other words, Engelhardt models, if not parodies, the position of the formalists themselves, referring to Eichenbaum's most recent programmatic article

35. Engelhardt BM Formal method in the history of literature // Engelhardt BM Izbr. works. Saint Petersburg: Publishing House of St. Petersburg University, 1995. P. 76.

36. Ibid. P. 78.

(“We are surrounded by eclectics and epigones,” 37 - it says almost paranoidly about yesterday's friends and even some students).

Engelhardt's closed polemics, appealing to the academic tradition, turned out to be a kind of archaizing innovation of discourse, evolution through retreat, against the background of open attacks from critics of Krasnaya Novi and Press and Revolution, which had to be remembered only in the post-Soviet years, but already in the aspect of the history of science ... In the 1930s, such scientists fell silent in principle, and without the pathos characteristic of conscientious pariahs like Olga Freudenberg. Engelhardt became the translator for Jonathan Swift, Walter Scott and Charles Dickens; he died in besieged Leningrad. However, neither he, nor even the formalists with their comparatively happy fate (if you read such that they almost completely escaped the Gulag) can be considered defeated - even in a war with a predetermined end. Fair play was understood as a temporary, intermediate state. The logic of a hegemon, forcibly using the resources of a defeated opponent, does not imply that the latter has a chance to survive and survive. The enemy is either broken or killed. The rules of the game regarding the enemy in the role of a temporary ally can change at any time. The route of this change is from discussion to defamation, from conventional acuteness to outright rudeness.

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FROM DISPUTE TO PERSECUTION: RHETORIC OF DEBATES SURROUNDING THE FORMALIST CIRCLE IN THE 1920S

Jan Levchenko. Professor, School of Cultural Studies, Faculty of Humanities, [email protected]

National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE). Address: 21/4 Staraya Basmannaya str., 105066 Moscow, Russia.

Keywords: Russian formalism; literary criticism and polemics; rhetoric of competition and discussion in literature; class struggle; Bolshevik revolution.

The present article traces the origins and forms of aggressive rhetoric in the Soviet literary criticism of the 1920s, using the example of the debates surrounding the Leningrad branch of the Russian Formalist School. The discussions around this research circle can be traced to the destructive experience of revolution and civil war, and the shift from conventional forms of debate to the abuse and annihilation of opponents, transforming the latter practices into the new mainstream. The discussion as such becomes a race for power, or a straight-up competition between political groups. In turn, literary criticism also starts reproducing the repressive methods of the victor. The so-called "formalists" represent the most prominent example of this process, as they were sentenced to annihilation as pure ideological enemies of the new hegemonic class - both in a political and cultural sense.

The contrast dualism that characterizes the opposition between "us" and "them" in Russian culture to the present day became visible during that time, as the triumphant class was fundamentally unwilling to compromise with the defeated. The Bolsheviks were not feeling magnanimous after the victory of the October revolution. Their strategy was to cultivate hatred, pitting different groups against each other under the banner of class struggle in order to further strip and / or remove any phenomena diverging from the established way forward. The primary motivation for the crackdown through terror was civil war. Subsequently, it was replaced by the requirement for special vigilance during the temporary resurgence of the bourgeoisie in the period of New Economic Policy (NEP). The conceptualization of the NEP was not only an economic and industrial, but also inevitably a cultural matter, and the proletariat simply had to feel threatened by the surviving oppressors whose consciousness remained the same as before the revolution. Ultimately, the announced and long-awaited rejection of the NEP and its "restorative" culture legitimized a new round of aggressive rhetoric that reinforced the internal crisis of the Soviet "poputchiks" (primarily discriminated intelligentsia) and allowed to put an end to them on the cusp of the 1920s and 1930s.

DOI: 10.22394 / 0869-5377-2017-5-25-41

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The latent, but hot social intensity of philosophical and aesthetic searches and battles of the "Gogol period" of Russian literature gives rise to a new for it, socially most effective, journalistic genre - journalistic criticism and polemics.

A fundamentally new phenomenon was the paramount place that he won in the 30s and 40s. as the most acute and operational weapon of ideological struggle and delimitation of different in their social aspirations directions of not only literary, but also social, including scientific, thought.

In the form of the most "innocent" in the censorship, critical analyzes and aesthetic declarations are put in magazines and the most burning issues of our time are solved in different ways.

One of the first prototypes of this new type of magazine was the organ of Moscow philosophers “Moskovsky Vestnik”. It was published from 1827 to 1830, its editor, almost nominal, was M.P. Pogodin. The magazine pursued a strictly defined goal - to contribute to the "enlightenment" of the Russian society, to convince it that philosophy "is the science of sciences, the science of wisdom" by acquainting with Schelling's philosophy, Herder's doctrine, works of art and the aesthetic theory of German romantics and the corresponding critical interpretation of the phenomena of Russian literature.

Pushkin took a direct part in the creation of the magazine, mainly for tactical reasons. Without feeling any attraction to German "metaphysics", he hoped to subordinate the journal to his influence and find in it his own printing platform.

That did not happen. Having become, as it was intended, the tribune of Schelling's views of the wisdom, Moskovsky Vestnik played a well-known role in popularizing the ideas of German classical philosophy, but was unable to win a wide readership and soon ceased to exist.

Even less, only a year and a half, the Literaturnaya Gazeta, which was close to Pushkin in its direction, existed (January 1830 - June 1831). It was published by one of Pushkin's closest friends, Delvig, with the participation of O. Somov, and after Delvig's death - for several months by Somov alone. In addition to the publishers and Pushkin, the newspaper published Baratynsky, Vyazemsky, Katenin, Pletnev, Gogol, Stankevich and a number of other young writers and poets.

The name of the newspaper (it was published every five days) emphasized its purely literary, non-political character. But her demonstrative independence from the official ideology and fierce polemics with F. Bulgarin and N. Polev, who accused the newspaper, and not without reason, of seditious "aristocracy", caused disapproval of the authorities and did not receive public support.

The most influential, serious and popular magazine at this time was "Moscow Telegraph", published by N.A. , however, advocated an alliance of autocracy with merchants and industrialists.

From this point of view, the journal broadly covered the current literary, scientific and socio-political life of Western European countries, mainly France; the July monarchy was assessed positively, even enthusiastically; the principles of French romanticism and its eclectic philosophy (Cousin, Wilmain) were promoted as anti-aristocratic, and therefore the most promising for Russia.

In the first years of publishing "Moscow Telegraph" Polevoy was able to combine the best literary forces in it. Vyazemsky took an active part in the publication, who attracted Pushkin, Baratynsky, Yazykov, Katenin and other poets of his circle to him. In the years when the school of "stately romanticism" was formed, the publisher of "Telegraph" by no means belongs to its supporters. Moreover, for a sharp critical review of N. Kukolnik's semi-official drama "The Hand of the Almighty Saved the Fatherland", which captivated Nicholas I, the magazine was closed.

"Moscow Telegraph" and its publisher had a significant impact on the democratization of literary and public consciousness, which was deservedly appreciated by Belinsky and Chernyshevsky. But Polevoy's openly pro-bourgeois and ultimately loyal position threw him into the ranks of the enemies of Pushkin and Gogol and, after the closure of the Moscow Telegraph, brought him to the camp of reaction.

For the same reasons, the publisher of "Telegraph" stayed away from the most speculative in form, but highly promising in terms of content, the philosophical and aesthetic direction of the 1930s, at the origins of which are the wisdom and the Moscow Bulletin.

In contrast to N. Polevoy, the publishers of the Moskovsky Vestnik, after the termination of its publication, gradually become imbued with an increasingly anti-bourgeois spirit and, remaining as before adherents of Schelling, but now adopting his later reactionary "philosophy of revelation", they are gradually transformed from wisdom to Slavophiles. In anticipation of this, they publish "Moscow Observer" (1835-1837), directed by SP Shevyrev and VA Androsov.

The magazine was conceived as a counter to "industrial" literature and journalism, presented by the same N. Polev, N. Grech, F. Bulgarin, the publisher of the official newspaper "Severnaya Beelya", and mainly "Library for Reading", published by a talented but unprincipled writer and the scientist-orientalist O. I. Senkovsky together with the bookseller A. F. Smirdin since 1834. Designed for the tastes of an unassuming reader, "Library for Reading" enjoyed great success in the bureaucratic and merchant environment, among the middle strata of the nobility, including provincial.

Schellingian in its philosophical design and in many respects fair criticism by the publishers of Moscow Observer of the "industrial age" as a whole as hostile to the lofty aspirations of the human spirit and its highest expression - art - was combined with opposition to the autocratic-serf system, but was criticism from the right, directed against democratic aspirations of modernity.

This recoiled from the journal Pushkin, who at one time sympathized with him, and was sharply condemned by Belinsky, who opposed the "Moscow Observer" in NI Nadezhdin's magazine "Teleskop" and in the newspaper "Rumor" (1831-1836), published as an appendix to it. ...

Like the “observers,” the Telescope publisher was a staunch Schellingian, but of a significantly different and mostly democratic orientation, complicated, however, by political conservatism. Nadezhdin's views on the essence and social function of art were just as contradictory, but on the whole paved the way for realistic aesthetics.

Especially weighty is the contribution made by Nadezhdin to the democratic understanding of the problem of "nationality", which is directly opposite to its protective interpretation by the publishers of "Moscow Observer", which formed the basis of their Slavophil doctrine, which took shape a few years later. Belinsky began his literary criticism at Telescope and Rumor, who owed much to Nadezhdin. Among the employees of "Telescope" were the future "Westerners" - A. I. Herzen, M. A. Bakunin, V. P. Botkin, P. Ya. Chaadaev.

Pushkin published two pamphlets on Bulgarin in Telescope, which corresponded to the position of the magazine, sharpened simultaneously against Polevoy's Moscow Telegraph and Moscow Observer. For the publication of Chaadaev's "Philosophical Letter", "Telescope" was closed, and its publisher was exiled from Moscow to the Urals.

Almost simultaneously, in April 1836, the first issue of the Sovremennik magazine founded by Pushkin was published. The magazine did not have a clear program and, continuing in many respects the traditions of the Literaturnaya Gazeta, in contrast to it, it was designed for circles not only of the liberal aristocratic intelligentsia, but also of the rascal, democratic intelligentsia.

In Sovremennik, Pushkin published a number of his works of art, including The Captain's Daughter, several critical and historical essays, reviews and notes. The journal was attended (not too actively, though) old literary friends of Pushkin - Zhukovsky, Vyazemsky, Baratynsky, as well as Yazykov, D. Davydov, Tyutchev and others.

The most active participant in the magazine was the young Gogol, who published in the 1st issue of Sovremennik a long and sharply polemical article “On the movement of journal literature in 1834 and 1835”. She did not satisfy Pushkin in everything, which did not prevent such works of Gogol from appearing on the pages of Sovremennik as The Carriage, The Nose and The Morning of a Business Man.

Left aside from the philosophical interests and disagreements of its time (which did not quite justify the name Sovremennik), Pushkin's journal claimed to be not only a literary-critical, but to some extent a historical-literary and even historical publication. Most of Pushkin's plans related to this remained unfulfilled for censorship reasons.

Pushkin managed to publish only four issues of Sovremennik. But the magazine was destined to have a long life. After the death of its founder, it passed into the hands of Pletnev and Zhukovsky, and ten years later, at the end of 1846, it became the journal of Nekrasov and Belinsky, the most influential and progressive periodical of the second half of the 40s.

On the pages of Sovremennik, Belinsky's struggle with the Slavophiles unfolded, who in their journal Moskvityanin (1841-1855) took up arms against the “negative” trend of the “natural school”.

After Belinsky's death (1848) Sovremennik gradually loses its militant democratic spirit, which revived with renewed vigor in 1853, when Nekrasov recruited N. G. Chernyshevsky to work in the magazine, and then N. A. Dobrolyubov. The fate of Sovremennik is symbolic, as if embodying the objective logic of literary development in the 1930s and 1940s, largely but not fully foreseen by Pushkin.

A special and very significant role belongs to the first half of the 40s. and another long-term magazine - Otechestvennye zapiski (1820-1884). From 1839 to 1846, the critically-bibliographic, widely organized section of the journal, which was then published by A.A.Kraevsky, is led almost solely by Belinsky.

Here the journalistic talent of the critic is fully developed, and his articles about Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Koltsov, systematic annual literary reviews and many, many other critical reviews become major events in literary and social life, are eagerly awaited, read, discussed by student youth and democratic intelligentsia. Russian criticism did not know such a wide public resonance before.

Gradually, many young writers of a socialist orientation, followers of Gogol and admirers of Georges Sand - Herzen, Ogarev, Saltykov, Nekrasov, Dostoevsky, as well as Turgenev, Grigorovich and some others are grouped around the magazine and Belinsky, united by a new direction, which soon received the name of the "natural school".

At the same time, Otechestvennye Zapiski became an organ of propaganda of socialist ideas, under the direct influence of which the realistic and democratic aesthetics of the “natural school” was formed.

The words spoken by Herzen about the political lyrics of the Decembrists and Pushkin are fully applicable to her, as to the work of her inspirer - Gogol: ".

History of Russian Literature: in 4 volumes / Edited by N.I. Prutskov and others - L., 1980-1983

An important place in Russian literary and social life is occupied by literary criticism.

How do criticism and fiction relate? It would seem that there is no doubt that literature is primary, and criticism is secondary, in other words, that critical thought follows in its development the movement of literature and cannot contain more than what is given by literature. In principle, it is so, but for Russian criticism, since the time of the Decembrists, it has become a tradition to address not only purely literary, but also social, philosophical, and moral problems. In addition, there are cases when the best critics were able to make such predictions of literary development, which were subsequently fully justified.

Social life of the 60s. was quite tense. Literary criticism was just one of the main areas of ideological struggle, which was reflected in the sharp polemics between representatives of various directions. Defenders of revolutionary democratic ideology and supporters of "pure art" defended diametrically opposed theories, looked at the goals and objectives of literary creativity in different ways.

Not all outstanding writers of the 19th century. they recognized the justice of acute literary polemics, when some defended the beneficialness of only Gogol's traditions, while others accepted only Pushkin's “pure poetry”. However, Turgenev wrote to Druzhinin about the need for both Pushkin and Gogol in Russian literature: “Pushkin was relegated to the background - let it come forward again, but not in order to replace Gogol. We still desperately need Gogol's influence both in life and in literature. " Nekrasov adhered to a similar position, who during the period of the most acute polemic urged the younger generation to learn from Pushkin: "... learn from the example of the great poet to love art, truth and homeland, and if God gave you talent, follow in the footsteps of Pushkin." ... But at the same time, in a letter to Turgenev, Nekrasov asserted that Gogol is “a noble and most humane person in the Russian world; we must wish young Russian writers to follow in his footsteps ”. Material from the site

In the middle of the XIX century. representatives of two main directions, two aesthetic theories sharply polemized. Who was right, who was wrong? To a certain extent, both one and the other side were right.

We can say that the ideal is an organic combination, harmony of aesthetic, moral, sociological, historical criteria. Unfortunately, this did not always work out. There was no unity among the critics: various schools and directions appeared, each of which had not only its own achievements and successes, but also disadvantages, not least caused by unnecessary polemical extremes.