Gorham, Michael S. After Newspeak: Language Culture and Politics in Russia from Gorbachev to Putin (review)

Abstract

SEER, 93, 3, JULY 2015 590 findings in particular stand out: 1) Slovak (and Czech) nationalism did not emerge immediately after the revolution but grew only out of local patriotism and then regionalism. Using the heretofore unexplored case of Civic Forum branches in Slovakia, Krapfl shows how Bratislava ultimately ‘conquered’ Slovakia by stoking nationalism and how OF and VPN might have forged a different relationship between the two entities, and 2) local actors throughout the country played a central role in the revolution by conducting no confidence votes and recall elections that allowed them to oust workplace directors, democratize unions, reconstruct local administration and change political representatives. Without these actions, which often had to overcome significant resistance from entrenched powerholders, much of the Communist apparatus or at least its personnel would have remained in place. These new findings, as well as several others, are important and persuasive. Where the book falls short is in showing the roots of these phenomena and their consequences. Are the interpretations and actions of the public in Czechoslovakia specific to this country (if so, why?) or are they applicable to all revolutions? Both claims find some support in the text. What impact did this sort of public involvement have on future developments in the Czech and Slovak Republics? Krapfl claims that the symbolic system created by the revolution remains and generates legitimacy today but offers little evidence for this proposition. Social scientifically inclined scholars may thus ask their traditional questions of ‘Why?’ and ‘So what?’ about this impressive work of historical reconstruction. Nevertheless, the book does take a considerable step forward in the study of the fall of Communism. It is persuasive and ground-breaking in showing the involvement of the public in the Gentle or Velvet Revolution and the importance of this involvement for breaking the grip of the Communists on power and setting the country on a path to dissolution. It may also provide inspiration to contemporary actors in the Czech and Slovak Republics as well as elsewhere that ordinary people can and do have an influence on even the grandest political changes. Department of Political Science Andrew Roberts Northwestern University Gorham, Michael S. After Newspeak: Language Culture and Politics in Russia from Gorbachev to Putin. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 2014. xvii + 234 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $24.95 (paperback). For much of the twentieth century, the Russian language was a trusty resource of Soviet patriotism. From the early 1930s, Marxist arguments were discarded REVIEWS 591 and language policy became a matter of setting and policing norms. Notions of correctness were drawn partly from a selective appropriation of the national literary heritage and partly from Soviet construals of ‘high’ style. Bolstered by telling interventions from Gor´kii and Stalin, Soviet people became convinced that talking proper was a crucial component of culturedness. In the post-Stalin era, as access to education expanded and the norms of the intelligentsia spread to a mass public, the publishing industry saw a boom in advice literature on kul´tura rechi, while the broadcast media also played their part in dispensing linguistic counsel. The promotion of the ‘great, mighty’ (velikii, moguchii) language of Turgenev and Tolstoi was not obviously compatible with the leaden rhetoric of the Brezhnev generation of the political elite. But in both of these discursive realms the sense of a timeless norm prevailed. As Michael S. Gorham demonstrates astutely in his new book, Russia’s normsetters had a much tougher time from 1986 onwards. The first culprit was the slippery term glasnost´. For the whole of the modern era, from Faddei Bulgarin in 1826 to the Soviet Constitution of 1977, this concept had been carefully circumscribed by the establishment: glasnost´ was about giving the people enough information to agree in a more enthusiastic way with the decisions of their rulers. Gorbachev himself operated in this tradition until 1986, when he gave legitimacy to a more contentious interpretation of the word: glasnost´ was now to be understood as debate and discussion. When he later tried to step back from the implications of his own rhetoric, it was already too late. At the 19th Party Conference in 1988 the apparat could launch a determined rearguard action...