Historical Roots of Russian Silence

Abstract

Historical Roots of Russian Silence Yelena Mazour‐Matusevich It is just sheer misery; so silence is the best. (Pushkin, Boris Godunov) For centuries, Russian writers, intellectuals, and foreign travelers remarked on the mysterious phenomenon of the so‐called Russian silence. The most famous, though far from sole quote, belongs to Alexander Pushkin (1799‐1837). In his historical drama, Boris Godunov, he used the term “bezmolvie” in reference to the common people's reaction to tumultuous political events of the sixtieth century Russia. This term can only loosely be translated as silence, “bez” meaning “without,” and “molvie” meaning “speech.” This type of silence does not necessarily imply peace and quiet. It can be quite loud, sometimes deafening. Pushkin vividly captured noises of the “multitude” with the abundance of verbs relating to inarticulate sounds: to cry (nineteen times), wail (eight times), curse (seven times), groan (six times), laugh (four times), weep (four times), scream (two times), and murmur (two times). In his play, the crowd moans, shouts, sighs and yet, Pushkin says, “People remain mute.” Therefore, the silence that Pushkin brings to attention is of a special kind. It is a silence of a noisy mass made of individually “mute” people. The best approximation might be the neologism “social mutism,” the term derived from the word “mute” and the French term “mutisme,” more adequately rendering this phenomenon, characterized by the absence or incapacity of articulate, commonsensical, and transparent speech. It must be made clear that this type of speech stays in opposition to mythic‐poetic language, in other words, to all traditional forms of expression such as ritual songs or performances, proverbs, legends, poems, folktales, indirect allusions, parables, etc. Social mutism refers to the lack of public opinion based on the general and socially shared distrust of logical discourse and reluctance to use words in a clear and straightforward fashion: A Russian instinctively fears simple and accessible truths, seeking everywhere a hidden sense, and creating a mystery out of nothing. There is no public opinion in Russia because everything public and transparent is perceived as a lie and evil. People, just like five hundred and thousand years before, remain mute [bezmolvnyj]. The above description, written in 2012, asserts the persistence of this phenomenon in Russia, which, although repeatedly noted, remains without explanation or even working hypothesis. Providing such a hypothesis is the goal of this essay, which will argue that Russian social silence might have resulted from a prolonged and unchallenged application of certain religious practices to public sphere. Evidently, collective mutism is not restricted to the Russian culture alone. Historians have long remarked on the difficulty of studying the mentality of the illiterate “silent majority,” because these people left no written documents. Albert Camus, raised by a semi‐mute and illiterate mother, saw the project of his life as an attempt “to extract this poor family from the fate of the poor, which is to disappear from history without leaving a trace: the Mutes.” However, there is a simple point, which tends to be overlooked in the discussion of silent majority: even though it might appear mute, it does not mean that it must also be deaf. Humans learn to speak by listening to others speaking. The clearer and more articulate the speech the baby hears, the clearer and more articulate his own language will be. Could the same process take place in a culture when its educated elite shares its language with the rest of the population? This is at least how it happened in the Western civilization. What is now commonly referred to as logical discourse, the type of speech based on provable affirmations, was developed during the middle ages by the educated elite, the theologians, who made this type of speech their profession. Based on the inheritance from classical antiquity of Socratic and Aristotelian methods of argumentation, this professional language, although remaining within strict limits of tradition, left room for improvisation. Medieval clerics not only processed and reproduced their common intellectual and spiritual heritage, they were often eager to add and comment on it. Medieval manuscripts abound in elaborate and lengthy commentaries. Moreover, educated members of the medieval clergy were trained to comment on traditional texts if they...