Idéologie et sémantique : Le vocabulaire politique des anarchistes russes

Abstract

Michael Confino, Ideology and semantics: the political vocabulary of the Russian anarchists. This article deals with the formation of the political terminology (and of the specific jargon) of the Russian anarchists as expressed in their publications and in their everyday discourse and utterances (speeches, lectures, private letters). This distinctive anarchist terminology was shaped by two main factors: first, by the need of words and terms (of a "language") different from those of their nearest political and ideological adversaries, that is - in the present case - the left in general and the revolutionary groupings in particular. The continuous debate with the Marxists and the Russian Social Democrats (Bolsheviks and Mensheviks alike) was one of the sources for the formation of an important and significant set of terms reflecting, at one and the same time, the ideological differences between the two movements, and the strong disdain of the anarchists for "state socialists" and all brands of "authoritarian socialism". Another area which generated an original and interesting constellation of terms and buzzwords was the terrorist action and the "expropriations" (eksy). Finally, the study examines the widespread use of war metaphors in the writings and everyday speech of the anarchists, a linguistic phenomenon rather surprising and paradoxical in a political milieu so strongly committed to combat all and any kind of militarism. Throughout the article an attempt has been made, whenever possible, to translate the Russian anarchists' terms and jargon words, by French equivalents used during the same period in the anarchist groups in France.