New Zealand Slavonic Journal, vol. 41 (2007)
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Stephen Marder, A Supplementary Russian-English Dictionary (ASRED2),
2nd edition, Slavica Publishers, Bloomington, Indiana, 2007, xxv+736 pp.
USD 44.95
Reviewed by Hans-Peter Stoffel, University of Auckland
NOTE: The complete introductory comments given in ASRED2 (i-x), as well as 19
sample pages (368-387 [носатик to омужланивать]) can be viewed on the Slavica
Publishers’ website http://www.slavica.com/newrecent.html
Under the prosaic title “supplementary dictionary”, Stephen Marder presents us
with an outstanding piece of lexicographical work. While it is most useful for
contemporary translation work, it is a book that is hard to put aside because one simply
cannot stop browsing in it. Those who have known and worked with Marder during his
time as a lecturer and senior lecturer at Victoria University in Wellington (1971 – 1993)
will remember his vast knowledge of Russian and English vocabulary of the most
various registers. ASRED2 is the result of his lifelong interest in the Russian lexicon in
which he superbly achieves his aim of presenting us with “something new and exciting”
(vi).
The first edition (ASRED) appeared in 1992. It contained 29’000 entries made
up of approximately 350,000 words. The second edition (the present ASRED2) contains
81’000 entries (but here Marder does not say how many words) and has undergone
substantial changes including both in the look of the volume as well as the contents and
the make-up of the entries. Some of the most visible changes of ASRED2 as compared
to the first edition are:
(a) A multitude of new, additional head-words and sub-entries, including the first (1)
and the last word of the dictionary (736). The examples given in this review must
suffice to illustrate the thousands of such entries. Naturally, the user will always want to
know even more: are there really only the forms немецко-говорящий (356) – spelled
with a hyphen – but германоговорящий (106) and русскоговорящий (542) without
a hyphen, and vice-versa? There is политкорректный (455), but why would there be
no политкорректность ?
(b) Re-written entries, ranging from minor changes to the adjustment of short and long
explanatory “Notes” which often accompany the entries. Two of the smaller changes
are, e.g.:
хэтчбек [...] hatchback (car). (Cf. комби; пятидверная машина; хетчбек)
(ASRED; 492), re-written as хэтчбек [....] hatchback (car). (Cf. пятидверка)
(ASRED2; 694), or мáркетинг, a, m. (ASRED 216), re-written as маркéтинг and
(obsoles.) мáркетинг [...] (ASRED2: 305) (Wheeler cites мáркетинг only; 215).
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(c) The elimination of complete entries and the reduction of the duplication of crossreferences. This elimination includes items which have found entry into Wheeler’s and
Smirnitsky’s dictionaries (see ‘References’ at the end of this review) since the
publication of the first edition of ASRED. In some instances Marder could have further
streamlined the entries by giving the lengthy note of background information only
once, such as for men’s underpants, a new item in ASRED2. While in the case of
боксёры (46) the reader is referred to трусы, the explanation of the phenomenon is
repeated almost identically under семейн|ый: [...] 3. ~ые трусы (560-561), плавки
(434, and 2. разлетайка (513)! The same would be true, for instance, for the entries for
радиорынок [..] (509) and Митька (323) which are identical, apart for the headword
and, in the case of Митька, the stylistic marker (coll.).. ( Митька (323; 509) is also
an excellent example for Marder’s Notes; it is given in full below).
(d) The formatting of headwords with more than ten sub-entries in a vertical way rather
than in one block of consecutively-numbered entries. Many headwords encompass
dozens of sub-entries which are now much easier to find (e.g. машина: 66 sub-entries;
программа: 73; устройство: 84; день: 91). Rightly so, Marder regards this as the
“most important formatting change between ASRED and ASRED2” (i).
(e) The increase of items in the List of “Abbreviations and Conventional Symbols” from
68 to 154 (xxiii-xxiv). However, the List does not include abbreviations such as FSU
which occurs in the body of the dictionary (e.g. 287, 502; in other places Marder uses
Former USSR (e.g. 724, or former Soviet Union (e.g. 561) for the same phenomenon.
Here, uniformity could easily be achieved in a further edition. This List is important
since it also contains most of the stylistic markers used in the dictionary. With nonabbreviated stylistic markers and items of an explanatory nature such as ethnic slur the
user comes across for the first time when perusing the body of the dictionary.
A closer scrutiny of ASRED2 also reveals that the stylistic marker (taboo) has
been incorporated into (vulg), e.g. хуй (693), and that several colloquial ethnonyms
which were (pejor.) are now classified as (ethnic slur), e.g. – among many more:
испашка (219) for a Spaniard, макаронник 3. (301) for an Italian, кацо (233) for a
Georgian or other inhabitants of the Caucasus, and чучмек (710) for an inhabitant of
Central Asia, the Caucasus or Siberia. But other stylistically similar ethnonyms are still
marked as (pejor.), e.g. the informal ethnonyms for Chinese, German, Japanese, Italian
and Romanian: китаёза (238), япошка 1. (735), итальяшка (221) and мамалыжник (303), or (sl.) [slang] as in аллорец and аллорка (13) for Italians and
немчура (357) for Germans.
The study of the changes made by Marder would provide material for a large
number of research seminar papers, including, for instance, the study of the
adaptation/integration of loanwords. ASRED2 lists various competing forms of not yet
fully integrated loanwords. There are six of them under управление 03. for the “U.S.
Food and Drug Administration (USFDA)” (663).
Though Marder states that the printed sources were “relegated to the ‘back
burner’” in ASRED2 (i), the vastly updated and extended list of written sources in the
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Selected Bibliography (xi-xix) shows, that these sources have certainly not been
discarded. In them readers would find, among other, the familiar surnames of Russian
lexicologists and lexicographers. However, a major input in ASRED2 is now the
Internet. Apart from providing material for the dictionary this would also have assisted
Marder in his endeavours of consulting with native and non-native speakers and
colleagues.
Marder could have written just another one-volume “ordinary” dictionary which
might not have contained much new material compared with other bilingual dictionaries
of a similar format. However, the value of his dictionary lies in the fact that it is
supplementary to existing bilingual dictionaries, and in particular, it is supplementary to
the widely-known bilingual Russian-English dictionaries or Russian-English sections in
dictionaries edited by M. Wheeler and A. Smirnitsky (see ‘References’). Marder’s work
derives from these two dictionaries and leads on from there.
With few exceptions, ASRED2 does not duplicate lexical material which is
given in these dictionaries. This also applies to well-known words including
славяноведение (new in ASRED2), where the difference to Wheeler is minimal
(Wheeler 471: Slavonic studies; Marder 578: Slavic studies), литературоведение
(new in ASRED2) where Marder’s English renderings better encompass the essence of
the word (Wheeler – 207: literary criticism; ASRED2 290: 1. literary scholarship 2.
literary studies), ручная кладь where Wheeler’s version seems more accurate
(Wheeler: 450 – hand luggage – 180 hand luggage (Br.) baggage (US); ASRED2: 542
and 239: carry-on luggage), and волос (Wheeler: 53 has five unnumbered sub-entries
while ASRED2: 85 has twenty vertically numbered sub-entries, none of which are also
found in Wheeler).
But most supplementary material consists of items which are undocumented in
Wheeler and Smirnitsky. They include words ranging from билет: [...] 10.
читательский б. – library card (40), кенгурятник 1. (235) or намордник (346) –
roo-bars, жарить (vulg.) – to screw (171), to утройство чтения шрихового кода –
bar code scanner (668). Where ASRED2 shares the headword with the other two
dictionaries, the headword – without an English rendering – only has the function to
introduce the supplementary material.
The very essence of ASRED2 is the fact that it provides the user with far more
than absolutely essential information of a bilingual nature: ASRED2 is especially
valuable for its illustrative examples showing usage, for its wealth of phraseologisms,
collocations, cross-references – (Cf.) – and “synonyms” in English and Russian, e.g.
under the sub-entries for the headwords услуга: and там:
услуг|а: [...] 7. у. коротких сообщений, у. обмена короткими сообщениями
short message service (SMS), text messaging (= for sending and receiving text messages
on a cell phone or from the Internet to a cell phone). (Cf. служба обмена короткими
сообщениями; (короткое) текстовое сообщение; сэмэска; эсэмэска) (665)
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там: 1. где т.. ! (coll.) not a chance!, fat chance!, no way!, not likely!, far from it!,
nothing of the sort!, you’re not serious!, a (fat) lot of good that did or that was!, (but)
what’s the use! (Cf. где уж) [...] (628)
There is an aspect of ASRED2 which specifically lends itself to the ‘joy of
browsing’. It is what Marder discusses in the Introduction under “Etymologies” (viii).
Marder, one feels, would really have liked to include a considerable amount of such
“etymological” information but did not do so in order to keep the dictionary “as
uncluttered as possible”. However, he still chooses to include “some which may have
exceptional value or interest for the user” (viii). These “etymologies” and additional
“Notes” are, in fact, longer or shorter stretches of almost encyclopedic information –
often of a stranovednie-type – which is hard to find elsewhere. For the great benefit of
the user Marder does include more than just “some” of them. Two entries of this type
must suffice as examples – compared with other such entries the first is of medium
length, the second of relatively short length. (More examples can be found on the
slavica website mentioned above in the entries and sub-entries of нулевой¹, облако,
ОВС, оклад, оконьe, оливье, ОМОН):
радиорын|ок: Митинский р. Mitino electronics market (in Moscow): софт у меня
по преимуществу “лицензирован” на Митинском ~ке (coll.) most of my
software is “licensed” at the Mitino market (i.e., it is pirated software). [Note: This
famous – or notorious – market is widely known as a place where one can buy every
conceivable type of electronic article, from radio and TV components to computer
hardware and software. It is also the place to go to buy “spy paraphernalia”.] (Cf.
Митька) (509)
пирог, a, m. [....] 5. пусть лучше ~и печёт пирожник (coll. fig.) let experts do what
experts do best. [Historical note: The Russ. expression is a reworking of Krylov’s “беда,
коль пироги начнёт печи сапожник а сапоги тачать пирожник (“Щука и
кот”); cf. “let the cobbler stick to his last”.] (431)
What Marder states in the Introduction to the first edition (ASRED: i; reprinted
in ASRED2: v), namely that preference for inclusion in the dictionary has been given to
“those areas of linguistic usage which have received the greatest prominence over recent
years”, holds true also 15 years later for ASRED2. Thus, the dictionary contains a large
amount of neologisms – new meanings for existing words, and new words for new
concepts. But it is not a dictionary of neologisms. And it is neither a dictionary of slang,
though it contains a large amount of slang under the stylistic label slang and also the
labels colloquial, vernacular, and vulgar. The latter may be a source of specific interest
– especially for non-native speakers of Russian when browsing in the dictionary – but a
source of offence for other users. Marder returns to the problem of citing such
“irreverent material” in his Introduction to ASRED2 (ii), pointing out that such material
– “part of life” – makes up “less than half a percent of the book’s content” – though this
figure would depend on how such lexical material is defined. But the wealth of
colloquialisms of all stylistic levels in ASRED2 is, after all, part of a supplementary
dictionary, precisely because this lexical layer – by necessity – has to be restricted in an
ordinary bilingual dictionary. For the same reason ASRED2 also contains a large
number of abbreviations and acronyms a very valuable source for translators of
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contemporary texts. These are not given in an appendix but, justifiedly, in the body of
the dictionary, often with an indication of their pronunciation and additional
explanations, for instance:
ЕврАзЭС (<Евразийское экономическое сообщество >), a, m. (polit.) EURASEC,
EEC (Eurasian Economic Community). [Note: EURASEC is comprised of Russia,
Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.] (168)
And ASRED2 also cites a large number of what one could call moderately
specialised words (Marder uses the term “semitechnical terminology”; viii ). An
example for the latter is, e.g. the entry for налог: [...] (345) which includes items such
as 03. н. на вменённый доход (fin.) tax on imputed income or 04. н. на
дабавленную стоимость (НДС) goods and services tax (GST), to mention just two
of the twelve sub-entries. On the other hand, the entry for монгольский (329)
contains nine sub-entries – all marked as either (bot.) or (zool.) – which probably most
users apart from Mongols would regard as more than just moderately specialised.
All items contain stress marks and comments on pronunciation where necessary,
e.g. where consonant clusters are pronounced as one consonant only: деголлевский:
[лл pron. л] (135; referring to de Gaulle); for compound nouns it gives their genitive
forms as an indication of their declension pattern, and for verbs their aspect. The many
verbs of foreign origin which can be biaspectual are given as impf. and pf. (neither
Wheeler nor Marder use the term ‘biaspectual’), or – where only one aspect is attested –
it is always indicated accordingly, e.g. the verbs кис|оваться, уюсь impf. (sl.) or
кисса|ться, юсь impf. (sl.) (238; to kiss) which, apparently, occur only in the
imperfective! By comparison, the various specialised Russian dictionaries of foreign
words which the present reviewer has been able to consult, provide no information on
the aspect of verbs.
Marder’s main problem would thus have been to avoid the over-representation
of “nonce words” or “lexical entities which have yet to prove themselves” (vi). But
when dealing with translation work of a contemporary nature from Russian into English
users will soon find that Marder’s ASRED2 may well become their main source,
because of the neologisms, including abbreviations and acronyms, the lesser-known
colloquialisms and the moderately specialised vocabulary which Marder has selected for
inclusion and which they cannot find in other non-specialised dictionaries.
While it is impossible to review a dictionary such as ASRED2 in detail, the
extensive checks of the present reviewer have revealed very few discrepancies. In a
close examination of verbs in де(з)....(ир)овать(ся) – Wheeler cites 39 such verbs,
ASRED2 20 – it is not quite clear why Marder duplicates six of them without even
minimal, supplementary comment. The explanation of немецко-говорящая зона
(356) as “German-speaking countries (i.e., Austria, Germany and Switzerland)” would
probably not find favour with French, Italian and Romansh-speaking Swiss who do not
see Switzerland as a German-speaking “country”. And, naturally, one can always
disagree with the odd inclusion or omission among the thousands of entries.
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Marder’s dictionary covers the lexical area between a one-volume general bilingual dictionary and various specialised dictionaries – an area which translators and
other users of contemporary Russian often need most. Though it is a Russian-intoEnglish dictionary, it also lends itself to translation into other languages, using English
as the bridging language as the present reviewer has done. The selection of lexical
material presented on 736 pages shows Marder’s depth of knowledge of the subject. He
must be congratulated for his meticulous work and substantial contribution to the
profession, and Slavica Publishers for producing this high-quality work at the very
reasonable price of USD 44.95.
Last but not least we must now lean on Marder to produce a much-needed
English-Russian dictionary of a similar format (albeit not just an English-into-Russian
“version”). His in-depth knowledge not only of Russian but also of English makes him
the right person for the job.
REFERENCES
Smirnitsky, A. (ed.) (2002) Большой русско-английский словарь – Comprehensive
Russian-English Dictionary. Moscow: Russkii iazyk. 758 pp.
Wheeler, M., Unbegaun, B. (eds.) (2000) The Oxford Russian Dictionary. EnglishRussian edited by Paul Falla. 3rd ed., revised and updated by Della Thompson. xxi
+1293 pp.
Thomas F. Magner, Dunja Jutronić, Rječnik splitskog govora – A
dictionary of Split dialect [sic]. Dubrovnik: Dubrovnik University Press,
Zagreb: Durieux, 2006. xxvii+214 pp. ~ € 13
Reviewed by Hans-Peter Stoffel, University of Auckland
This dictionary is a co-production of emeritus Professor Thomas Magner of
Pennsylvania State University who passed away during the final stages of its
production, and of Dunja Jutronić, a native of Split and professor at the University of
Maribor, Slovenia. Among many other, Thomas Magner has had a special interest in
city dialects of Croatia (Zagreb – kajkavian, Split – čakavian) for many years, and so
has Dunja Jutronić.. The latter has also investigated the speech of migrants from Croatia
in the United States. Thus, the present dictionary is not a specialised study of a dialect
such as, for instance, the extensive Čakavisch-deutsches Lexikon (see References); its
great value lies in the presentation of a city dialect in flux and in the accessibility of its
material to the non-specialists and the users outside Croatia.
This American-Croatian co-production is evident throughout the dictionary: the
Preface (v/vii) and all comments in the Introduction (pp. ix-xxvi) are given in a
Croatian (Uvod; ix-xvi) and an English version (Introduction; xvii-xxvi), and the words
cited in the main body of the book, the dictionary proper (pp. 1-201), are given in the
Split dialect, followed by Standard Croatian and English. Even the Bibliography (pp.
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203-209) is given in a Croatian and English section, though, here, only the introductory
note differs. The book is rounded off by a section on the authors and their work (pp.
211-214). The indication of pp. in the following comments refers to the Englishlanguage version of the Introduction..
The authors define “dialect” vis-à-vis a standard language, i.e. from a sociolinguistic point of view (xvii). They present what has been called a “special halfčakavian dialect” (xviii), i.e. the city dialect of Split which has been in competition with
other, mainly štokavian-based dialects and which is in a diglossia situation with
Standard Croatian. In the short but concise introductory remarks the authors show that
the dialect of Split is ikavian (proto-Slavic ě is represented as i, e.g. město as misto, as
opposed to mjesto in Standard Croatian). They also define the čakavian dialect in
general as ikavian (xvii) though this is somewhat too general since there are also
čakavian dialects elsewhere which are ekavian or jekavian (old ě reflected as e or as
/i/je). The Introduction also contains brief comments on Split and its diglossia situation
(xviii-xix), a Historical Note (xix), a Brief sketch of Split’s history which includes a
comment on the toponym Split (xix-xx). Following this is a brief item The grammar of
the Split dialect (xx) which, basically, repeats what has already been said earlier and
could be incorporated into the comments given under Split.
The following four pages are a condensed survey of the major linguistic features
of the Split dialect. The bare essentials given here are an excellent source of information
for the non-specialist. In the sections on Phonological characteristics (xx-xxi) and
Accents (xxi-xxii) the authors present two important decisions which they felt they had
to take: they use the voiceless affricate č to represent both č and ć, and the voiced
affricate dž to represent both dž and đ.
In the area of prosody čakavian includes the stressed vowel, the quantity of the
stressed vowel (long or short), tone on the stressed syllable (rising, falling or both) and
the duration of unstressed vowels before or after the stressed syllable. Here the authors
only indicate stress on a “short syllable (`) and on a “long rising (in tone) syllable” (´).
This greatly simplifies a complex situation in flux in which it is often impossible to
make finer distinctions applicable to all cases. The present reviewer has encountered the
same problem when investigating the speech of immigrants from Central and Southern
Dalmatia in New Zealand, also a situation with dialect(s) in flux (see References). The
solution which Magner/Jutronić present here – and which the user will find throughout
the dictionary – is an excellent one for all practical purposes.
The brief sketch also includes Morphological (xxii-xxiii) and Syntactic
characteristics (xxiii) and is rounded off by Lexical characteristics (xxvi). The authors
emphasize the “large number of lexical items from Venetian and Italian”. Indeed,
looking at the words listed in the dictionary, this comment looks even somewhat
modest; one can say that probably a majority of the words cited are of Italian or
Venetian origin, e.g. the multitude of pairs of perfective and imperfective verbs such as
pàsat-pasávat (English: to pass by; 121). Naturally, one might want to know to what
extent this Italian or Venetian-derived lexicon is still used by today’s speakers. In their
Preface (vii) the authors mention that they have “interviewed scores of native speakers
from the late 1970s through the year 2003” and that they have not “restricted [their]
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choice of informants to any age group”. This could include speakers born around 1900
reflecting the speech of most of the 20th century as well as speakers born towards the
end of that century. The information on informants is important and would perhaps be
better placed at the beginning of introductory comments rather than in the Preface.
The Introduction is rounded off by Three texts in the Split dialect (two of them
based on the works of local authors). They are not only good illustrations of the fact
that, despite the multitude of loanwords from Italian and Venetian, the Split dialect is
clearly Slavic speech, but they are also delightful to read – made easier for non-native
speakers by the English translations which follow them (xxiv-xxv; in the English
section of the Introduction only).
The main body of the book is a trilingual dictionary citing words in the Split
dialect followed by Standard Croatian and English. It lists about 4500-5000 individual
words with no further comments other than those of a grammatical nature.
For nouns it always gives grammatical gender though this could be simplified by
declaring words in -a feminine, and those ending in a consonant masculine, with an
indication of gender only when words deviate from this pattern. The genitive form in
case of a mobile -a- and phonetic variants are also given, e.g.: múlac – múlca
(English: child out of wedlock, mischievous child; p. 101), pòštjer/poščér (English:
mailman; p. 132). Where pairs of imperfective and perfective verbs exist these are given
as separate lexical items. Usually the one in -at/-it is perfective while the one in -ávat/ívat is imperfective but there are some where both forms are given as imperfective such
as prognoštìkat I – prognoštikávat I – prognozirati – to foretell (p. 135). The authors
also make the effort, where possible, to reflect the aspectual difference in their Standard
Croatian equivalents such as skàlat P – Standard Croatian spustiti, skalávat I –
Standard Croatian spuštati (English: to take down, lower; p. 151).
Apart from everyday words, including exclamations such as čào! (p. 25) the
range of vocabulary cited in the dictionary also encompasses specific vocabulary items
of the way of life of the inhabitants of Split such as fishing, boats, the sea and the winds,
local games and foodstuffs. These provide a lively picture of traditional life in Split and
are of special value particularly for the non-specialist user outside the city and Dalmatia.
Unfortunately, there are a large number of errors in the book, including wrong
order (e.g. prominívat before promìnit; English: to change; p.135) or the absence of
the article ‘the’ in the English title of the book. Before the next edition the dictionary
needs a thorough revision and proofreading.
This relatively small and affordable trilingual dictionary opens up the Split
dialect to far more users than at first meets the eye: To those who may or may not use
the Split dialect in Split and its environs, including local writers who wish to check the
odd word for interest’s sake; for teachers in a diglossia situation in Split who may use
the dictionary for a brief general contrastive analysis of the dialect vs. Standard
Croatian; for slavicists around the world who may wish to gain a brief survey of a
Čakavian dialect or comparative lexicology such as mùka – flour (Split dialect) and e.g.
мукá (Russian) or mąka (Polish) but Standard Croatian brašno (p. 101) and,
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especially, for the descendants of the migrants who left Dalmatia during the first part of
the 20th century for English-speaking countries overseas.
For those descendants it will provide a source of interest and also reference,
including for their historical and genealogical studies which are very popular. It will
help to explain mistakes in their written work, such as “Nemoj zaboraviti doč u
središte gradu na kvarat do tri” (sic! – from a Standard Croatian composition, New
Zealand) and explain why descendants of the dialect speakers find it difficult to
understand a guest-speaker using Standard Croatian. And last but not least for those
investigating language contact, to avoid false linguistic friends: they will not assume
that čìnit júbav (p. 26) is a loan translation and loan meaning of contemporary English
‘to make love’ but find that this expression must have existed in their speech before
their ancestors came to the New World!
Despite the errors mentioned above this dictionary is a fine tribute to the late
Thomas Magner and to Dunja Jutronić for completing this important joint work after his
passing away.
REFERENCES:
Hraste, M., Simunović, P., Olesch, R. (1979, 1981, 1983) Čakavisch-deutsches Lexikon,
Teil I-III. Köln.
Jutronić, D. (1985) Hrvatski jezik u SAD. Split.
Magner, T. (1978) ‘Diglossia in Split’, in: Folia Slavica 1/3: 400-436.
Stoffel, H.-P. (1994) ‘Dialect and Standard Language in a Migrant Situation: The Case
of New Zealand Croatian’, in: New Zealand Slavonic Journal 1994: 153-170 [Reprinted
in Croatian Studies Review, vol. 2, Sydney 2003: 1-23.]
Christoph Witzenrath, Cossacks and the Russian Empire, 1598-1725.
Manipulation, Rebellion and Expansion into Siberia (Routledge Studies in
the History of Russia and Eastern Europe), London: Routledge, 2006.
259pp. USD170.00
Reviewed by Thomas Nelson, University of Canterbury
Siberia is vast and its climate uniquely harsh. Yet, in spite of these difficulties,
fifty years after crossing the Urals in 1581, the Russians reached the Pacific. These new
territories were not held down by regular soldiers, yet were sufficiently well
subordinated to Moscow to supply the government there with at least a tenth of its
revenues.
The central theme in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Siberian history has long
been to explain this enigma.
All of the histories of Siberia that I have read to date have left me with the
feeling that the authors have tried to be too tidy in their reasoning. Perhaps taken in by
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the sheer vastness of the Siberian landscape and Russia’s reputation for autocracy, they
have tended to lose sight of the individual Cossacks and colonists and to see events in
terms of broad movements, institutions and structures. Some have seen Siberia as a
giant business enterprise, while others have argued that the tsars extracted tribute, or
“iasak”, from an unwilling population by sheer brute force.
Christoph Witzenrath’s work is the first history I have read that has the ring of
plausibility. He starts from the obvious premise that the tsar did not have the power to
compel anyone in the depths of Siberia and had to rely on the cooperation of the few
Russians who had actually moved there.
Having established this premise, he sets out the means by which the tsar’s
government won and retained these men’s loyalty.
The Siberian wilderness was, in spite of its reputation, no place for the hardy
individualist. In order to survive and earn a living, Cossacks had to cooperate and their
favoured means of doing so was through the Personenverband, or temporary grouping
whose members formed a circle and swore an oath to subordinate their individual
interests for the purpose of attaining a temporary and tangible goal. These groups would
elect their leaders, and it behoved both these leaders and the tsar’s voevodas to work
together, for only if they did so, would either the group’s or the voevoda’s goals be
attained.
Most of Siberia was not suitable for agriculture. Thus, another means by which
the tsar was able to retain the allegiance of the Siberian Cossacks was by paying them a
salary in grain. Witzenrath successfully shows both that the salary was substantial and
that the tsars were able to exploit Siberia’s waterways to ensure that it was paid reliably.
In addition, the Cossacks were desperate to participate in the lucrative China trade and
the Chinese simply refused to deal with anyone not accredited by the tsar.
The section of the book that deals with corruption and bribery is especially
interesting. The state relied on motivated servants and had to allow them to profit from
their service. Thus, graft was normal and tolerated as long as it remained within bounds
and did not adversely affect the tsar’s business. Voevodas were in theory absolute and
certainly were not above beating and imprisoning those who defied them. However,
they were ill-advised to overuse their powers. They had few private means of
compulsion and many early voevodas were deposed by Cossack Personenververbände
who justified their actions by claiming to defend the tsar’s interests against the
depredations of his own rapacious officials.
Thus, Christoph Witzenrath’s book is, in essence, a wonderful contribution to
scholarship on Siberia. However, the book is defective in a number of ways. Most
importantly, it is incredibly badly written. Page 23, for example, is actually one of the
better written parts of the book, but contains two howling grammatical errors. I had to
read one paragraph three times before I realised that the word ‘impaired’ had been
substituted for the word ‘imparted’. The author also appears unaware that the
expressions “to search someone” and “to search for someone” mean different things. I
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appreciate that he is not a native speaker of English, but someone should have picked up
these errors.
On many occasions, the author is so keen to prove his credentials as a
‘professional’ historian that he introduces vast amounts of completely unnecessary
‘theory’ and often obscures the basically simple reasoning that he is trying to
communicate. On pages 12-15, he asks two of the most central questions in Siberian
history. Firstly, since Cossack groups were impermanent, how could they negotiate with
higher authority in cases where the time-frame of the negotiations exceeded a single
season? Secondly, how could Cossacks and voevodas both appeal to the ‘sovereign’s
affair’ to justify mutual contradictory courses of action? Rather than answering the
question in plain English, he talks about the latest developments in ‘institutional theory’.
The evidence upon which the author builds his conclusions is inevitably limited
and occasionally he is tempted to overinterpret the sources. For example, ordinary
Cossacks could gain direct access to the arbitration of higher authority by saying they
“knew a sovereign’s affair”. In 1680, a Cossack from Yeniseisk called Sirotinin
claimed to know a sovereign’s affair and accused other Cossacks of criminal behaviour.
Later, he claimed to have been drunk at the time and the only sovereign’s affair that he
knew of was a minor act of petty larceny that had occurred one year previously. The
author comments on pages 120-1:
Sirotinin challenged the limitations of this Personenverband which no longer
lived up to either of its promises to serve the sovereign or share the spoils by
uttering a mere five words.
Surely, the more plausible explanation is that Sirotinin had a quarrel with his friends
and sought to ‘get even’ by uttering a sovereign’s affair. He then realised he had gone
too far and tried to backtrack.
Finally, the importance of religious institutions in Siberia receives little attention
even though they are frequently mentioned as players in the incidents upon which the
author builds his thesis. He himself seems to be aware of this limitation in his work and
notes that the surviving monastic records are scanty. The records of the Seleginsk
Trinity Monastery were stored in a warehouse on Lake Baikal and lost when the level
of the lake suddenly rose in 1917.
Christoph Witzenrath’s scholarship is fundamentally sound and he has
contributed enormously to our understanding of Siberian history and the role of the
Cossacks. It is to be hoped that some scholar somewhere will be able to unearth enough
data to give an equally convincing account of the role of the Church.
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Евгений Добренко. Политэкономия соцреализма. Москва, Новое литературное обозрение (Библиотека журнала “Неприкосновенный запас”), 592 стр, cloth.
Reviewed by Dennis Ioffe, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada
and University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Over the last two decades, the Soviet-born British scholar Evgeny Dobrenko has
vigorously established himself as a leading authority1 on a whole range of subjects
related to the culture of Stalinism. One could even go so far as to say that he in fact “reinvented” the entire scholarly field of what is widely known today as ”the literature of
the Stalin era”. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that back in the old days,
Dobrenko’s most recently published work alone could easily amount to a contribution
made by an entire “Institute” of an average Soviet University. Katerina Clark,
Dobrenko’s elder colleague and well-known predecessor in the same field of study2,
once grumbled about all the eyebrows of the “higher-ups” risen in consternation when
she started dealing with all those axiomatically “bad authors” of the Socialist Realist
canon (as opposed to the “great ones” of the Silver Age). But nowadays, this entire
subject became part of the scholarly mainstream, and it would not have happened
without Dobrenko’s tireless effort.
The book under review exists in two simultaneously published Russian and
English versions (for the English version see Evgeny Dobrenko, Political Economy of
Socialist Realism, tr. by Jesse M. Savage (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007)).
1
Even the list of just the most recent English titles by Dobrenko related to the culture of the Stalin era is
already impressive.
Dobrenko, E., Stalinist Cinema and the Production of History: Museum of the Revolution, trans. by Sarah
Young, Edinburgh University Press, 2008; Soviet Culture and Power: a History in Documents, 19171953, narrative, text preparation, and commentary by Katerina Clark and Evgeny Dobrenko, trans. by
Marian Schwartz, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2007; Dobrenko, E., Political Economy of Socialist
Realism, trans. by Jesse M. Savage, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2007; Dobrenko, E., Aesthetics of
Alienation: Reassessment of Early Soviet Cultural Theories, trans., by Jesse M. Savage, Evanston,
Northwestern University Press, 2005; The Landscape of Stalinism: the Art and Ideology of Soviet Space,
edited by Evgeny Dobrenko and Eric Naiman, Seattle, University of Washington Press, 2003; Dobrenko,
E., The Making of the State Writer: Social and Aesthetic Origins of Soviet Literary Culture, trans, by
Jesse M. Savage, Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press, 2001.
Endquote: Sots-art Literature and Soviet Grand Style, eds. Marina Balina, Nancy Condee, and Evgeny
Dobrenko, Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 2000; Dobrenko, E., The Making of the State
Reader: Social and Aesthetic Contexts of the Reception of Soviet Literature, trans. by Jesse M. Savage,
Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press, 1997; Socialist Realism Without Shores, edited by Thomas
Lahusen and Evgeny Dobrenko, Durham, Duke University Press, 1997.
This does not include dozens of his Russian publications, among which the monumental volume
Sotsrealisticheskii kanon partially funded by the VolkswagenStiftung alone presents more that one
thousand pages of pure scholarship:
Sotsrealisticheskii kanon, pod obshchei redaktsiei Hansa Guntera i Evgenia Dobrenko, Sankt-Peterburg,
Gumanitarnoe Agentstvo Akademicheskii Proekt, 2000.
2
See her groundbreaking monograph: The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual, University of Chicago Press,
1985.
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This review will focus on the Russian original as the latter reflects more accurately the
peculiarities of the author’s native language style.
Politekonomiia sotsrealizma is extremely rich in many respects. The author
formulates its primary objective as follows:
Эта книга – попытка функционального подхода к сталинской культуре,
нуждающейся как в новых интерпретациях, так и в новых аналитических
подходах к своим текстам, к пересмотру самого корпуса этих текстов. Я
обращаюсь к текстам сталинизма в поисках ответа на вопросы, выходящие
далеко за пределы текстуального анализа: о том, какова природа
сталинского политико-эстетического проекта, каковы функции политикоидеологических дискурсов и визуальных практик в сталинизме, каковы
причины и характер их динамики. Поэтому я рассматриваю эту книгу
одновременно и как попытку возведения моста между историей культуры
(в том числе литературы, кино) и культурной истории сталинизма:
слишком часто историки и литературоведы, киноведы, искусствоведы не
видят того, что соединяет культурную и политическую, социальную
Истории – сферу идеологии и символического производства.
Dobrenko intends to re-formulate and rebuild dominant scholarly approaches to
the cultural history of Stalinism; he wants to revisit many of the already examined
topics. The book opens with a thoughtful scrutiny of the important reasons why
sotsrealism cannot be considered a valid “realist” movement. The mimetic faculty was
conspicuously absent from its ideology and practice. Concluding on the ‘impossibility’
and ineffectiveness of nearly every socialist economic venture, Dobrenko playfully
remarks that the only “successful” executive production issuing from this bleak period
was the “symbolic establishment” of socialism, achieved by means of Stalinist
sotsrealist art. Ordinary everyday “reality,” claims Dobrenko, was to be changed and
“transfigured” with the help of sotsrealist art, whereby the latter would serve as a model
for further idealistic imitation. The image of socialism was symbolically created as a
sort of tradable “commodity” that could be further exported and successfully implanted
not only inside “mother Russia”, but also in neighboring nations. He brings up Merab
Mamardashvili’s interesting concept of “logokratia” (which is defined in the book,
among other things as “господство изображений, заменяющих собой то, что они
изображают”).
The ultimate goal of the entire sotsrealist industry was to portray the fictitious
reality through the use of the hypnotizingly convincing technique of pictorial hyperrealism. Dobrenko utilizes Merab Mamardashvili’s elaborate theory of the image in
order to apply it to his method of comprehending Stalinist culture. He employs such
meaningful terms as “изображeния изображения”, “кажимости кажимости”, “жизнь,
имитирующая жизнь.” It would not be unreasonable to add that sotsrealism in such an
interpretative projection could be likened to a classic “simulacrum” as defined by
Baudrillard. Everywhere Dobrenko deals with the explication of the authenticated
meaning of sotsrealism; he tends, in fact, to refer to this concept either implicitly or
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directly, but seems to hesitate calling it by name.3 I would suggest that the entire
concept of Stalinist sotsrealism could be better understood if scrutinized via the
“simulacra” lens. Sotsrealism in fact was nothing but a cynical “simulation” of a
“proper” mode of experience imposed on the entire Soviet community. Dobrenko
quotes a relevant passage from Maxim Gorky to which, we believe, Jean Baudrillard
would have subscribed as well: “факт – еще не вся правда, он – только сырье, из
которого следует выплавить, извлечь настоящую правду искусства. Нужно
научиться выщипывать несущественное оперение факта, нужно уметь извлекать
из факта смысл” (p.44). The concept of the “fact” emerges therefore as arbitrary and
“negotiable,” as a virtually relativistic construct pertaining to any perceived matter
whatsoever. In the totalitarian universe of socialist realism, then, there cannot be any
genuine empirical “facts,” only pre-approved “representations”; no veritable truth of
reality, only politically chosen appearances of ideologically “invented actuality.” Every
“fact” of sotsrealist representation must be adopted and modified for its future audience,
each “sotsrealist fact” ought to convey a condensation of a clearly defined effort to
accomplish a certain purpose.
Throughout the entire volume, Dobrenko seems to be most interested in what he
tends to call tricky “representation mechanisms” of Stalinist culture. His apparent goal
is to “deconstruct” these in order to arrive at the keenest possible phenomenological
comprehension of his object. Cultural reality of Stalinism may be viewed as an apogee
of symbolic portrayal par excellence, and also as a highly manipulative way of
confronting the surrounding discursive reality. Concealing the brutality of its age,
“elevating” it to the sublime heights of a remote ideal was obviously one of
sotsrealism’s hidden goals and programmatic raisons d’être.
Nearly every chapter title in Dobrenko’s book bears an important, yet playful
and even “indecent” allusion to a well-known author or topic. The first one “Сoциализм как воля и представление” clearly alludes to Schopenhauer’s Die Welt als Wille
und Vorstellung. All other subchapter titles are more than suggestive and at the same
time also “informative”. Since the references contained in these titles may not always be
self-evident to the English reader, I will decipher some of the encrypted Russian
allusions.
“Соцреализм: Машина по производству социализма” refers to “машинa по
производ-ству капитала”, whereby “oсуществляется синтез Машины и Капитала”
(“capital-producing machine”; “hybrid-like union of this mechanism and the capital”).
Then “Соцреализм как торжество творческого марксизма” (“Socialist Realism as a
Triumph of Creative Marxism” may refer to Riefenstahl’s Triumph des Willens.
The tongue-in-cheek title “Советская Империя знаков, или Социалистический (гипер)реализм” seemingly refers to both “Empire (Realm) of the Senses” –
3
Jean Baudrillard is widely quoted in the book and this “simulacra” suggestion seems to be agreeable
with Dobrenko himself. He is most interested in Baudrillard’s way of hallucinatorial grasping and
chasing the “unreal”: “Именно так следует понимать характеристику Бодрийяром «нереального»,
которое полагается теперь не на мечту или фантазию, но на галлюцина-торную похожесть
реальности на саму себя. В попытке избежать кризиса репрезентации реальность кружится вокруг
себя самой в чистом повторe”.
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the famous movie Ai no corrida (1976) by Nagisa Oshima, publicly banned but
irresistibly popular in the days of Dobrenko’s youth, and to the sweeping semiotic
agenda of Ferdinand de Saussure (signs and Empire, their eminent domain). It is to de
Saussure, too, that Dobrenko’s title “Социализм как означаемое” (Socialism as the
Signified) refers, whereas “Эстетическое, слишком эстетическое” overtly paraphrases
Nietzsche’s Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, which in the standard Russian translation
is rendered as “Человеческое, слишком человеческое”.
Titles like “Нищета реальности, или Абсолютный Чернышевский” may
remotely echo Honoré de Balzac’s Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes (in Russian
Блеск и нищета куртизанок), whereas “Осколки зеркала русской революции.
Социализм как означающее” – on the one hand, refers to Lenin’s famous words about
Tolstoy (зеркало русской революции), and on the other, brings in Saussure yet again
(означающее). Dobrenko’s “Революционный романтизм: Красное и Зеленое, или
Вторая природа” refers to another French author, this time Stendhal (Le Rouge et le
Noir – in Russian Красное и Черное versus in the travestied version Красное и
Зеленое). The second half of this title “Вторая природа” (“Second Nature”) may allude
to its common Soviet definition: совокупность материальных условий, созданных
человеком в процессе его адаптации к естественным условиям (the sum total of
material conditions created by human labor in the process of changing the nature, as if
creating the adapted ‘second nature’). This may also correspond to the popular
communist anti-environmental dictum coined by Ivan Michurin: “Мы не можем ждать
милостей от природы, взять их у нее – наша задача”.
Another very playful chapter title: “Презревшая формализм: Живое вещество
старой большевички” colorfully alludes to Victor Zhirmunskii’s illustrious article
“Преодолевшие символизм”. Mentioning the “living substance” of an “old Bolshevik
lady,” Dobrenko also brings up the topics of provocative corporeality and sex. And
further on, the title “Надзирать – Наказывать – Надзирать: Соцреализм как
прибавочный продукт насилия” clearly transcribes Michel Foucault’s Surveiller et
punir and also reveals an allusion to Marx (прибавочный продукт). Dobrenko’s
“Железный Мессия как предтеча производственничества” plays around the
character of Железный Дровосек, who was always very popular in Russia (iron man as
a wood-cutter i.e. “Tin Woodsman” of Land of Oz, created by L. Frank Baum). Here
this Tin Woodman is compared to Messiah who will bring the industrialization paradise
and salvation to Russia. “Железный Мессия” may well also correspond to L’Homme
au Masque de Fer (Железная маска) who was a French noble prisoner, held in a
number of jails, during the reign of Louis XIV. Dobrenko may refer here to the French
film Le Masque de fer (directed by Henri Decoin, featuring Jean Marais playing
D’Artagnan), widely shown in the USSR during his youth4.
The title “Машина в цветах: Скромное обаяние производственнической
утопии” on the one hand alludes Luis Buñuel’s Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie,
and on the other, refers to Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s Venus im Pelz (in Russian
Венера в мехах  Машина в цветах). Dobrenko’s “Bildungsfilm: Рождение
Соцреалистического Героя из плоти Производительных сил и Мелодрамы Духа
4
Железный Мессия may also allude to “Железный Феликс” (Дзержинский).
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Производственных Отношений” encapsulates several allusions. First of all, it
produces a neologism from the name of the famous German literary genre (this way
Bildungsroman becomes Bildungsfilm – i.e. a film that ‘educates’ a person and assists in
his/her intimate formation). And then it, it appears to “mock” Nietzsche’s Die Geburt
der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik. In Dobrenko’s case, it is not Tragedy that is
being born from the spirit of music, but rather the new sotsrealist Hero who is being
fleshed out of the productive forces and the emotional soul of the related
Produktionsverhältnisse. The book’s other title “Сон разума рождает героев”
represents a parody on the famous Spanish expression “El sueño de la razón produce
monstros”, and of course refers to the series of Los Caprichos painted by Francisco de
Goya. There are many other titles that deserve this kind of ‘close reading’ in
Dobrenko’s book.
The volume covers the widest scope of topics: from pure politics and political
theory to literature and poetry, from film to philosophy, from philately to sociology and
anthropology of the Stalin era. The first part of the book opens with the introductory
chapter devoted to ways of theorizing socialism in the light of contemporary scholarly
approaches. The ultimate poverty of empirical reality is cynically clashed with the
illusory universe of sotsrealist cultural agenda. The second part of the book deals with
the “economic” basis of the socialist environment and how the latter was portrayed,
creating a new culture of fictions. Special attention is paid to the semantics of human
body and the general “biological” discourse of the period (featuring Maxim Gorky and
Trofim Lysenko.). Several subchapters are devoted to the newly invented “science” of
Soviet pedology that indirectly dealt with the “body” as well as “biology”. Chapter Four
is concerned with the effects of Stalin’s mass-scale industrialization on the culture of
the period. The fifth chapter extends the discussion of Soviet pedology to the sphere of
film, focusing on ways in which new propaganda genres of the cinema (with major
examples drawn on Pudovkin’s movies) were conceived and eventually achieved mass
popularity. Chapter Six that opens the third part of the volume continues the discussion
of sotsrealist visuality by introducing the concepts of the “talking eye” (говорящий
глаз) and the “seeing tongue/language” (видящий язык) in reference to the new
cinematic productions and their subjects. Chapter Seven charts curious ways of
organizing pompous “All-Soviet Exhibitions” and analyzes their perception by ordinary
people. Chapter Eight is devoted to the enchanting realms of Soviet stamps used as
“archaeological” evidence for reconstructing their culture in the Foucauldian sense
(Dobrenko himself was once a dedicated philatelist in his youth). Chapter Nine that
concludes the volume returns to the Soviet film industry, focusing on the colorful
examples of Ivan Pyriev and Grigorii Aleksandrov.
The publication of this monograph is of great importance to the study of Stalinist
culture. All future scholarly endeavors will be profoundly dependant on this paramount
contribution.
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Александр Кобринский, Даниил Хармс, Москва, Молодая гвардия,
2008, 501 pp., cloth.
Reviewed by Mikhail Klebanov, Toronto, Canada
The name of Alexandr Kobrinsky came to light at the first surge of wide interest,
both academic and public, in Daniil Kharms around late 80s-early 90s, shortly after
major ideological changes in the Soviet Union made it possible. Since that time,
Kobrinsky secured his place among the most prolific scholars in Kharms studies. It thus
comes as no surprise that he should have authored the first biography of one of the most
enigmatic Russian writers.
Yet the very endeavor to pen such a biography may seem bold enough even if
undertaken by such an authority as Kobrinsky. Few characters in Russian literature are
surrounded by more legends and unlikely stories than Daniil Kharms. A fair number of
memories left by his numerous acquaintances from St Petersburg often appear so
affected by his fascinating personality, including, first and foremost, his eccentric
appearance and behavior, that it would be rash to try and rely on them unconditionally.
On the other hand, the profound interference between Kharms’ life and art, well-spotted
by his contemporaries (notably Yakov Druskin), may question also the reliability of his
own literary legacy where diary notes are interspersed with snatches of fiction in a
seemingly inextricable mess of textual fragments.
None of this, however warded Kobrinsky off his venture. Armed with more than
extensive knowledge of the subject, he laboriously compiles his work, putting to use
almost indiscriminately every shred of available information. Official documents,
Kharms’ own confessions and his friends’ testimonies are applied in plenty to maintain
the timeline of the book throughout its nine chronological chapters. Each chapter is set
in reference to the suggested milestones of Kharms’ life, such as OBERIU years,
detention and exile or the period of gradual switching from poetry to prose. The
resulting effect is impressive: Kobrinsky does succeed in portraying his hero as quite a
remarkable young man (still young before his tragic death at 36), as is suggested by the
title of the renowned “Lives of Remarkable People”5 series in which the biography is
published. His mother marvels at him as a child, his friends adore him, he is befriended
and appreciated by the most prominent artists of his day, and virtually everybody
testifies that he is a truly outstanding person. The reader is presented with colorful
scenes of cultural life in Russia’s “northern capital” in which Kharms was involved,
detailed descriptions of artistic events he participated in, and everything else necessary
to capture the atmosphere of his life. We also learn a great deal about Kharms’ father,
who himself was a person noteworthy enough to earn a biographical study.
Despite these virtues, Kobrinsky’s book offers rather little to those familiar with
the major scope of Kharms-related scholarly contexts. Its bibliography comprises a list
of predominantly well-known sources, so there are few insights (it was most
disappointing indeed to learn that the rhyme attributed to Kharms until recently as his
5
Founded as early as the 19th century and comprising hundreds of biographical volumes dedicated to
artists, scientists, and other prominent figures who lived and worked in Russia and elsewhere.
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first chronicled experience in poetry does not in fact belong to him6) and hardly many
more of the insubstantial but intriguing details (like Kharms’ love affair with his sister’s
servant). Moreover, some very particular problems seem to issue from the ambiguous
format of this biography. The text contains no references, while the author reserves the
right to name or not name the sources he used in each particular case: a doubtful
strategy that almost makes one wonder whether he resolved to join in the chorus of
apocryphal stories sprouting around Kharms for decades during his life and even more
so posthumously. It seems even more puzzling because it is often not easy to grasp
effectively on what grounds Kobrinsky chooses to grant credibility to his witnesses. For
instance, it is unclear why philosopher Yakov Druskin’s statement about Kharms not
reading Immanuel Kant should be put in doubt only because allusions to some of Kant’s
metaphysical concepts can be found in Kharms’ writings7, whereas quite apocryphal
accounts by persons like Georgy Matveev of Gennady Gor are reproduced without any
reservations. The inconsistent use of evidence also makes unclear at times the motives
inducing Kobrinsky to use the tone of brazen confidence in regard to many, not always
inarguable issues. This may appear particularly striking when similar-looking cases are
in question. Thus, when the art critic Nikolay Khardzhiev is characterized as “a harsh,
hard-spoken man”, this claim is backed up by a quote from the latter’s highly
controversial remarks about the playwright Evgeny Schwarz. At the same time, any
such evidence is lacking when the actress Klavdia Pugacheva to whom Kharms wrote
his delighted letters is described as “a flippant and cantankerous damsel”.
Another noteworthy feature of Kobrinsky’s book is that alongside its primary
biographical objective, it pursues several ancillary ones. For example, it is hardly
possible to ignore the heavy presence of scholarly discourse throughout the biographical
narrative. With all due respect to Kobrinsky’s contribution to scholarship, it needs to be
said that, regrettably, the narrative gets interrupted much too often when the author has
to take a look back in order to maintain his argument. It is also somewhat disturbing
that, with few exceptions, a fair number of issues debated by scholars over the years are
represented here solely from the author’s own standpoint. Finally, in an apparent effort
to provide a broader historical context for the biographical narrative, the author keeps
embarking on rather lengthy historical detours, often with a distinct tinge of political
analysis, and sometimes rather successfully distracts the reader’s attention from the
biography itself. It is not unlikely, however, that such digressions can only contribute to
the interest that Kobrinsky’s book will surely provoke among the wider audience of
Kharms devotees.
6
The stanza “В июле как-то в лето наше…” opens the poetical section of the Collected Works of
Kharms edited by Valery Sazhin.
7
The closely following biographer’s note asserting that reading Kant is not compulsory for knowing and
understanding his concepts only adds more confusion here.