On the notion of "idle" reading

[George Fowler]

Greetings, all!
     It has been pointed out to me off-list that the tone of my posting
about the book "Delo slavistov" was somewhat flippant for what is after all
a set of genuinely tragic circumstances: the repression, arrest, exile, and
even death of eminent scholars. I apologize to anyone who reacted in this
way; I meant no disrespect to their sufferings. By "idle" reading I have in
mind "not strictly professional" reading; of course it has nothing to do
with typical bedside reading. Some of the book is written in a fairly
detached style (e.g., the text of N.N. Durnovo's statement to investigators
and the following commentary, pp. 108-19); while other passages are
heart-rending (e.g., Selishchev's letter to prosecutor I.A. Akulov
imploring him for access to libraries so that he can work, pp. 153-54).
     As long as I'm on this subject, let me mention another useful book:
Wilhelm von Timroth's survey of Soviet sociolinguistics, originally
published in German and subsequently translated into English. The
interesting chapters pertain to the suppression of the study of non- (sub-)
standard variants of Russian, and the subtrefuges to which sociolinguists
resorted in order to pursue forbidden lines of inquiry. The reader is left
with a strong sense of the commitment these scholars had for scientific
"truth", given the difficult circumstances for investigations in this area.
I read this around 1984 or 1985; by now there may well be a much more
definitive treatment of the same topic by a Russian scholar, perhaps a
student of some of these sociolinguistic pioneers. If anybody knows of such
a history, perhaps they would post the citation to the list.
     George Fowler

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