The Russian Language Today (review)

[Andrew Jameson]

The Russian Language Today
Larissa Ryazanova-Clarke and Terence Wade
Routledge, 1999, xi + 369 p.  ISBN 0-415-14256-3 (hbk) British
pounds 60; 0-415-14257-1 (pbk) British pounds 18.99.

This book is unique in its scope, its breadth and its detail.
Never before in an English-language publication have lexical
and word formatory processes in Russian received such detailed,
systematic and erudite scrutiny. The title of the book suggests a
survey of the state of Russian at the turn of the millennium, but
in fact we get a lot more than this for our money: a history of lexical
development, word formation, grammatical processes, names and
naming, and a survey of styles, registers and speech culture for the
period 1917-2000. Each stage in the history of lexical development
is accompanied by appropriate cultural information placing it in
context. Within a continuous factual text, on average about half
the space on each page is occupied by examples. The whole work is
accompanied by an 18 page bibliography and an index in two parts,
English and Russian.

The Russian language was under stress during the whole period in
question, but lovers of this unwieldy, quirky monster would argue
that the genius of the language is that it is able to absorb, use and
transform almost anything that comes its way. A strong influence
in the initial period was the use of foreign borrowings by the revolutionary
elite, many of whom were expatriates,followed by the extension of the
speech of these political groups into mass political jargon. Lenin
himself when drafting early documents used foreign words, often
coupling them with their Russian synonyms, one guesses to aid
comprehension, even though his attitude changed at a later stage.
Selishchev in Yazyk Revolyutsionnoi Epokhi provides some amusing
lists of the grotesque transformations of these new words in the mouths
of country folk, perhaps one of the reasons why his work was for a long
time confined to the Spetsfond of the Lenin Library.

Other important early developments include acronyms and the growth
of the use of non-standard Russian (NSR), seeing, in the long term,
the gradual acceptance and greater currency of vulgarisms and NS
forms in general discourse. Whereas acronyms die when their denotates
change their names, words, including NS words, have a life of their own
and often survive with modified meanings. This is particularly true of NSR.
The 1920s saw the appearance of quite a few studies of NSR and
indeed the late Dmitry Likhachev "cut his teeth" on this topic, following
his experiences in the Solovki monastery/prison. From the 1930s to the
1980s discussion of NSR was either disapproved of, or the province of
specialists, but the topic is now once again very much alive. NSR (slang)
does not play a very large part in the work under review. There are
relatively small sections on vulgarisms, criminal and youth slang, but no
mention of the language of the military, hippies or drug-users, although
these are admittedly small groups. The statement in the 'state of the
language' section that youth slang has its roots in criminal jargon runs
counter to the earlier section on youth slang which gives a fairer account
of its composition. Youth slang is a very complex phenomenon, including
elements of historic trade languages, some criminal elements, imaginative
adaptations of primarily English words and witty coinages in Russian. As
the book notes, English is now less used as a source for NSR and
innovations are more likely to have a Russian derivation, almost certainly
explained by the current tragic social background to this language variety.
That is to say that, whereas youth slang up to the 1980s was popular
with well-educated students, it now spoken by a real urban underclass.

The key terms of the Gorbachev period are examined in some detail.
Regarding the history of the word glasnost', it is interesting to note that
it occurs not infrequently in Lenin's works. The revival of the term under
Gorbachev may possibly be connected with Solzhenitsyn's emphatic
use of this word in open letters and documents during his battles with
the authorities in the late sixties, documents which Gorbachev must
have seen.

Developments in word formation are summarised as the shift of NS
forms mentioned above, the elimination of Soviet stereotypes, the
active role of key words of the age, an emphasis on affixes of Western
origin which reflect the issues of the time, and abbreviations and word
play. The examples go into great detail. This reviewer particularly liked
the reaction to 1991: " Putch provalilsya, potomu chto nikto ne smog
vygovorit' Ge-Ka-Che-Pe" - (The putsch failed because no one was able
to pronounce Ge-Ka-Che-Pe). Nezavisimaya Gazeta pronounced the
final verdict in the following terms: "Nedoperestroika so vsei neumolimoi
logikoi uvenchalas' nedoputchem" - (Abortive perestroika, with relentless
logic, culminated in an abortive putsch). English just does not possess
these verbal resources!

Grammatical developments take place at a slower rate, and include a
continuing trend towards non-declension of loans, abbreviations and
some Russian elements; developments in aspect forms; changes in
the use of transitive verbs; prepositions (which can now govern infinitives)
and the growth of plural forms for abstracts previously used only in the
singular. TV commercials may be responsible for an increasing tendency
to list information in the nominative case without grammatical linkage.
The Russian trend to analyticity continues, led by the media.

The section on names and naming goes in great detail into the many
absurdities of political renaming over the Soviet period, and the attempts
to restore old names since then. The initials SNG were the subject of
much ironic comment, the media asking whether it meant "S Novym
Godom" - (Happy New Year). (The USSR flag was taken down for the
last time in December 1991.) Revealingly, Kaliningrad has not reverted
to Konigsberg, and the name Leningrad lives on in many names of roads,
stations and the province itself. The sections on Moscow and Petersburg
street names are especially interesting. The final section here is a short
but important section on the names and name changes in and of the
newly independent republics. This area could be a real diplomatic minefield
in the future. To take one example not mentioned by Wade, the republic
of Kazakstan has been quick to insist that its name is just that, not
Kazakhstan, which they feel was a form imposed on them by Russia.
Westerners would do well to check the politically correct versions of names
in the republics before entering into top level negotiations. And should
we not now be addressing letters to the Ukraine in transliterated Ukrainian?

The final section, entitled "The state of the language" is a masterly
32 page survey of opinion polls, recent academic and parliamentary
debates, new usage, Newspeak, Styob, slang (see above), and issues
surrounding the "collapse of speech culture". Few forces are available
to stem the tide, but among them are the Academy of Sciences Institute of
Russian Language, the Russian Language Council attached to the President
of the Russian Federation and the 1997 federal programme entitled "Russian
Language". The book ends on a positive note, pointing out that the Russian
experience of students of Russian now is that they are fewer in number, but
better motivated, that Russian for special purposes is flourishing and that
internationally recognised certificates of competence are available. News
of the death of Russian is premature - in fact, it is being reborn.


Andrew Jameson
Chair, Russian Committee, ALL
Languages and Professional Development
1 Brook Street, Lancaster LA1 1SL UK
Tel: 01524 32371  (+44 1524 32371)

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