Vyshinsky, Stalinka

[Deborah Hoffman]

With respect,

The error that is was made during this conference discussion sounds like a confusion of analysis with approbation.  In other words, there was a failure to make a distinction between recognizing the use of rhetorical practices that, as a category, are morally neutral, and giving moral approbation to their application, which in the case of Vyshinsky can be considered reprehensible but need not always be.  More so than restricting scholarly discourse for the sake of saving feelings, perhaps the answer might be for the interlocutors to continue the scholarly process and clarify the finer points of the topic under discussion. 

In my humble opinion only, of course.  

 

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 What came next however, 
was an assertion that we can view the "discursive practices" of Vyshinsky 
on the same level as those of Mayakovsky, Babel, Zoshchenko....

Say what?  That's right, Vyshinsky's performances at the show trials 
are in the same discursive field with the performances of Mayakovsky, 
Zoshchenko, etc.  This sociopath, Procurator General Andrei Vyshinsky 
(1883-1954), sent countless human beings to their deaths with his 
"discursive practices."  Real people died real deaths because of him.  
I doubt that any real people died real deaths as a result of, say, the 
"shows" put on by Vladimir Mayakovsky (excluding his suicide).


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