Platonov: a sentence from Kotlovan (stuchit)

[Robert Chandler]

Thanks very much, Deborah - am kicking myself for not having looked myself
in that remarkable volume!

R.


> For what it's worth Rossi's Gulag Handbook has the following entry for stukach
> (redirected from stuknut', stuchat', to inform)
>    
>   Stoolie. "Individual who knocks on a cell door in order to be allowed into
> the corridor to make a secret report," informer; see seksot. The term was
> unknown in Tsarist prisons, appearing at the very beginning of Soviet power
> (in their dictionaries, Trakhtenberg (1908) and Popov (1912) show only
> stuchat--to speak, to argue).
>    
>   [konets tsytaty]
>    
>    
>> Date:    Sun, 20 Jan 2008 21:46:39 +0000
>> From:    Robert Chandler <kcf19 at DIAL.PIPEX.COM>
>> Subject: Platonov: a sentence from Kotlovan (stuchit)
>> 
>> Dear all,
>> 
>> About 15 pages from the end of Kotlovan Yelisey says this to the
>> activist:
>> (Tam medved=92 stuchit v kuzne i pesnyu rychit. Ves' kolkhoz glaza
>> otkryl: nam bez tebya zhutko stalo.
>> At one level this means simply that the bear is making a lot of noise
>> hammering in the smithy and that this has woken everyone up.  But
>> kolkhoz glaza otkryl=92 has, I think, a secondary meaning: that the
>> whole collective farm has begun to see the truth.  What I want to know is
>> whether =91stuchit=92 could have the secondary meaning of =91inform=92, in
>> the
>  sense of =91denounce=92.  Were =91stukach=92 and =91stuchit=92=92 used in
> this
>  way as early as 1930?
> 
> Best Wishes,
> 
> Robert
> 

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