This fascinating book should be read by anyone who has ever puzzled over the apparent woodenness of Soviet political discourse or assumed that it is ossified or mendacious. Patrick Seriot tackles these questions head-on and conclusively demonstrates that the crucial problem with Soviet political discourse is not its so-called woodenness, but, on the contrary, its ambiguity and ambivalence.
In an analysis of considerable linguistic subtlety, Seriot explores two texts: the Central Committee reports presented to the Twenty-second and Twenty-third Congresses of the CPSU in 1961 and 1966. He investigates, among other things, the process of nominalization, a linguistic process to which the Russian language (in general) and Soviet discourse (in particular) is especially amenable.
In simple terms, nominalization is a linguistic transformation in which nominals (or nouns) replace verbs or adjectives. The effect of such nominalization is to delete the agents or objects of an action, with the result that any statement containing such a nominalization is ambiguous. Seriot’s text is replete with examples in Russian. A small French example, however, suffices to illustrate the general point (p. 161): “La critique de Chomsky est justifiee” can be read in two different ways. Either Chomsky is the author of the critique in question, or he is the object of someone else’s critique. Context might well clarify the ambiguity; however, in many cases it does not, and the different readings create a permanent ambivalence in the text.
Seriot draws numerous conclusions from the persistent Soviet use of nominalization. Most interestingly, he demonstrates that nominalization is the trace of an “Other” which perpetually invades these texts. Although these texts appear to be monolithic, they are in fact dialogic: They are constantly engaged in an implicit response to, and refutation of, an “opposing discourse.” Because of the postulated unity of party and people, the other can never be named and remains unspeakable, but it is nevertheless present in the very heart of the party’s discourse—“is interior to it,” in Seriot’s words. The dynamic of this implicit struggle can be traced in a number of ways. On the one hand, for example, nominalization enables a speaker to compromise the audience by presenting an assumption as though it were accepted fact. In a statement like “ Usililas' bor’ba narodov protiv imperializma, ” it is already presupposed as a fact accepted by all that indeed “the people are struggling against imperialism” (p. 236). Such presupposition corrupts opposition: “The addressee is . . . prisoner of a single alternative: either to refuse all participation in the discourse, or to accept as true that ‘the people struggle against imperialism’ ” (p. 237). In this way, the discourse constantly creates and mobilizes its ideal (as distinct from its concrete) listener: the one who accepts its presuppositions as true. On the other hand, the persistent appearance of such nominalizations together with what Seriot calls “verbs of argumentation”—those which affirm, prove, demonstrate, as well as such ubiquitous impersonals as “it is known”— attest to a perpetual struggle in which every effort is made to ward off and preempt contradiction. All to no avail, since it is impossible to constitute oneself as a speaking subject except in relation to an other. As Seriot remarks, the apparent serenity of these texts “masks a polemic of justification [and] one cannot justify oneself except in relation to an Other” (p. 340). The party’s discourse can therefore never be properly homogenous, since what is exterior to it is inevitably and “without ceasing present in its interior.”
Unfortunately, Seriot does not draw political conclusions from his analysis, although his book is enormously provocative of them. His general purpose is quite different from the political. His overall aim in analyzing Soviet discourse is to demonstrate that linguistic preoccupation with artificial sentences consistently gets things wrong: first, because it fails to investigate real language as it is used, second, because, having elaborated a theory based on artificial sentences in the linguist’s native language, linguists presume it to be universal without applying it to languages other than their own. Seriot is unquestionably right on both counts. The book will be of considerable interest not only to Slavists, but also to linguists generally.
The book does have drawbacks, however. It requires considerable patience; it is a camera- ready Ph.D. dissertation and reads like one. The argument is often loose, disjointed, and topheavy with evidence. The quality of the argument and research deserves a tighter presentation and more professional appearance. That said, it is worth the effort of reading in its current form, notwithstanding the need for a knowledge of French, Russian, and linguistics. I look forward to seeing it again, not only re-presented, but also translated into other languages.