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This chapter examines the representation of Soviet terror in post-Soviet culture. It proposes a new concept, that of memory-dread, to analyze how Russians perceive the Soviet terror. It interprets the fearful visions of post-Soviet writers, fimmakers, and intellectuals as a territory of memory-dread, a space of the undead. Recognizing ghosts, spirits, vampires, dolls, and other man-made and man-imagined simulacra that carry the memory of the unburied Soviet dead, the chapter develops a theory of cultural memory as consisting of three elements that are intimately connected: monuments (hardware), texts (software), and specters (ghostware). It also discusses three stages in the Russian memory of the so-called “unjustified repressions”: denial, repression, and interpretation. Finally, it considers the carnivalesque dynamics of the post-catastrophic melancholia, along with Magical Historicism in the post-Soviet novel.

This introductory chapter begins by comparing the Russian term politkonkretnost (“polit-concreteness”) with the English “political correctness.” Both terms share two assumptions central to this book's study: that language not only reflects but also shapes perception, identity, and reality; and that language, culture, and politics are closely intertwined and mutually dependent on one another for meaning. Furthermore, the link between language change and politics is particularly critical during times of radical social change. This book thus examines the late- and post-Soviet political culture through the lens of language. The rest of the chapter outlines the methodological tools and framework best suited for this study.

This chapter sets out to investigate how the implications and broader dimensions of the Soviet linguistic legacy is represented in two post-Soviet prose texts, Evgenii Popov’s novel Podlinnaia istoriia ‘zelenykh muzykantov’ (The True Story of the ‘Green Musicians’, 1998) and Vladimir Sorokin’s short-story ‘Monoklon’ (2010). Popov’s ‘novel in footnotes’ comments on a text from the 1970s (reproduced in the novel), using humour and satire to expose the emptiness of clichés and make links to the present-day language debates. Sorokin, in turn, invokes the historical memory of Soviet speak through fragments, slogans, words and concepts, creating in his text a ‘simultaniety of the non-simultaneous’ by juxtaposing elements from two very different parts of the Soviet past and showing the need to tackle this past (or these pasts) in present-day Russian society.

This chapter explores how Russian prose writers create fictional representations of a past, or a future, where language emerges as an essential theme. It offers close readings of two works, one portraying a fictional future for Russian – Tat’iana Tolstaia’s 2000 novel Kys’ (The Slynx), and one diving into the language’s past – Evgenii Vodolazkin’s Lavr (Laurus, 2012). The analysis shows how both authors challenge the standard language by stretching its potential and including a wealth of elements taken from non-standard varieties and older forms. Whereas Tolstaia’s novel depicts a brutal, destructive world of linguistic dystopia with, or so it would seem, no real past and no future, Vodolazkin’s text presents a smoothly created linguistic amalgam characterised by flexibility and multifunctionality. The chapter discusses the linguistic attitudes implied in the two approaches and their relevance to the post-Soviet language debates.

This chapter analyses explicit responses to the ‘language question’ in post-Soviet Russia by writers participating in surveys, interviews, roundtable discussions or conferences dedicated to the language situation. Such statements on the language situation illustrate the linguistic attitudes of individual writers towards some of the central topics in the language debates, while conveying the writers’ own assessments of their status as opinion-makers in this area.

This chapter explores the reactions of people working in the cultural field to the 2014 Russian ban on the use of verbal obscenity in film, literature and public performances, reactions that have not only taken the form of commentaries and statements in interviews or the social media, but have also provoked protest actions featuring linguistic and artistic practices (readings, performances), thus responding and commenting in ways bordering on the implicit and performative.

This chapter offers readings of two recent Russian novels, Valerii Votrin’s Logoped (The Speech Therapist, 2012) and Mikhail Gigolashvili’s Zakhvat Moskovii: natsional-lingvisticheskii roman (The Occupation of Muscovy: a national-linguistic novel, 2012). Votrin represents a linguistic dystopia governed by strict orthoepic norms. The story is told through the portrayal of two persons, a speech therapist representing the authorities, and a journalist, expelled for his oppositional views. Gigolashvili’s novel tells about a young German student of Russian and his encounter with the grammar nazi movement, a group of self-appointed language mavens who monitor, expose and ridicule linguistic liberties and orthographic errors in highly aggressive ways. Both novels can be read as responses to language legislation and language cultivation, highly topical issues in present-day Russian language culture.

The book’s conclusion discusses the findings of Parts three and four and their implications for a general theory of what this book proposes to call performative metalanguage. Arguing that literary works may contain a metalinguistic dimension and intention, we maintain that a theory of performative metalanguage helps us understand this particular form of linguistic commentary, mapping out ways in which we can identify and assess such reflection.