Samizdat

Samizdat (pronounced sah-miz-daht or suh-myiz-daht)

(1) A clandestine publishing system (really, an ecosystem of sometimes connected but often independent systems) within the Soviet Union, by which forbidden works of literature were reproduced and circulated (also called “underground publishing”).

(2) A work or periodical circulated by this system (a samizdat publication).

1966: A direct borrowing from the Russian самизда́т (samizdat) (self-publishing), the construct being сам (sam) (self) + изда́т (izdát), an abbreviation of изда́тельство (izdátelʹstvo) (publishing house, publishing), the word samizdat coined as a jocular allusion to the compound name of official Soviet publishing organs (Gosizdát for Gosudárstvennoe izdátel'stvo (State Publishing House)).  Even among historians of the Cold War opinion must still be divided on whether samizdat remains a foreign term (and thus italicized) or has been assimilated into English (and thus not italicized); whichever is used, use within a document should be consistent.  A samizdatchik was a person involved in the production or distribution of samizdat.  In English language publications, the first known use of samizdat was in 1966 but the word clearly was in use in the Soviet Union (and presumably elsewhere behind the Iron Curtain) at least as early as the late 1950s and the clandestine production, copying and distribution of works banned by church or state authorities had been practiced for millennia.  Samizdat & samizdatchik are nouns; the noun plural is samizdats or samizdaty.

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak’s (1890–1960), first edition, 1957.

The companion word was tamizdat, a direct borrowing from the Russian тамизда́т (tamizdát) literally “published there”, the construct being там (tam) (there) + изда́ть (izdátʹ).  That was a form of clandestine distribution in which writings published abroad were smuggled into the Soviet Union or other places behind the Iron Curtain.  Such works could be by foreign authors, by those in the Soviet Union or those in exile (self-imposed or otherwise); the definitional point was the publications were always banned.  A tamizdatchik was a person involved in the production or distribution of tamizdat although, as was the case with samizdatchiks, mere possession of a copy of something illicit could be enough for the security forces to apply the label; guilt by association often a popular legal device in authoritarian states.  The tamizdat tradition is less celebrated but there have been some notable titles.  Boris Pasternak’s (1890–1960) novel Doctor Zhivago was smuggled to Milan and there published in 1957 with Russian language copies soon appearing as tamizdats, swapped, bartered and sold in the vibrant underground trade in Moscow and Leningrad (the old imperial name Saint Petersburg restored in 1991).  The author was in 1958 awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature which didn’t best please the Politburo, compelling him to decline the award.  Times have changed and the novel is now part of the Russian high school curriculum.

Tamizdat Inc

Founded in 1998 and now based in Brooklyn, New York, Tamizdat Inc. is a NPO (non-profit organization) dedicated to promoting and facilitating international cultural exchange.  It appears to be focused on pop culture and originally was established to assist musicians from Central and Eastern Europe reach broader audiences, its activities including organizing tours by bands and staging music festivals.  Prior to streaming services going mainstream, Tamizdat for some years in the early 2000s ran a bricks & mortar music shop and CD distribution centre based in Prague (capital of the Czech Republic) but more recently it seems most involved with assisting those involved in some form of “art” to gain visas to visit the US.  Presumably, serious operations like the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) view Tamizdat Inc with the same sceptical eye they cast upon subversive outfits like the Vatican or the Falun Gong.

The Culture of Samizdat, Literature and Underground Networks in the Late Soviet Union (2020) by Josephine von Zitzewitz.

Although used mostly by historians and political scientists, samizdat is an accepted term in the jargon of literary theory and its use is not restricted to the Soviet Union or the states behind the old Iron Curtain.  Within the discipline, the term denotes certain “underground writing” (self-publication), circulated in typescript or copies produced on photocopiers or other duplicating machines; what (in this context) makes it samizdat is content expressing views proscribed by the state.  The word entered Western consciousness in 1966 when details emerged of the Sinyavsky–Daniel trial, conducted in Moscow the previous year.  Andrei Sinyavsky (1925–1997) was a literary critic but it was the material he wrote under the pseudonym Abram Tertz which saw Moscow brand him a “dissident”.  That what he wrote was critical of the communist regime was bad enough but his texts were smuggled out of the country and published in the West before returning as contraband, thereby circumventing the state’s strict (and bafflingly inconsistent) censorship regime.

Obviously guilty as sin, Mr Sinyavsky and fellow malcontent Yuli Markovich (1925–1988) were convicted of anti-Soviet agitation in a “show trial” and remarkably, history records them as the first Soviet writers to be convicted solely on the basis of their written words.  Plenty over the decades had been sentenced (sometimes to death) on charges in some way involving what they’d written, but Sinyavsky & Daniel served six years in a penal colony just for the words.  For the Kremlinologists, the most intriguing aspect of the trial was the prosecutor revealing the existence of a large body of underground literature circulating within the Soviet Union so the point of this “show trail” was not to secure a couple of convictions (rarely difficult in a Moscow court) but to act as a warning to other dissidents.  Being a dissident was not easy and one of the under-appreciated difficulties was that the state quasi-tolerated what came to be called “official dissidents”; those who were permitted to be critical… up to a point.  This approach functioned both within the country as a “safety valve” and, for Western viewers, an indication things were not as repressive as anti-Soviet propaganda claimed.  Unfortunately, as the political climate shifted, “official dissidents” could find what was tolerated one month could be judged unacceptable the next with consequences ranging from tiresome to serious.

The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008), first edition, 1968.

Thus the attraction of adopting a pseudonym and publishing abroad, an additional benefit being duplicating machines were freely available in the West and hundreds or even thousands of copies cheaply could be produced in a way impossible in the Soviet Union where such machines were rare and their use diligently monitored.  As a form of deterrence, the 1966 Sinyavsky–Daniel show trial was not wholly effective because in 1968 the nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) completed his essay Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence in which he described the anti-ballistic missile defense projects being explored by both Moscow and Washington as likely to increase the threat of nuclear war.  Initially distributed within the Soviet Union in samizdat, it was smuggled to the West and published in translation.  As a punishment, Sakharov was removed from his role in military research and restricted to studying theoretical physics.  Even more famous was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s (1918–2008) The Gulag Archipelago which, written between 1958-1968, was first published in Paris in 1968.  An exploration of the vast system of Soviet labor camps and penal colonies, the sprawling, three volume work included interviews, reports, statistics and an account of the author’s own experience as a Gulag prisoner.  In the West it remains the best known samizdat and prior to publication, the text in Russian did circulate in the Soviet Union although not until 1989 (in the days of Glasnost (openness) and Perestroika (restructuring) was it openly on sale in some bookshops.

The audio equivalent of all this is magnitzdat, denoting material recorded on magnetic tapes that went on unlawfully to be circulated.  Originally, the audio tape recordings were of spoken text and took advantage of several quirks in the Soviet criminal code: (1) While citizens could not own printing presses or duplicating machines, they were permitted to own tape-recorders and by the mid-1950s, Japanese machines, although rare and expensive, had begun to appear and listening was often a communal experience, (2) although the production of more than six copies of a typewritten text was unlawful, there were no restrictions on duplicating recordings and (3) the only legal liability for the content of a recording accrued to those recorded, not those involved in production or distribution. The construct of magnitizdat was магнитофон (magnit(ofon)) (literally “magnetic tape recorder”) + изда́ть (izdát).  Because of the relatively small numbers of real-to-reel tape recorders available, behind the Iron Curtain, the printed samizdats & tamizdats had a much more profound and far-reaching effect but, in an indication of what might have been possible had the technology been available, by the late 1970s cheap, portable cassette tape players enjoyed wide ownership in Iran and the people around Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1900-1989; Supreme Leader, Islamic Republic of Iran, 1979-1989), then in exile in Paris, maintained an energetic programme of distribution to Iran of tapes containing his incendiary speeches against Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980; last Shah of Iran 1941-1979).  Easily duplicated and shared within communities, the Ayatollah’s message spread probably at least as rapidly as would have occurred had he been allowed to broadcast on radio or television and the rest is history.

Lindsay Lohan, Confessions of a Broken Heart (Daughter to Father) (2005), 2Crow Bootleg.

Technically of course, a magnitzdat was conceptually similar to a “bootleg” recording, a form which in the West enjoyed in heyday in the 1970s & 1980s.  The term “bootlegging” dates from the late eighteenth century when it was used by British customs and excise officers to describe the trick smugglers used to hide contraband in their large sea-boots.  Since then, it’s been applied variously including (1) the distilling, transporting and selling of unlawful liquor (2) unlicensed copies of software and (3) unauthorized recordings of music and film.  In music, bootleg recordings began to appear in some volume in the 1960s and originally were often from live performances.  Frequently created from tapes of dubious quality with little or no editing, these bootlegs generally were tolerated by the industry because they tended to circulate among fans who anyway purchased the official product and were thought of just a form of free promotional material.  Later, when things became more organized and bootleggers began distributing replicas of official releases, the attitude changed and for decades the music and software industries fought ongoing battles against bootleg copies (which in some non-Western markets represented in excess of 90% of software installations).

Broken English (1979) by Marianne Faithfull (1946-2025).

Marianne Faithfull undeniably was beautiful but before Broken English her discography had been a predictable pastiche of any number of “girl singers” of the 1960s, the music rarely original, usually melodic and inoffensive but never with an arrangement hinting her output could be thought “interpretative”.  Broken English startlingly was different and rarely has a repertoire better suited a “gin soaked” voice.  However there was one track with lyrics deemed in some places “obscene” (the words now would raise barely an eyebrow) so in those markets the album appeared with the offending track deleted.  That led to a lively trade in “bootleg” copies (ie those produced for sale in less censorious jurisdictions) and before long most regulators bowed to reality, allowing their citizens to hear Ms Faithful sing the words many likely would hear while walking along city streets.

While obviously there can in form be similarities in samizdats, tamizdats, magnitzdats and bootlegs, the motives for their production and distribution differ.  “Bootleg copies” of this and that are money-making devices that generate profit by evading copyright, thereby denying the payment of royalties to those who hold the IP (intellectual property) or distribution rights whereas the Russian trio existed to publish material proscribed by state censorship.  Behind the Iron Curtain, for those involved in the means of production or distribution, there could be a profit motive (especially resellers in the “secondary market” and beyond) but the primary rationale was to avoid the censor’s pen.  Although philosophers have for millennia discussed and explained the nature of the institutions such as organized religion and what would come to be called “the nation state” (and latterly, political scientists have with increasing levels of complexity added to the literature), operating in parallel with theoretical niceties such as “consent”, “distributive justice” and “social contracts” is “power”.  Politics, as it is practiced, was detailed by the Florentine diplomat Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli, 1469–1527) in Il Principe (The Prince, 1532), a kind of “owner’s handbook” of power and its retention and its core dynamic is what’s now known as regime survival, an imperative which long predates Renaissance Italy and although tactics may vary, the strategy remains the same, whether in a besieged Constantinople in 1453, in the Führerbunker in 1945, in the Oval Office in 2021 or among Ayatollahs in Tehran in 2026.  Censorship is an important component in regime survival because if alternative thoughts are allowed freely to circulate, people might get ideas and princes, popes and presidents all well know where that may lead.

Court of the Star Chamber (1951), gouache on paper by Cecil Doughty (1913–1985).

Although created in the mid-twentieth century, the work is in the style of a "period correct" woodcut.  The Star Chamber was formed because of the courts of Common Law and Chancellery had become inefficient, rule-bound and susceptible to external influences and initially it functioned well but later (especially under the seventeenth century Stuarts) it became a tool of repression.

In the West, the notion of “freedom of speech” is a recent arrival; edicts banning “seditious and heretical works” were proclaimed in 1529 during the reign of Henry VIII (1491–1547; King of England (and Ireland after 1541) 1509-1547) who shortly would change his mind about what constituted “heresy”.  Within a decade of the first proclamations, laws were passed requiring books must be licensed for printing by Privy Council or other royal nominees, an indication the printing press in its time was as disruptive an influence as the internet and social media would later prove; in moves that would be applauded by later Soviet governments, in England and elsewhere in Europe, severe restrictions were imposed on the importation of foreign books.  Had these measures worked as intended, political and intellectual life would have been very different but in England (as in Europe), underground and unlicensed printing presses were soon active and often highly productive.  By 1557, the Stationers' Company (an outgrowth of the London craft guild of printers) was granted a “charter of incorporation” which stipulated only members of the company (or others holding a special patent) were allowed to print any work for sale in the kingdom.  In 1586, the Court of Star Chamber introduced an ordinance mandating that no printing press might be set up in any place other than London or the university towns of Oxford and Cambridge, the point being that in those places the state possessed the infrastructure to supervise what was being produced.  As the Star Chamber was inclined to do, under the act of 1637 it imposed harsh punishments upon transgressors and even after the court was in 1641 abolished by the Long Parliament the repression not only continued but the consequences for illicit printing became more severe.  Remarkable as it sounds, under the rule of Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658; Lord Protector of the Commonwealth 1653-1658), publishers and printers may have looked back on the administration of the Star Chamber as an enlightened period.  The puritanical Cromwell in 1655 actually banned all unofficial publications but this was found to create more problems than it solved and four years later the Rump Parliament permitted the printing of a limited number of licensed newsbooks but distribution was restricted.

So censorship was not invented by the Tsars or comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953).  The significance of the Stationers' Company’s charter was that structurally it created a regime strikingly similar to that which prevailed in the Soviet Union in which the entire publishing industry could be thought “the government printer”.  What members of the company were compelled to do was record prospectively in the Stationers' Register any publications they proposed to print, something which has made research difficult for historians because not everything recorded ended up being printed.  Nevertheless, the Register remains an important source document of literary activity in the era and although the original purpose had been to prevent the spread of seditious publications, lawyers began to use the entries as evidence when attempting to assert copyright.  That was at the time too novel a notion to impress the judges but the register form part of the template for the first English Copyright Act (1709), which provided the framework on which the rights of writers and publishers would be codified.  Lawyers who experienced the often futile task of arguing their cases before the Star Chamber would have found the Tsarist and Soviet models regulating publishing refreshingly familiar and concepts such as samizdat & tamizdat would have needed little explanation.

Bone Music by Stephen Coates.  The x-ray discs are now minor collectables and while all those decades what Russians paid most influenced by what was claimed to be "on the cut", buyers now especially value the best images, skulls among the more desirable.

The ever inventive Russian youth were early adopters of bootleg recordings and combined recycling with a unique form of magnitzdat.  Because the Communist Party was as scared of rock music as it was of tracts about Western democracy and human rights, such sounds were banned and damned as subversive, decadent, capitalist, imperialist etc; in an authoritarian state, the exact form of the damnation is less important than the fact some label has been applied.  So, rock albums were hard to get but in Soviet homes gramophones (record players) were common so all that was needed was the media.  That was found in the rubbish discarded by hospitals, x-ray images turning out to be an ideal material for cutting the grooves which could be played on a gramophone.   Known by a variety of terms including ribs, music on ribs, jazz on bones or bone music, although the first were produced as early as 1946, most date from the 1950s & 1960s, cut into 7-inch discs (the size of the old 45 rpm “single”).  The machines used to “cut the grooves” were reputedly old 78 rpm phonographs, modified by skilled technicians, trained by the state to do stuff in the service of socialism.  Because of the nature of the material, they had a short life (managing a dozen plays was exceptional) and the quality was (by the standards of commercially produced vinyl pressings) appalling but alternatives were scarce and the improvised recording were cheap, often selling for a few kopeks with only the most desirable bands attracting more than a ruble.

Bone music: A early form of a digital disc.

That so many discarded X-rays were available in a nation in which usually there were shortages of just about everything except Vodka, was a product of circumstances.  With the breakdown of public health systems in the immediate aftermath of World War II (1939-1945) at a time when close to 20 million soldiers and displaced civilians were moving between countries, an increase in the spread of tuberculosis concerned the authorities and the Soviet government, like many, embarked on a vast programme of chest X-rays.  As a public health initiative it was a success but it resulted in large libraries of X-rays being stored in hospitals.  Because these contained a silver nitrate substance, they were a fire hazard and, after a couple of conflagrations, a twelve month limit was imposed on storage so hospital administrators were happy to give their old stocks to anyone who asked.  So, the input cost of the raw material was zero and the production costs were marginal which meant that even if the retail unit price of a bone music cut was less than a ruble, with high volumes, it was by Soviet standards a lucrative business model.  Customer satisfaction however was variable because, bought on street corners, the audio quality was unpredictable as was the content; until played, a buyer couldn’t be certain what they’d bought.  Noting the trend, the government passed a law banning the home-production of recordings of “a criminally hooligan trend” but rock ‘n’ roll was here to stay.

Glasnost & Perestroika

Glasnost (pronounced glaz-nost, glahz‐nost or glahs-nuhst (Russian))

Openness in the context of politics.

1985 (English adoption): A modern English borrowing from the Russian гла́сность (glásnost) literally meaning “publicity” or “fact of being public” but usually translated as “openness” or something in the vein of what is now referred to as “transparency”.  Although entering English use in 1985, the word had been in the Russian language for centuries and appears in the earliest Russian dictionaries.  Among the West's Kremlinologists, the word had been familiar since the Glasnost Rally, staged by the embryonic Soviet civil rights movement in December 1965 and appeared in 1972 in reference to a 1969 letter by dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.  The word is ultimately from the Old Church Slavonic glasu (voice) from the primitive Indo-European galso-, from the root gal- (to call, shout).  It was first used in a socio-political sense by Lenin and popularized in English after Mikhail Gorbachev used it several times in his speech in March 1985, accepting the post of General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (USSR).  Glasnost is a noun, the adjectival forms are glasnostian & glasnostic.

Perestroika (pronounced per-uh-stroi-kuh or pyi-ryi-stroi-kuh (Russian))

Structural economic reform.

1985 (English adoption): A modern English borrowing from the Russian Перестройка (perestróĭka) literally meaning “rebuilding”, “reconstruction” or “reorganization” and gaining currency as an expression of an intent by government to initiate structural economic reform.  Perestroika is a noun, the other noun (and adjectival) form being perestrokian.  It also begat Salinastroika (a blend of Salinas- +‎ -(peres)troika, which referred to the programme of liberalization (which didn’t end well) under Carlos Salinas de Gortari, President of Mexico (1988-1994).  Perestroika is an ancient Russian word but was rare and in only technical use until the 1980s.  It was constructed from pere- (re-) from Old Russian pere- (around, again) from the Proto-Slavic per- from the primitive Indo-European root per- (forward) (hence "through, around, against”) + stroika (building, construction) from the Old Russian stroji (order) from the primitive Indo-European stroi-, from the root stere- (to spread).  Entering general use in English in 1985, in the USSR, use in the now familiar context actually pre-dated the Gorbachev era, being discussed during the twenty-sixth Party Congress in 1981.

Decline and fall, 1953-1991

After comrade Stalin's (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) death in 1953, the USSR entered a period of economic stagnation relative to the West, a situation not wholly understood at the time, disguised as it was by secrecy, Sputnik and the (often over-estimated) strength of the Soviet nuclear arsenal.  After the decade-long, idiosyncratic rule of Comrade Khrushchev (1894–1971; Soviet leader 1953-1964) gave way to twenty years of increasingly geriatric government, in 1985, the relatively youthful comrade Gorbachev (Mikhail Gorbachev (1931–2022; Soviet leader 1985-1991) assumed the leadership.  He announced to the party and the world that the USSR’s society and economy were in dire need of reform, the words he chose to describe the necessary processes were respectively glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring).

Glasnost under the gaze of comrade Lenin (Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924; Russian revolutionary & theorist, founder of the Bolsheviks and head of government in Russia or the Soviet Union 1917-1924).  One of the fruits of reform was that in 1988, the USSR staged its first ever government-approved beauty contest, the Miss Moscow title won by sixteen year-old Maria Kalinina (b 1971) who was later crowned Miss USSR.

Glasnost & perestroika captured imaginations in the West and comrade Gorbachev became something of a political rock star but while the reforms had profound geopolitical consequences, they weren’t what had been intended, the forces unleashed destabilizing the USSR and its satellite states.  In 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall triggered a chain-reaction of political upheaval which saw the overthrow of the Moscow-aligned régimes of the Warsaw Pact and in 1991 the USSR was itself dissolved, ending both the cold war and an empire which had endured almost four decades after comrade Stalin’s death.  Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013; UK prime-minister 1979-1990) famously observed of comrade Gorbachev that he was a man she “…could do business with” but that wasn’t a novel view of the Kremlin from Downing Street.  Clement Attlee (1883–1967; UK prime-minister 1945-1951) in 1961 spoke of comrade Stalin in terms which while not exactly warm, did reveal a certain respect: “He was clearly a pretty ruthless tyrant, but a man you could do business with because he said yes and no and didn’t have to refer back.  He was obviously the man who could make decisions.”  Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) also appreciated the sense of certainty associated with discussions with comrade Stalin; he was a man “…could do business with”.  Churchill acknowledged it could be torturously difficult to secure agreement with the Georgian but once reached, he kept his word.  Possibly what Churchill had in mind was the notorious “piece of paper” on which the two had divided the post-war Balkans into Soviet and British “spheres of influence”, a practical approach which appealed to comrade Stalin much more than the utopianism of the idealists the US State Department sent to Moscow.  Honor the informal agreement comrade Stalin did, thinking it a very good deal to sacrifice any say in Greece so he could grab the rest.

After glasnost, in the age of Mr Putin: Lindsay Lohan in Moscow, June 2015.

The era of glasnost & perestroika was followed by the frequently chaotic years of the 1990s during which the old Soviet empire fragmented into its historic component states and Russian society and its economy what transformed into what is usually understood as "capitalism with Russian characteristics" with much of what that implies.  However, the 1990s were genuinely a period of glasnost (openness) and in those years Western historians were granted their first access to the Soviet archives and some long held suppositions were confirmed while others were overturned and many books were updated, the revised editions including for the first time original source documents from Moscow.  It was a brief opening of the vault which didn't long stay ajar and what Russia has become under (former) comrade Vladimir Putin (b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999) represents his view that what Gorbachev did was a mistake and handled differently, the USSR might well have endured to this day.  Mr Putin was under no illusions about the failure of the Soviet economic model and he would have preferred the reforms of the 1980s to have moved towards the Chinese model of state capitalism (the so-called "socialism which Chinese characteristics") under the supervision of the Communist Party.  Still, very much in the tradition of Lord Palmerston (1784-1865; variously UK prime-minister or foreign secretary on several occasions 1830-1865) who noted his country had neither eternal allies or perpetual enemies and that only “interests are eternal and perpetual”, years before Russia’s seizure of the Crimean peninsula (2014) or the “special military operation” (ie the “full-scale” invasion of Ukraine in 2022), commenting on a recently published study of the Yalta Conference (February 1945), Zbigniew “Zbig” Brzeziński (1928–2017; US National Security Advisor 1977-1981) observed “…simply replace Stalin with someone whose name rhymes with his, and Poland with Ukraine.”  Something of a realist in economic matters, Mr Putin would not have been opposed to perestroika (though he'd probably have done things a bit differently) but truly glasnost appalled him.

Formalism

Formalism (pronounced fawr-muh-liz-uhm)

(1) Strict adherence to, or observance of, prescribed or traditional forms, as in music, poetry and art.

(2) In religion, a strong attachment to external forms and observances.

(3) In philosophy (ethics), a doctrine that acts are in themselves right or wrong regardless of consequences.

(4) In literary theory, an approach to the interpretation of texts focused on the structure rather than the content, context of its origin or reception.

(5) In mathematics (formal logic), a doctrine that mathematics, including the logic used in proofs, can be based on the formal manipulation of symbols without regard to their meaning (the mathematical or logical structure of a scientific argument as distinguished from its subject matter; the theory a statement has no meaning but that its symbols, regarded as physical objects, exhibit a structure that has useful applications).

(6) A scrupulous or excessive adherence to outward form at the expense of inner reality or content.

(7) In Marxist criticism, scrupulous or excessive adherence to artistic technique at the expense of social values etc; also a view adopted by some non-Marxist critical theorists).

(8) In performance art, theatre a deliberately stylized mode of production.

(9) In both structural engineering and computer science, the notation, and its structure, in (or by) which information is expressed.

1830–1840: The construct was formal + -ism.  Formal was from the Middle English formel, from the Old French formel, from the Latin formalis, from forma (form) of unknown origin but possibly from the Etruscan morma, from the Ancient Greek μορφή (morphḗ) (shape, fashion, appearance, outward form, contour, figure), dissimilated as formīca and possibly formīdō.  The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek –ismos & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, often through the Latin –ismus & -isma, though sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Greek.  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form action nouns from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).  Although actual use of the word formalism dates only from its adoption (1830s) in critical discourse, disputes related to the matter can be found in texts since antiquity in fields as diverse as agriculture, literature and theology.  Formalism is a noun, formalist is a noun & adjective, formalistic is an adjective and formalistically is an adverb; the noun plural is formalists.

The Russian Formalists

In literary theory, the term “form” is used of the “structure & shape” and the manner in which it is constructed, as opposed to the substance (theme, topic and such).  Form and substance are so intertwined as to be inseparable (although that hasn’t stopped some authors of “experimental” works trying to prove otherwise) but long before the post-modernists made deconstruction a thing, the two strands separately had been assessed and analysed.  The other way the word is used is as a synonym of genre (novella, essay, play etc).  Formalism was different; it was a literary theory with origins in the early Soviet Union of the 1920s, the practitioners and followers labelled “formalists”, a pejorative term which implied limitations.  In the way things then were done by the Bolshevists, Formalism as an identifiable entity faded quickly and fell into desuetude by late in the decade; movements which of which comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) didn’t approve had bleak prospects.

Influenced by the Moscow Linguistic Circle (1915) and The Society for the Study of Poetic Language (1916), Formalism was in 1917 founded by literary theorist, & writer Viktor Shklovsky (1893-1984) and author & political satirist Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884–1937) with the then novel assertion art primarily was a matter of technique, the style not merely a method of execution but also the object of the art.  In an example of the way political forces in the post-tsarist state evolved, although Formalism began in the year of revolutions as something with the obvious socialist theme of the artist as a “worker” or “artisan”, its credos came under suspicion in the Kremlin because it was thought to have been captured by authors, artists & composers who found intoxicating the idea their work could be an exercise in pure technique, sometimes of such intricacy that it was only their colleagues who could understand, the public left unmoved or baffled.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December, 2011.

Reflecting what was going on in intellectual circles in Moscow, the Formalists were interested in applying to literary criticism what had come to be understood as the “scientific method” and were dismissive of the role of ideas, emotions, & actions (and “reality” in general) in defining what was specifically “literary” about a text.  What this meant was any distinction between form and content ceased to be relevant and the writer became a kind of cipher, re-working available literary devices and conventions, some practitioners even holding there were no poets or other literary figures, just the output, encapsulated in Shklovsky’s pithy definition of literature as “the sum total of all the stylistic devices employed in it”.  Shklovsky was the most influential figure in the early days of the movement and he was influenced by the Futurists who had been drawn to the speed and mechanical creations of modernity, something manifested in his concept of ostranenie (making strange, later to be called defamiliarization) which was an attempt to divorce art from conceptions such as beauty, elegance or other conventional benchmarks.

Despite the implications of that, Formalism was dynamic (and in the way movements tend to be) schismatic, a theory of narrative also developed which made a distinction between plot and story, the technique adopted reflecting the approach of the Futurists’ understanding of machinery.  Syuzbet (the plot) referred to the order & manner in which events were presented in the narrative while fabuh (the story) tracked the chronological sequence of events.  Another of the Formalists infused with the tenets of Futurism was the literary critic & theorist Boris Tomashevsky (1890–1957) who used the term modf to denote the smallest unit of plot and distinguished between “bound” & “free” motifs, the former one which the story absolutely requires while the latter was inessential; it was a model as familiar to engineers then as it would be to software developers now.  Formalists of course regarded content as subordinate to the formal devices used in its construction and this dependence on external “non-literary assumptions” was called “motivation”, and a text’s motivation was defined by Shklovsky as the extent to which it was dependent on non-literary assumptions, an example of a work totally without motivation cited as The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (in nine volumes, 1759–1767) by the Anglo-Irish novelist & Anglican cleric Laurence Sterne (1713–1768).  Whether or not one concurs with Shklovsky’s absolutism, in writing Tristram Shandy, Sterne used so many devices and techniques that had the term “mash-up” then existed, it would have been applied and it can be argued it was with that work the distinction between the techniques of plagiarism and sampling can best be identified.  Formalism’s life was brief but the churning of theory was constant and later the concept of “device” gave way to the notion of “function”, depending on the purpose or mode or genre; it was no longer the device per se which was defamiliarizing but its function in the work.  While comrade Stalin was content he’d killed off Formalism, its elements and deconstructive tools took root in the academic reaches of Western literary criticism and if not a fork, post-modernism is at least a cul-de-sac.

Comrade Stalin, comrade Shostakovich and Formalism

Comrade Shostakovich at his dacha.

Comrade Stalin (1878–1953; leader of the USSR, 1924-1953) didn’t invent the regime’s criticism of formalism but certainly made it famous after comrade Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) was denounced in the Soviet newspaper Pravda (Truth) in January 1936, after the Moscow performance of his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District.  Stalin didn’t like music he couldn’t whistle and the complex strains of Shostakovich’s opera, sometimes meandering, sometimes strident, certainly didn’t permit that; he labeled the composition формализм (formalism), "chaos instead of music", a self-indulgence of technique by a composer interested only in the admiration of other composers, an audience of no value in the school of Soviet realism.  It’s believed the Pravda article may have been written by Stalin himself and he used the word "formalism" in the sense it was understood English; formality being the observance of forms, formalism the disposition to make adherence to them an obsession.  To Stalin, the formal rules of composition were but a means to an end and the only legitimate end was socialist realism; anything other than that "an attack on the people".  Lest it be thought the defeat of fascism in the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) might have mellowed his views in such matters, Stalin at the 1948 party congress made sure the point was hammered home in the Communist Party's brutish way:  

"Comrades, while realistic music is written by the People's composers, formalistic music is written by composers who are against the People.  Comrades, one must ask why it is that realistic music is always written by composers of the People? The People's composers write realistic music simply due to the fact that being by nature realists right to their very core, they simply cannot help writing music that is realistic, while those anti-People composers, being by nature unrepentant formalists, cannot help... cannot help... cannot help writing music that is formalistic."

Comrade Stalin signing death warrants.

In the Soviet Union, producing or performing stuff hated by Stalin was not good career move.  Shostakovich completed his Fourth Symphony in C minor, Opus 43, in May 1936 and, even after the attack in Pravda, planned to stage its premiere in Leningrad December but found the orchestra unwilling to risk incurring the Kremlin’s wrath and almost as soon as rehearsals began, the orchestra's management cancelled the performance, issuing a statement saying comrade Shostakovich had withdrawn the work.  Actual responsibility for the decision remains unclear but it was certainly in accord with the views of the Kremlin and not until 1961, almost a decade on from Stalin’s death, was it performed.

All is forgiven: Soviet postage stamp issued in 1981 to honor 75^th anniversary of Dmitri Shostakovich’s birth.

Shostakovich became a realist, his response to denunciation the melodic Fifth Symphony in D minor, Opus 47.  Premiered in November 1937 in Leningrad, it was a resounding triumph, attracting a standing ovation that lasted more than thirty minutes.  The following January, just before its first performance in Moscow, an article, under the composer’s name, appeared in the local newspaper Vechernyaya Moskva in which he described the Fifth Symphony as "…a Soviet artist's creative response to justified criticism."  Whether Shostakovich actually wrote the piece isn’t known but there’s never been any doubt it’d never have been published without Stalin’s approval and the success of the Fifth Symphony re-personed Shostakovich.  Whatever it lacked in glasnost (openness), it made up for in perestroika (restructuring) and the party engineered his rehabilitation as carefully as it had his fall a couple of years earlier, anxious to show how those bowing its demands could be rewarded as easily and fully as dissidents could be punished.

Kyiv

Kyiv (pronounced kee-yiv (Ukrainian) or kee-yev (Russian))

(1) Capital of Ukraine, in the north-central region of the country on the Dnieper River.

(2) An oblast (a region or province in Slavic or Slavic-influenced countries (plural oblasts or oblasti)) of Ukraine, the medieval principality centreed on Kiev (the Kievan state (Kievan Rus)).

(3) In culinary slang, a shortened for the dish Chicken Kiev (a breast of chicken stuffed with butter, garlic and parsley, rolled, breaded and fried). 

Pre 1000: From the Ukrainian Kýjiv or Kyyiv (Ки́їв), from the Russian Kíjev (Ки́ев), perhaps from the name Кий (Kij or Kyi), one of the city’s four legendary founders, from the Proto-Slavic kyjь (stick, club) although some historians regard this as a folk etymology and instead link it to an evolution of something from the local language.  The alternative forms are Kyïv, Kyjiv & Kyyiv, the earlier forms Kiou, Kiow, Kiovia, Kiowia, Kiew, Kief, Kieff & Kief all obsolete.  Historically, in Western use, an inhabitant of Kiev was a Kievan and in the West, until recent events, the default spelling was Kiev.  The Ukrainian government's official roman-alphabet name for the city is Kyiv, according to the national standard for romanization of Ukrainian Київ (Kyjiv), and has been adopted by geographic naming databases, international organizations, and by many other reference sources.  In the West, many style guides have been updated to reflect the government’s recommendation the preferred spelling should be Kyiv (although a few historians insist it should be Ki'iv), pronounced kee-yiv and a transliteration of the Ukrainian Київ.

The Russian form was a transliteration from the Russian Cyrillic Киев and, along with the associated pronunciation, was the internationally accepted name during the Soviet era, something that lasted well into the twenty-first century and many who couldn’t have found the place on a map would have been familiar with both because of the eponymous chicken dish introduced to popular Western cuisine in the 1960s.  The post-Soviet reaction to the Russification of Ukraine encouraged the Ukrainian authorities to adopt the local spelling, the cultural sensitivities heightened by Russia’s military incursions into Ukrainian territory since 2014.  The changing of locality names is nothing new in Europe, various parts of the continent having changed hands over thousands of years and names of localities have often been altered better to suit the needs of conquerors, sometimes as a form of triumphalism and sometimes just to ease the linguistic difficulties.  The area in which sits Kyiv has at times over the last millennium fallen under Mongol, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, Soviet and now Ukrainian rule and while Russian and Ukrainian are both east Slavonic languages (as opposed to west Slavonic languages such as Polish, and south Slavonic ones like Bulgarian) and from the one original root they have, like just about all languages, diverged in forks which sometimes evolved and sometimes went extinct.

In the early modern period, Ukrainian absorbed some Polish influences and a number of vowels came to be pronounced differently from their Russian counterparts, the kind of regional difference quite familiar to those in England, Germany or the United States.  That would be variation enough to account for many differences but in its evolution, several letters of the alphabet became unique to Ukrainian (such as the ї in Київ) and the variations can make it difficult for native Russian speakers to understand some words or expressions when spoken by Ukrainians.  Still, there must be acknowledgement that name changes imposed from Moscow (whether Russian, Tsarist or Soviet) have so often reflected an astute understanding of propaganda and the implications of language.  When in the 1660s the Ukraine was taken from the Kingdom of Poland, the Russians promptly renamed the territory "Little Russia" although despite the assertions of some that here began the Kremlin's manufactured fiction that Russians & Ukranians are the one people with the one language, the root of that lie earlier.  The legend shared by three Slavic peoples is of three brothers, Czech, Lech & Rus who set off in three directions from the family and later settled in different places, the three fathering the Czechs, the Poles and the Rus (which begat both the Russians and Ukranians).     

Sometimes the changes effected by governments happen instantly upon occupation such as much as what was done in Nazi-occupied Europe but sometimes, the rectification or correction waits for centuries.  Although the Byzantine capital Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in 1453, it wasn’t until the Turkification movement, which began in the 1920s after the formation of the modern Turkish state, that the government began to encourage other countries to use Turkish names for Turkish cities, instead of the transliterations to Latin script which had been used during the Ottoman era.  In 1930, the Government gazetted the official change of name from Constantinople to Istanbul.  Ankara’s interest in linguistic hygiene was recently revived, the Turkish authorities issuing a communiqué advising the country’s name would change from the internationally recognized name from "Turkey" to “Türkiye”.  The concern is said to be the association of Turkey with other meanings in English (not the birds but rather “a person who does something thoughtless or annoying; an event or product which fails badly or is totally ineffectual”).  Around the word, those in chancelleries dutifully adjusted their directory entries while cynics wondered if the Turkish president might be looking for something to distract people from their problems.

The Chicken Kiev speech

What came to be known as the “Chicken Kiev speech” was delivered by President Bush (George HW Bush, George XLI; 1924–2018; US president 1989-1993) to a session of the Supreme Soviet of Ukraine in Kyiv on 1 August 1991.  The tone of his words came to be much criticized by the right of the Republican Party, still infused with the spirit of Ronal Reagan and heady from breathing in the dust which rose as the Berlin Wall fell.  Three weeks after the speech, the Ukrainian Declaration of Independence would be presented and a few months after that, over 90% of Ukrainians would vote to secede from the Soviet Union which would collapse before the year was out, an event at least hastened by Ukrainian independence.  Bush’s speech came directly after his meetings with Mikhail Gorbachev (b 1931; leader of the USSR 1985-1991), the last Soviet leader, who seems to have impressed the US president with both his sincerity and ability to pursue economic and political reform. 

Bush started well enough, telling his audience “…today you explore the frontiers and contours of liberty…”, adding “For years, people in this nation felt powerless, overshadowed by a vast government apparatus, cramped by forces that attempted to control every aspect of their lives.”  That encouraging anti-Moscow direction must have raised expectations but they were soon dashed, Bush continuing “President Gorbachev has achieved astonishing things, and his policies of glasnost, perestroika, and democratization point toward the goals of freedom, democracy, and economic liberty.”  Just to make sure there was no hint that Washington might be encouraging in Ukrainian minds any thoughts of independence, Bush provided clarification, telling his by now perhaps disappointed audience that “…freedom is not the same as independence.  Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred."

The speech had been written by Condoleezza Rice (b 1954; US secretary of state 2005-2009), then on the Eastern European desk at the HSC (National Security Council) and a special assistant to the president for national security affairs although the "suicidal nationalism" flourish was inserted by Bush himself.  Commenting later, Dr Rice and Mr Bush would acknowledge the speech did not capture the moment, the winds of change having been blowing since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, but both in their statements of (sort of) regret made the point that August of 1991 was a very different time and place from December and nobody (certainly not the Kremlinologists) had predicted the imminent demise of the Soviet Union.

Whatever the reaction of the Ukrainians, it was no more severe than that unleashed at home by the aggregations of anti-communists, American exceptionalists and right-wing fanatics, New York Times columnist William Safire (1929-2009) calling it the "Chicken Kiev speech" and a "colossal mis-judgment".  Later presidents, all of course who served in a post-Soviet environment, seemed to agree and changed direction, pushing for an aggressive expansion of NATO to embrace all the former Soviet bloc.  NATO would, at the now famous Bucharest summit in 2008, go further still, pledging that Ukraine and Georgia would one day be invited to join the alliance. Perhaps wishing to atone for the sins of the father, another President Bush (George W Bush, George XLIII; b 1946; US president 2001-2009) then wanted immediately to offer both nations membership roadmaps but even then, Berlin and Paris were cautious about antagonizing Russia and put both the former Soviet republics on the back-burner.  There they’ve stayed.

Chicken Kiev (côtelette de volaille in Russian & Ukrainian cuisine)

Chicken Kiev variations.

Ingredients

4 rashers of smoked streaky bacon
Olive oil
4 x 150 g skinless chicken breasts
3 tablespoons of plain flour
2 large free-range eggs
150 g fresh breadcrumbs
Sunflower oil
2 large handfuls of baby spinach or rocket
2 lemons
Butter
4 cloves of garlic
½ a bunch (15g) of fresh flat-leaf parsley
4 knobs of butter (at room temperature)
1 pinch of cayenne pepper
800 g Piper potatoes
1 head of broccoli
1 knob of unsalted butter

Instructions

Fry bacon in a pan at medium heat with no more than a drizzle of olive oil, until golden and crisp, then remove.

For the butter, peel garlic, then finely chop with the parsley leaves and mix into the softened butter with the cayenne.  Refrigerate.

Stuff the chicken breasts.  Pull back the loose fillet on the back of the breast and use a knife to slice a long pocket.

Cut the chilled butter into four and insert into the pocket, then crumble in a rasher of crispy bacon.  Fold and seal back the chicken, completely covering the butter so it becomes a wrapped parcel.

Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C).

Place flour in a shallow bowl, whisk the eggs in another and put breadcrumbs and a pinch of seasoning into a third.  Evenly coat each chicken breast in flour, then beaten egg, letting any excess drip off, and finally, turn them in the breadcrumbs, repeating until all four are evenly coated.

Shallow-fry in ¾ inch (20 mm) of sunflower oil on a medium to high heat until lightly golden (should take no more than 2-3 minutes), then transfer to a tray and bake in the oven until cooked through (typically around 10-12 minutes).  The alternative method is to bake them completely in the oven and skip the frying process; this requires drizzling them with olive oil and baking for about 20 minutes; taste will be the same but they won’t have the golden surface texture.

While cooking, peel and roughly chop the potatoes and cook in a large pan of boiling salted water until tender (typically 12-15 minutes).

Chop up broccoli and add it to the potatoes for the last 8-odd minutes of cooking.  Drain and leave to steam dry, then return to the pan and mash with a knob of butter and a pinch of salt and pepper.

Dollop the mash on the serving plates, placing a Kiev atop each. Lightly dress the spinach leaves or rocket in a little oil and lemon juice, then sprinkle over the top as garnish. Serve with a wedge of lemon.