Early Gulag studies between ostracism and forgetfulness

Abstract

K e y w o r d s : Gulag studies; elsewhereness; liminality; exilic-utopian imagination; permanent liminality; Ivan Solonevich; Mikhail Nikonov-Smorodin; Mikhail Heller; conspiracy of silence РАННЕЕ «ГУЛАГОВЕДЕНИЕ» МЕЖДУ ОСТРАКИЗМОМ И ЗАБЫВЧИВОСТЬЮ Люцканов Й. Институт литературы Болгарской АН (София, Болгария) ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6363-1585 Аннотация. Статья посвящена размышлениям об опыте группы близких между собой людей, воевавших против большевиков, оставшихся по собственной воле в СССР, культивировавших в себе способствующий выживанию конформизм, но не избежавших ареста, тюрьмы, ссылки и лагеря; потом нелегально покинувших страну, не только с целью спасти свою жизнь, но и аналитически рассказать внешнему миру об СССР; наконец попавших в западню «заговора молчания», длящегося по сей день. Во-первых, к прижизненным перипетиям группы применяется понятие «инонаходимость». Во-вторых, эти перипетии, в единстве с их посмертным продолжением и с учетом их вписанности во взаимодействие группы с намного превосходящим ее контрагентом, рассматриваются при помощи понятия «лиминальность»; автором показывается коррелятивность двух понятий (инонаходимость и лиминальность) и применяются две разные теории «лиминальности» (Михая Спариосу и Арпада Шаколчая). Иными словами, подверженность «заговору молчания» видится как аспект «инонаходимости», «замалчивание» – как политика «лиминализации» группы, но и как симптом принадлежности самих «замалчивающих» лиминальной ситуации. В-третьих, очерчивается внеперсональный объект «замалчивания» – набор проигнорированных, из-за малоприемлемости источника либо их собственной нелицеприятности, сведений и идей: это до-солженицынские сведения и идеи о Гулаге, к которым современное англоязычное «гулаговедение» приходит, как бы выдавая их за собственные находки, игнорируя прецеденты. В-четвертых, этот набор сведений и идей соотносится с понятиями «инонаходимости» и «лиминальности»: лагерный опыт понимается и как «инонаходимостный», и как «лиминальный», а опыт создания Гулага – как «лиминальный». Попутно демонстрируется эвристичность обобщений одного из членов вышеуказанной группы, И. Солоневича, а также и некоторых из тех, кто в разное время последовал за Солоневичами по ту сторону государственного рубежа (М. НиконовСмородин, М. Геллер). Lyutskanov Y. Early Gulag Studies Between Ostracism And Forgetfulness 97 К л ю ч е в ы е с л о в а : гулаговедение; инонаходимость; лиминальность; экзильно-утопическое воображение; перманентная лиминальность; Иван Солоневич; Михаил Никонов-Смородин; Михаил Геллер; заговор молчания 1 Translations throughout the article are mine, unless specified otherwise. 2 In its use by the present author, the term “elsewhereness / инонаходимость” translates Claudia Pieralli’s “altrove” [Pieralli 2013: 222], expanding its original context of application. In the same expanded sense, “инонаходимость” was used in a conference call for papers in 2018 (“Managing exile, suffering displacement, being an émigré: responsibility and mutual sympathy in the mirror of ego-documents and fiction”, at https://www.fabula.org/actualites/managingexile-sufferingdisplacementbeing-an-emigreresponsibility-and-mutualsympathy-in-the_84244.php; compare: http://www.ruthenia.ru/hronika.html?startdoc=1538032844). 3 Impersonal syntax was an imperative choice of the copy-editor of this article. Д л я ц и т и р о в а н и я : Люцканов, Й. Раннее «гулаговедение» между остракизмом и забывчивостью // Филологический класс. – 2021. – Т. 26, No 4. – С. 96–106. – DOI: 10.51762/1FK-2021-26-04-08. F o r c i t a t i o n : Lyutskanov, Y. (2021). Early Gulag Studies Between Ostracism And Forgetfulness. In Philological Class. Vol. 26. No. 4, pp. 96–106. DOI: 10.51762/1FK-2021-26-04-08. Introduction Having left the USSR in 1934, Ivan, Boris and Iurii Solonevichs were trapped in a “conspiracy of silence” – “We had to break it through, just as [...] to the border of Finland.” 1 [Солоневич 1936а: 2], – which still lasts in anglophone scholarship. With their narrative about the USSR unwanted, they fell from one ‘mis-space’ (cf.: mistime, mishap) into another. This experience can be conceptualised as liminal. Elsewhereness and liminality “Mis-space”, or elsewhereness 2, is a ‘family’ of psychophysical [Knapp 1991], incl. verbal, experiences of lack of home. It differs from both nomadism as voluntary non-’domestication’ of any place and being-at-home. Deportation, emigration, inner emigration, intrastate exile and camp incarceration are its most visible ‘members’ in the twentieth century. A non-participation in a “conspiracy of silence”, if one is a member of the “conspiring” community, is an essential aspect of a stance of inner emigration from that community, which rewards with ostracism. In this article elsewhereness is approached 3 in terms of the theories of “rites of passage” (Arnold van Gennep, Victor Turner), proportionality of “exilicutopian imagination” and “mentality of power” (Mihai Spariosu), and “hypermodernity” as a “permanent liminality” (Arpad Szakolczai). The kinds of elsewhereness are viewed as kinds of liminal experience within “complex largescale societies”. Elsewhereness and liminality have common temporality. The goal of emigration is to cease being an emigration etc. Inner emigration has the same horizon, as well as intrastate exile, even when the sentence is for an indeterminate period. Special settlements are liminal in one more sense: of spatial transiency, due to repetitive resettlement of the punished groups [Бердинских 2005: 20, 21; Бердинских, Бердинских, Веремьев 2015: 135]. “Stressing the importance of transitions in any society, van Gennep singled out rites of passage as a special category, consisting of three sub-categories, namely rites of separation, transition rites, and rites of incorporation. Van Gennep called the middle stage in a rite of passage a liminal period” [Thomassen 2009: 6; cf. Turner 1977: 94]. The “threshold” people and situations oscillate between intraand extrastructurality etc. [Turner 1977: 95, 200–202, cf. 116]. Without communities of premodernity, anomie could last indeterminately, or result into a formation of a new community [Thomassen 2009: 19–22; cf. Turner 1977: 107, 145– 147, 167]. Commensurating elsewhereness with rites of passage allows for an inner periodisation and typology of events within any group of exiles etc. Yet it is not reducible to ‘liminality’. ‘Elsewhereness’ is not rooted in the conceptualisation of rites. Its signified has a ritual character mainly from without and metaphorically (insofar a ritual is the kernel of a cyclic world order, a pledge for expectable restoration of what has been broken). It is temporary not by convention, one urging those who-are-elsewhere to acquire some properties which would make them normal members of the community left behind: despite that sentences to exile and camp incarceration are Люцканов Й. Раннее «гулаговедение» между остракизмом и забывчивостью 98 for a definite term, that camps were called correctional labour ones 1, and that political émigrés hope for a victorious return. (Hope has replaced confidence). Elsewhereness is not possible without an axiological or political dissent between the ‘leaving’ and the ‘staying’ (/the relocating institution), a dissent encodable in terms of ‘(im)maturity’ only by the latter party (which would wish to impose on the former the cultural archetype of the “prodigal son”). Homes that are left behind prepare themselves on a par with the elsewherebeing for the hoped for reaggregation, as vividly reflected in émigrés’ imagination. ‘Liminality’ and ‘elsewhereness’ seem to converge, without any of them being metaphoricised, in “permanent liminality”. Elsewhereness from the standpoint of potential victim: liminality as an escape Spariosu [2015: 25] founded on the notion of “protracted / permanent liminality”, a peripheral for Turner, his definition of exile and utopia. He views sharp sensitivity to the linearity of time (and ensuing feeling of loss and emptiness) and the power of “exilicutopian imagination” as the core properties of the “transhistorical” mindset of modernity [ivi: 13–16]. That sensitivity feeds a poweroriented mentality and the “agonistic dialectics” of tradition and modernity, and margin and centre [ivi: 15]. “Exilic” consciousness, captive to its groundlessness perceived as “ontological lack or emptiness”, generates a compensatory utopia [ivi: XVII–XVIII]. In phases of higher intensity of modernity exilicutopian imagination begins “experimenting with the communities in which it has originated” [ivi: 37–38]. A mentality that takes for granted a plurality of centres and stems from philosophia perennis [ivi: 12, 15–16, 26 etc] is deemed by Spariosu a way out [ivi: 13, 15]; viewing habitation in “no man’s land” as an asset, it prolongs liminality into eternity [ivi: 25–26]. Spariosu animates Greek and Semitic prehistory of the word limen, the ‘harbour’ behind the ‘threshold’ [ivi: 22]. He includes the notions of 1 Due to lack of space I cannot deal here with the evolving rationale behind maintaining camps and with the divergent scholarly opinions about both the evolution and the rationale. 2 Spariosu refers to Claudio Guillén’s notion of “literature of counterexile”. 3 The trajectory of life and works of Vladimir Nabokov can be viewed as an implementation of “counterexilic” strategy, of choosing “freedom” at the expense of “nostalgia”. 4 Non-victorious return to (former) homeland is the physical acme of nostalgia. Purgatory and exile into “liminality” [ivi: 22]. He deems exile a form of ludic liminality; a psychophysical condition of detachedness from home, either embroiled in nostalgia (and subsuming to the “agon” of “centre” and “margin”), or revolving into utmost creative freedom [ivi: 30–31], into an ability to affect both the society left behind and the host one, into an “utopia” in the sense of “a-topia”, “nowhere”, a neutral playing ground [i