594
PAR.TISAN REVIEW
Russians are reading less because they are working more, because
books and periodicals have become expensive, a natural result of subsi–
dized publishing having disappeared at the same time as censorship did.
Literature had been a state monopoly, and underground writing,
samiz–
dat,
was the literary equivalent of the black market. A real economy
doesn't need a black market, and an uncensored cu lture doesn't need
much of an underground literature. The late twentieth century, increas–
ingly attached to image and information, hardly needs literature at all.
Russian literature is also in danger of dying because of the waning of
the language itself. Russian was the
Iillglla Jrallca
of the Soviet empire, as
much a key to upward mobility as Party membership. It was spoken by
every educated person from Lithuania to Siberia and dominated to such
an extent that even some national literatures began to be written in
Russian. The fate of the Russian language had been tied to the fate of
the empire. Now, cultural antico lonialism has set in, and linguistic sensi–
bilities are very prickly. Ukraine's longstanding wish to not be called
"the Ukraine" has at last been granted. Streets, cities, countries, are un–
dergoing linguistic metamorphoses - Belorussia becomes Belarus, Kur–
gizia becomes Kjrghizstan, Leningrad becomes St. Petersburg. There used
to be a popular Soviet joke about an old man interviewed by a news–
paper. "Where were you born?" asks the reporter.
"St. Petersburg," he answers.
"Where did you grow up?"
"Petrograd. "
"Where do you live now?"
"Leningrad. "
"And where would you like to live?"
"St. Petersburg."
In the topsy-turvy world of Russian politics, the dream of the old
man in the joke has at last come true.
People from the classes dispossessed by the Bolshevik Revolution
were know as
bvyshie,
a nightmarish word to translate. "Formers" would
be a clumsy approximation; "has-beens," closer in grammatical form,
brings the wrong associations to mind - yellowed press clippings, aging
flesh, rented rooms. Now
b,Jyshie
is heard often in Russian, in connection
with "the former Soviet Union"; the circle is complete.
Perhaps Kazakhstan has the trickiest linguistic problem of all. The real
name of the people is
Kazaks,
with a hard "k," not
Kazakhs,
and the
name of the country should be
Kazakstan.
In her book,
Central Asians
IInder Russian Rille: A Stlldy
ill
Cllltllral Challge,
Elizabeth Bacon writes
in a footnote, "It was in 1936, when Stalin accidentally mispronounced
Kazak
in a public address, that the Turkish-Mongol people of Central
