Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Transliteration and Translations
- Introduction: Sociolinguistic Change and the Response of Literature
- Part I Post-Soviet Language Culture
- Part II Language, Writers and Fiction
- Part III Writers on Language: Telling and Showing
- Part IV Language on Display
- Conclusion: Towards a Theory of Performative Metalanguage
- References
- Index
6 - Abanamat: Reactions to the Ban on Profanity in Art
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 May 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Transliteration and Translations
- Introduction: Sociolinguistic Change and the Response of Literature
- Part I Post-Soviet Language Culture
- Part II Language, Writers and Fiction
- Part III Writers on Language: Telling and Showing
- Part IV Language on Display
- Conclusion: Towards a Theory of Performative Metalanguage
- References
- Index
Summary
On 30 June 2014, Russian writers and artists organised a nationwide event to ‘commemorate’ profanity (mat). The event was called Abanamat, and was a response to amendments to the Law on the Russian Language that took effect on 1 July 2014, banning the use of obscene language in film, theatre and public performances of music or literature. Abanamat brought together writers, actors, musicians and artists in nine Russian cities and featured readings and performances of texts, songs, films and plays that contain mat. The subtitle of the event solemnly stated that: отныне великий и могучий только на улицах и кухнях (Abanamat, Kazan).
Six months later, amid heated debates over Andrei Zviagintsev's prize-winning film Leviathan (2014), prominent members of the Russian film community, including Nikita Mikhalkov and Fedor Bondarchuk, appealed to Prime Minister Dmitrii Medvedev to reconsider and possibly revise the law (Karev and Krizhevskii 2015). Leviathan tells a miserable story of suffering, corruption and human cruelty, and abounds in profanity. The film premiered on Russian screens on 5 February 2015, but in order to fulfil the new requirements for distribution certificates, obscene language had to be deleted. Medvedev passed the open letter to Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinskii, but the reaction from the Duma's Culture Committee was negative. Committee chairman Stanislav Govorukhin rejected the appeal by advising artists to recall Turgenev's famous poem in prose:
Во дни сомнений, во дни тягостных раздумий о судьбах моей родины, – ты один мне поддержка и опора, о великий, могучий, правдивый и свободный русский язык!.. Не будь тебя – как не впасть в отчаяние при виде всего, что совершается дома. Но нельзя верить, чтобы такой язык не был дан великому народу! (Govorukhin 2015)
These two statements – one being the announcement of the Abanamat protests against the law, the other the official rejection of the filmmakers’ appeal to amend it – are but two voices in the larger debate on the role of obscene language in Russia(n) today. Interestingly, the two opposing voices both cite one and the same source in support of their case, Turgenev's famous dictum about ‘the great and mighty Russian language’. In Russian language culture over the last hundred years or so, this citation, and in particular the two adjectives ‘great and mighty’ (velikii i moguchii), have indeed been used in many contexts as a synonym for the Russian standard language (russkii literaturnyi iazyk).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Language on DisplayWriters, Fiction and Linguistic Culture in Post-Soviet Russia, pp. 84 - 104Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2017