Soviet Russian: translation losses as a weapon of information warfare against Ukraine (2013-2020)

Размещено на http://www.allbest.ru/

Soviet Russian: translation losses as a weapon of information warfare against Ukraine (2013-2020)

Stiazhkina Olena (Kyiv)

Doctor of Historical Sciences (Dr. Hab. in History)

Leading Research Fellow

Department of History of Ukraine of the

Second Half of the 20th Century,

Institute of History of Ukraine NAS of Ukraine

Annotation

soviet language false reality

In the focus of this research is Soviet Russian language as a mechanism of the creating fake reality and as a weapon of the war against Ukraine. The main question is how the linguistic constructions of Soviet Russian (its ideologemes, established phrases, precedent texts) became / become performative utterances (J.L. Austin) that created, supported and framed the fake reality around the Russian Federation's aggression against Ukraine and provided the fake reality with the pseudo-content with which politicians and peacemakers were forced to work, as if they were real and rooted.

Language philosophy provides methodological framework for this attempt to analyze Soviet Russian as a ritual and weapon of war. This framework poses and considers the question of language as a way of symbolic representation of the world, the organization of the picture of being.

Conclusion. The Soviet newspeak continued to shape not only the domestic, cultural, political, but also the legal field, and therefore influenced the hidden transmission of Soviet political order into the practices of independent Ukraine. By strengthening the Soviet discourses with nostalgic, `anti-fascist', `Soviet-patriotic' projects, the Kremlin relied on the established constructs of the description of the world and strengthened those patterns of speech and thinking that contributed to legitimization of aggression.

The myth of the `Great Patriotic War' turned out to be the strongest one among such patterns. When attempting to restore Russian imperial grandeur in its Soviet and post-Soviet variants, this myth acquired the characteristics of `eternal Great Patriotic War'. Reconfigured to become `eternal', this myth became an element of the Kremlin's This research was supported by «Heinrich Boell Foundation. -- Kyiv Office -- Ukraine». The translation was made by Nadiya Chushak. policy towards the war against Ukraine. Its broad verbal content, where the `fascists' merged with `American imperialists', creating an overall picture of the `hostile world', acted as a mechanism of `affective management', a powerful trigger motivator for engaging in ritual actions, including `reconstruction of the eternal Great Patriotic War' in Ukraine.

Key words: Soviet Russian language, Russian Federation's aggression against Ukraine, the occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, fake reality.

My research focuses on how the linguistic constructions of Soviet Russian (its ideologemes, established phrases, precedent texts) became / become performative utterances (J.L. Austin) that created, supported and framed the fake reality around the Russian Federation's aggression against Ukraine and provided the fake reality with the pseudo-content with which politicians and peacemakers were forced to work, as if they were real and rooted.

Soviet Russian language, existing in several spaces and audiences -- inside the Russian Federation, within the occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, within the Western European order of thought, within Ukraine -- produced fixed messages that were unreadable outside their contexts (political, historical, everyday). These messages were not only misleading about what happened during the war, but also shaped relevant practices, reactions, rituals and expectations of people both in Ukraine, Europe and the world, and in the occupied territories.

On the one hand, the work of the language, its effects, exist in the zone of invisibility and unconsciousness. Soviet Russian continues its existence as a `hidden curriculum'. On the other hand, Soviet Russian, its carbon copy -- Ukrainian Soviet -- and its translations into European languages are not generally perceived as a problem or a threat, since for a long time language constructions were not considered as a real, not symbolic or auxiliary weapon of warfare.

Language philosophy provides methodological framework for this attempt to analyze Soviet Russian as a ritual and weapon of war. This framework poses and considers the question of language as a way of symbolic representation of the world, the organization of the picture of being. Following Wilhelm von Humboldt [1], Ludwig Wittgenstein [2], Johann Leo Weisgerber [3], Edward Sapir [4], Benjamin Whorf [6] and others (while understanding the difference between their approaches and the passionate discussions surrounding their hypotheses and concepts), we will start by agreeing that language, its structure and ways of usage affect the perception, outlook, cognitive processes of its speakers. Therefore they build a certain picture of the world and also determine social behavior, which, in turn, influences the ways of human thinking.

J.L. Austin's theory of speech acts also offers a theoretical framework for understanding significant role of words in Russian aggression. According to this theory, speech acts consist of two kinds of utterances: first, the utterances that describe existing facts and then the ones that are not reflective of social reality but intentionally create or change it. J.L. Austin called them performative utterances, emphasizing that performative utterances should not be evaluated as being «true» or «not true», they can only be evaluated according to their success or failure to achieve goals [6]. Another theoretical framework for understanding the meaning of verbal processes as a component of war is the Thomas Theorem. American sociologist William Isaac Thomas formulated it in the 1920s as follows: «If a situation is defined as real, it is real in its social consequences» [7, c. 27]. The mode of thinking of the situation as real is laid through the mechanism of using words -- ideologemes and phrases that have stable connotative mechanisms.

How and why Soviet Russian was influencing

Sovite Russian language was not only the way of speaking and thinking about the bolshevik-communist-real socialist society and its future. It was a tool of creation of the `new man', indicator of the attainment of the `new consciousness', mechanism of the specific form of perception of the world as the bright future With help of the language «Ordinary citizens also developed the ability to see things as they were becoming and ought to be, rather than as they were. An empty ditch was a canal in the making; a vacant lot where old houses or a church had been torn down, littered with rubbish and weeds, was a future park // Fitzpatrick Sh. Everyday Stalinism Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s / Sheila Fitzpatrick. -- Oxford University Press, USA. -- 2000. -- P. 9.. Yet it also was a form of agreement to the `tortured life' (Aleksander Etkind). Soviet language of 1920s -- 1950s is the language of tortures and repressive apparatus. «The language provided a Soviet man with deeply internalized justification of the annihilating actions» [8, c. 19].

«When Ukrainian person had to write (mainly from behind the prison bars) about his loyalty to the `Soviet authorities', he also had to praise the official institutions in obshcheponiatnyy [understandable] language,» [9, c. 51] justly observes Serhiy Bilokin'. Not only institutions had to be named using obshcheponiatnyy language, Soviet Russian had to be used to describe the way of renouncing one's parents (friends, neighbours, relatives), mechanism of becoming of person as `faithful party member' (Komsomol member, proletarian, revolutionary, hero) etc. Soviet Russian suggested a number of cliches and precedent texts [10; 11; 12] that governed the self-understanding and narration of a life of an ordinary person. The necessity of `learning' this language in 1920s -- 1950s came not only and not because of it being the prerequisite of moving up the career ladder, but because of the fact that Soviet Russian was the only language spoken by the punitive and repressive apparatus, so it seemed to be the only, even if illusory mechanism whose usage offered a chance of physical survival.

When in 1960s -- 1990s the physical annihilation as the main threat to people's lives stopped being an everyday practice, Soviet Russian already had acquired the signs of the «convenient grid of coordinates for communication in mode of maintaining loyalty, guessing subtexts, finding one's own and avoiding fatal mistakes» [8, c. 13].

Late Soviet Russian language, according to Illya Zemtsov, contained a large number of psychological traps, acting as an iron cage that restricted the free movement of those inside it. A significant role in strengthening the language as a trap was played by the fact that a large number of concepts were coded, not manifested, while the other concepts, conversely, were overloaded with information [13, c. 10]. Both led to the distortion of the meanings, perspectives, proportions of the phenomena described. But people in the late Soviet Union already assumed that it is not necessary to think about the content: it has already been received. Therefore, a personal interpretation is not required from the native speaker, what is required instead is a proper understanding of the subtext and the ability to decipher pragmatic instructions about one or another behaviour [8, c. 39].

Alexei Yurchak noted that already in the period of late socialism in the practice of using Soviet Russian, «the reproduction of the norm of ideological expression, ritual or symbol at the level of their form was dominant, while the content shifted, becoming different from literally `stated'» [14, c. 25]. This `performative shift', the author emphasized in 2014, in the preface to the Russian edition of his monograph, «has again become widely practiced in the functioning of state institutions, discourses and mass media, and in the relations between the state and citizens» [14, c. 25].

Soviet Russian after 1991

In Ukrainian society, similarly to the societies of the former socialist states of Eastern Europe [15], we are dealing with not the results of the work with the Soviet but with the process of forming/ not forming distance to it. The process of decommunization [16] -- through destruction of Soviet symbols, topo- nymics, calendar -- aims to create the lacuna that would be marked by the alienation and rejection of the Soviet as a traumatic and repressive experience. Regardless of the attempts to protect Ukrainian informational space from systemic Russian influences, the discourse of `reSovietisation' in form of nostalgia for the Soviet everyday and quotidian life remained -- to varying degrees in different regions and different age groups -- relevant at the time of the outbreak of war [17].

Soviet Russian language provided the soil that nourished and made possible and acceptable the re-actualization of the Soviet. Large numbers of its speakers, according to Oksana Pakhl'ovska [18, c. 326], never left the coordinates of the Soviet history.

Soviet Russian continued its existence (including through its carbon copy of Ukrainian `double newspeak') on different levels and with different degrees of intensivity. Researchers noticed its `revanche' in the rhetorics of the Ukrainian politicians[18, c. 325-327]. Its rudiments marked the process of writing the textbooks [19], it continued its existence in still burdened by the ideological connotations lexical units in the dictionaries of Ukrainian language [20]. On the quotidian level Soviet Russian turned into certain `cultural imponderables' (Melville J. Herskovits [21]) -- routine elements of thinking and behaviour that are re-created below the level of consciousness and are characterized by the high level of conservatism, since they almost do not reach the consciousness and are being taken for granted. Therefore it is more difficult to expel them from patterns of thinking and behaviour of the individuals compared to those that constantly require attention. Thus, for example, maternity leave was continued to be called dekretnyy leave, and the business trip was called komandirovka [as in Soviet times]. The fact that the level of consciousness is `not reached' when these and similar words are used, allowed Soviet Russian to become a `hidden curriculum' The concept of `hidden curriculum' was first coined by American sociologist Philip Jackson in 1968 (Jackson Philip W. Life in classrooms. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1968). “Analyzing institutional education, Jackson identified in it two components: `formal curriculum' with openly manifested goals and values, and `hidden curriculum' -- those values, dispositions, norms, attitudes and skills that are learned regardless of the topic of the lesson or subject, such as: how to survive fights, how the power is formed in a team, how to earn the attention of peers and teachers, and so on. The hidden curriculum in the educational process is manifested through the system of organization of education, disciplinary practices, organization of space, choice of subjects, through the content of textbooks and emphasis on various topics. It is also manifested in the complex processes of interaction between students, teachers, and management. According to the views of representatives of the school of structural and functional analysis, the `protagonists of the hidden' are not only the obvious `possible and impossible' and `what and how to learn', but also the `class order, political interests of those who dominate and those who obey, the dynamics of the fields of education and culture', and thus any change in social order or pedagogical practice is only a secondary symptom of the restructuring of the network of positions of power within the limits of social totality” (Ридингс Б. Университет в руинах / пер. с англ. А.М. Корбута. -- Минск: БГУ, 2009. -- С. 184)..

Acting as hidden curriculum, Soviet language carbon copied into Ukrainian, influenced the `divergences in interpretation' and different understanding of the meanings, used in the social-political vocabulary of the contemporary world. Further research is needed to augment this statement but we can agree with those experts who emphasize that the `appropriation' and `reinterpretation of the meanings' of a number of words and concepts perverted by Soviet totalitarian discourse did not occur, and therefore the words `democracy', `capitalist', `private property', `liberalism', `constitution' and a considerable number of others, still connote the Soviet frames for a number of Ukrainians (`so-called democracy', `capitalist exploiter', `private property -- a source of exploitation', `rotten liberalism', etc.) or with the perception of the Soviet as a ritual, and thus -- empty in content (this concerns such concepts as `constitution', `election', etc.).

Obviously, not all vocabulary and constructive characteristics of Soviet Russian were widely understood and used in independent Ukraine, but its tacit existence continued, generating, mainly in latent way, orders of rituals, collective practices, ways of organizing life and mechanisms of self-discovery. Soviet language remained to be the field of symbolic exchange, supporting, among other things, discoursive and pragmatic practices of those in power, bureaucrats, ordinary people, oriented towards the support of the hierarchies and interactions of the Soviet type.

This argument requires a separate systematic search and analysis, `the archaeology of knowledge' [22] of the linguistic practices, where the words of the Soviet Russian were not just mechanisms for communication, rudiments of the precedent texts, but, first and foremost, carriers of hidden, unreflected by the contemporaries symbols and signs, that could and did influence the reproduction of the Soviet practices of public and private life.

Soviet Russian remained a part of social, political and everyday discourses in Ukraine throughout all the years of state independence. On one hand, its presence was determined by the existence of generations that lived in Soviet realities or had a Soviet background. However, instead of retreating to social oblivion, Soviet Russian strengthened its potential (including potential for propaganda). This happened because it was profitable for the `elites' to maintain a hidden Soviet agenda that provided them with comfortable conditions for imitation of reforms and personal enrichment. Part of the society, especially the part that relied mostly on the usage of Russian language, remained `Sovietspeaking' because this corresponded to their nostalgic sentiments and did not destroy the constructed picture of the world. Some communities that continued to use and respond to Soviet Russian vocabulary found themselves in a situation where speaking / writing in Soviet was neither conscious nor proble- matized. Pierre Bourdieu referred to such situations as to result of monopoly of power, in which the underprivileged do not feel that they have been deprived of something [23, c. 14]. Therefore the lack of a language for self-writing and usage of Soviet Russian were not regarded as a defect, a trap or a danger.

Soviet Russian for invasion and occupation

One of the most powerfully and verbally decorated constructions of Soviet discourse was the myth of the Great Patriotic War. In the words of Nina Tumarkin, it became a `Soviet civic religion' [24, p. 155] and, according to Dina Khapaeva, it played the role of a `blocking myth' that had to turn the `Great Terror' into a `peaceful everyday life', a `normal life' that was ruined not in the 1910s, 1920s or 1930s, but on Sunday morning, June 22, 1941. To some extent, the myth of the Great Patriotic War has become the `myth of creation' of the `Russian people' as the only nation-vanquisher of the biggest evil in human history.

The words used to create the mythological constructs have acquired fixed content and vivid emotional connotation. Using various techniques [25], the Kremlin authorities offered the image of the enemy `fascist' / `German', his bootlicker -- `former people', and equated (or almost equated) `nationalists' and `Nazis', introducing into the field of propaganda in the first postwar years The film «The exploit of the spy» (1947) by director Boris Barnet for the first time explained collaborationism not by class contradictions or by desire to `catch up with the Germans and live beautifully', but by nationalist views: "the traitor comes to the Germans, stating that he is Ukrainian [... ]: “In Moscow they have their own songs, we have our own” // Орлова А.С. Художественные фильмы о Великой Отечественной войне 1946-1956 гг. как отражение изменений в политической жизни СССР / А.С. Орлова // Вестник МГОУ: Серия исторические и политические науки. -- 2015. -- № 3. -- С. 170. -- Electronic resource. -- Available at: http://www.vestnik-mgou.ru/Articles/Doc/8339. the image of `Ukrainian-German nationalist' / `banderite' [26, c. 125]. The myth begat the point of birth of the only victorious -- through martyrdom for the sake of others -- Russian people, whose all representatives belonged to the `party'. This powerful ideologeme influenced the self-perception of ordinary people and became part of their self-description. Its outer vector -- through real contribution to the victory of the peoples living in the USSR -- also acquired the features of a `blocking myth', addressed to European intellectuals and politicians. When weighing in crimes against humanity, the actions of the Soviet and Nazi authorities were marked as incompatible. Nazism was condemned, but communism, as a Soviet variant of totalitarianism, was not Yana Prymachenko noticed at one recent attempt to condemn communism -- Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism -- that was signed on July 3, 2008 at the initiative of the Czech government by famous European politicians, historians and dissidents. The authors of the declaration called on the European community to recognize the Nazi and Communist regimes as the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century and to develop common criteria for the victims of both totalitarianisms. However, this proposal has been ambiguously accepted, and the question of the communist regime's crimes remains open. For more details see: Примаченко Я. Советское vs националистическое: противостояние дискурсов и практик в постсоветской Украине // Studia Universitatis Moldaviae. -- 2017. № 10. -- С. 270.. In addition, as Peter Dickinson rightly remarked, Western intellectuals and historians studying World War II have called and continue to call Soviet troops `Russian', and continue to write that the `Russians' lost twenty-seven million lives. They have been neglecting Ukraine, the millions of Ukrainian soldiers who have been in the Red Army, the scale of casualties of the civilian Ukrainian population, and continue doing so. Thus, under the influence of Soviet (and now Russian discourse), such a `staggering omission' demonstrates not the contribution of Ukraine, but the size of the `blind spot', that masks the role of Ukrainians in the Second World War in the minds of Europeans [27].

The myth of the `Great Patriotic War' and the common victory of the peoples of the Soviet Union (designated as `Soviet' and `Russian' people) over Nazi Germany not only provided the legitimacy of the Soviet system and became the basis for the formation of a new collective identity [28], it continued to play the role of the `blocking' and the `explanatory' myth for both the Cold War and the Soviet Union's interference with sovereign states around the world. The detailed vocabulary [29] created to describe, pronounce and create the ritual practices of the myth of the `Great Patriotic' war was supplemented by new words and collocations that denoted enemies {`America', `American imperialism', `fascist youths, `aggressive bloc NATO', `American militarists', `junta ', `clique', `neo-Nazis'), methods of action ( `help to the fraternal nation', `protect against American aggression'), in a distorted way labeled / masked interventions and invasions (`brotherly aid to the Czech workers', `international debt to the Afghan people') and so on.

The expansion of the myth of the `Great Patriotic War' absorbed also other wars waged by the Russian Empire, and thus the formula stipulating that the `Russians' always defeat the `Germans' existed for the everyday (and sometimes political) description of any confrontations -- from sports to culture, from military to diplomatic ones. It acquired a crystallized propagandist formula: `we can repeat'. The myth of the `Great Patriotic War' acquired the attributes of the `eternal Great Patriotic War', and its symbolic vocabulary was supplemented thus configuring and reconfiguring the practices of perception of the world and the behavior of its carriers.

The myth of the `Great Victory' continued to live after the fall of the USSR. As Tatiana Zhurzhenko remarked: «The Russian authorities are appealing to the `Great Victory' in order to legitimize the post-Soviet political regime in the eyes of Russians and the West alike, as well as to substantiate Russia's claims for the role of a global geopolitical player» [30, c. 103]. Considering that the myth, reconfigured into the myth about an `eternal Great Patriotic War', also became an element of the Kremlin's policy of restoring Russian influence in the post-Soviet space and preparing for the war against Ukraine, its broad verbal content, where `fascists' and `American imperialists' merged creating the picture of the `hostile world', became not only an echo of the ritualized Soviet Russian, but also a mechanism of `affective management' [31], a powerful trigger -- motivator for engaging in ritual actions, including in the `reconstruction of the eternal Great Patriotic War' on territories of Ukraine.

The first attempts at affective management with the use of powerful triggers of `fascism' and `Nazism' for the world and domestic Ukrainian audience were made several years before the Russian Federation's attack on Ukraine.

In the summer of 2011, German director Jakob Preuss, who directed the documentary `The Other Chelsea', claimed that he would like to make a film about Lviv, where, according to him, 90% of seats in the city council belong to deputies from `Svoboda [freedom]' party, who do not hide their fascist views. «One of them even has a nickname Nachtigall-88» [32], noted the director Without turning to conspirology, I wish to emphasize the strange -- for a German person -- usage of the term `fascism'. After all, Jacob Preuss should have used the correct term, `nazism', but for some reason he did not do this.. In April 2012, British journalist Bryan Flynn from The Sun tabloid disseminated information about Ukrainian ultras fans who were preparing at a `secret camp' near Ivano-Frankivskto to attack `black fans' attending Euro 2012 football competition. The subtitle of the «Anarchy in Ukraine» article reads: «Nazi militia train yobs to fight our fans» [33].

On May 28, 2012, the BBC published a report entitled «Euro 2012: Stadiums of Hate», which informed about Nazism among Ukrainian fans and about the violence they used against representatives of other nationalities. For example, the roll call of fans at the stadium was called a `Nazi salute' in the BBC movie, the coat of arms of Ukraine was compared to the Nazi symbols used by football fans [34]. This film caused a wave of outrage in the UK. The Foreign Ministry of Ukraine and President Yanukovych were forced to intervene in the scandal.

The World Cup was held without any incidents, but the frames `Nazism', `Nazi symbols', `Nazi / fascist threat in a weak state', `violence' arose and to some extent became entrenched in the eyes of Europeans.

The second attempt to accuse Ukrainians of fascism / Nazism, and thus to prolong the action of `eternal Great Patriotic war', was made in the spring of 2013.

On May 15, 16, 17 of that year, the Party of Regions organized rallies in Vinnytsya, Odesa, Chernihiv, Donetsk, Luhansk, and other cities of Ukraine, with slogans ` To Europe -- without fascism'.

The participants of the rally in Luhansk held banners with inscriptions in Russian: `Luhansk region against neo-Nazism', `Beware, fascism!', `Stop fascism in Ukraine' [35]. In Odesa, a column of protesters was headed by elderly people who carried posters with the text (in Russian): `Fascism will not pass!'. In Crimea, the `battle with fascism' was accompanied by the slogans `Neo-fascists will not pass', `To Europe -- without fascism', `No is our answer to fascism!'. The protesters chanted in Russian: `No to fascism' and burned on Lenin Square in Simferopol a rubber doll with a photo of Verkhovna Rada deputy from Svoboda [Freedom] party Iryna Farion, an image of a swastika and a plaque with the inscription `accomplice of the fascists' (in Russian), attached to it [36]. In Sumy, a deputy of the Party of Regions of the city council announced from the stage that “We gathered here to say `No!' to fascism, to say that we will root out mercilessly its smallest manifestations” [37]. In Zhytomyr, several dozens of people with banners saying `Halychyna is a den of neo-fascism', `Youth of Zhytomyr against fascism' stood in front of the students and state employees gathered for the rally [38].

In Donetsk, at the end of the rally-concert the head of the regional state administration delivered a speech (in Russian):

Parade fireworks have died out, but statemongers who are trying to change the history make us sound the alarm and say a decisive `NO' to neofascism. Are we going to betray our memory, our glory and our victory?! Long live our dear Donbas -- fascism will not pass! [39].

In the statement made at the rally, its organizers from the Party of Regions appealed (in Russian) to “society, authorities and all people of good will to prevent the revival of fascism in Ukraine with all their might ” [39].

The reactions of the participants of these events were different. The journalists who observed the situation reported that the participants of the rallies spoke about coercion and possible punishment by the bosses of enterprises and educational institutions for refusing to take part in the event. Some of the people from different cities where the `rally' took place obediently and even fervently repeated the slogans pronounced by speakers on the stage. Some of them, for instance in Sumy, stood in small groups waiting for the end of the so-called rally, meanwhile discussing their own topics, joking and checking the time [37].

With a high level of probability, this happening organized by the Party of Regions was the Kremlin-inspired rehearsal of the propaganda cover for the Russian military invasion in 2014, which took place under almost the same information campaign about `struggle against fascism'.

The May 2013 case of `anti-fascist rallies' is a vivid demonstration of how Soviet Russian language became a ritual tool and weapon of the information war, and how different audiences differently perceived it and were excluded/ included from its usage.

The dictionary of the rallies, the speech constructions of Soviet Russian and its Ukrainian `double-newspeak' (which, as Oksana Zabuzhko noted, «is characterized by the maximal possible unambiguous coincidence with Russian» [40, c. 119]), such as `Fascism will not pass', `sound the alarm', `decisive no', `root out mercilessly the smallest manifestations, `people of good will', `Halychyna -- a den of fascism' (all used in Russian language, except the last one, which was in Ukrainian, although with a Russian word for `den') served both to parameterize the geopolitical vector -- the vector of Ukraine's return to the Russian Empire (`two languages -- one people'), and to check the efficacy, rootedness of the Soviet linguistic project (here -- with the `anti-fascist' content) as the trigger of the potential political behaviour in case of Russian aggression, which, apparently, had been prepared by Kremlin for many years. During rallies conducted in May 2013 mechanisms were used that Larysa Masenko correctly calls `verbal rituals', `shamanic spells devoid of real meaning'[41, c. 38] because the Ukrainian state never had and does not have any signs of `fascism'. However, the linguistic rituals of Soviet Russian (and its Ukrainian `double-newspeak') created a space for symbolic action, in which the community that attended the rallies (voluntarily or by force) found itself both a carrier, a consumer and a translator (even if they disagreed with what they heard) of a political myth that in the “system of given ritual utterances... gave rise to non-existent processes and phenomena, combined reality with fiction, introduced false relations into the actual picture of social reality” [42, c. 14].

Nikolai Vakhtin noted that ritual is one of the key concepts that helps to understand how Soviet Russian penetrated all spheres of life and was seen as the norm. Ritualized language is a language built on previously known formulas. What matters here is not the content, but the ritual itself -- the utterance of words. «Ritual», Vakhtin said, «is the content». He also noted that where ritualized language wins, the opposition true / false loses meaning and is replaced by the opposition right / wrong. In the ritualized sphere the truth is automatically neutralized. If the ritual context is respected -- the ritual norms of vocabulary, hierarchy and word order, intonations, places of pronunciation -- the meaning does not matter. The speaker is not afraid to be caught lying, because speaking in Soviet Russian is not a part of the discussion, dispute, search for truth [43]. Speaking is an act of war in which one must win at all costs, suppress, and receive public approval [44, c. 30-32].

Decorated by Soviet Russian, myth of the `eternal Great Patriotic War' through words and their use formed such practices of invasion and occupation, in which both the inhabitants of the aggressor country, and some of the occupied people in eastern Ukraine were trapped in (and led others into) trap of ritualized speaking and, therefore, of ritualized actions. The scenarios and variations of social behavior formed by the Soviet vocabulary of `eternal war' were different.

For some native speakers and consumers of the `eternal Patriotic war' language, the meaning of the words used to describe events remained not quite clear and understandable, but they still did not doubt their correctness. Thus, the term opolchentsy (Russian for militia men) was widely used by Russian propaganda to conceal aggression of Russia. According to Larisa Masenko, this word was used to refer to the local collaborators and Russians recruited to participate in military operations on the territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The scholar noted that the word opolchenets means «military formation of civilians released from active military service created in wartime to assist the regular army on a voluntary basis», therefore its dominant meaning is `common to all people' and `voluntariness' [45, c. 228]. We want to add that its symbolic basis is the myth of `eternal Great Patriotic War', within which the `people's militia' repeatedly fought back or were heroically killed for the Muscovy / Russian Empire / USSR For historical connotations of the term opolchenets and the danger of its mistaken usage in Ukrainian media discourse during the Russian-Ukrainian war see: Тараненко O. Евфемізація в українському медіа-дискурсі гібридної війни // Соціальні комунікації: теорія і практика: наук. журнал. [наук. і літ. ред. Г.Я. Холод; наук. ред. О.М. Холод]. -- Т. 4. -- К., 2017. -- С. 19-27..

Taking the above into consideration, the answer provided by the pensioner from Snizhne to interviewer's question `Who are opolchentsy (militia)?' in autumn of 2014 is quite illustrative.

Who are ... opolcheniye...? you need to read the history to know how to decipher it correctly... (pause). I'm fine about opolcheniye ...[46]

The feeling of being correct, coupled with the lack of an accurate understanding (knowledge) of the content of the words used, made it possible for Russian propaganda to easily manipulate people's minds by offering them practices and reactions `spelled out' in the myth of `eternal Great Patriotic War'. In a statement made by Igor Plotnitsky, one of the leaders of the occupation administration of Luhansk (September 2015), instructions regarding the behavior of occupied people were constructed according to a large number of verbal constructions of Soviet Russian:

We must recall the experience of the Great Patriotic War, when every citizen was a voluntary assistant to SMERSH, and saboteurs and spies could not walk on our land. In the nearest future, instructions will appear in the media on how to quietly identify terrorists and report them to the competent republican authorities. The republic is our common home. Together, we will cleanse it of the carriers of Nazi viruses and bacteria and drive the war beyond the borders of our native land! [47].

The ritual Soviet language marked not only the orders and instructions of the occupation administrations. It also marked the scientific texts («Attempts at forced propagation in Donbass of hate-filled ideas of neo-fascism met with armed resistance of the local population in spring of 2014» [48, c. 50]), fictional texts («Hang in there bravely, rebels from the east! Strangle fascism! And do not retreat! Violently fight the enemy in the name of freedom! Otherwise, your lands will burn in fire!» [49, c. 123]); journalistic texts («Brothers, be vigilant. This is not a banal appeal, not a poster from the past. These are the requirements of the current moment» [50]).

Just as in the late Soviet era, the ascertaining function of utterances within the permissible discourses of the occupiers and occupied people became irrelevant, their performative function came to the fore: «creating the feeling that precisely this and not in any case some other description of reality is the only one possible and unchanging even if not necessarily true» [14, c. 161].

Let us emphasize once again that the veracity / falsehood of the verbal constructs of the embodiment of the mythology of `eternal Patriotic war' in the practice of aggression and occupation had no meaning, nor did it have it during the creation and stabilization of the myth in which `ours' were `captured' while the enemies gave themselves in, or where the Nazis occupied Poland, while the Soviet army rescued Polish workers. Under the circumstances of the occupation, words that formed a monstrous lie ceased to be false and became a fact that neutralized the truth [43].

In addition to the naive incomprehension of the meaning of words while agreeing that words are correct, speakers of the language in different situations and in different circumstances of social interaction used the language of war, having different motives and orientations. For a certain number of people who `serviced' the aggression ideologically, politically or administratively, the reproduction of Soviet Russian gave access to, in terms of Pierre Bourdieu, `delegated power', delegated by a particular institution (here, the aggressor country) to those who speak on her behalf. Therefore `proper speaking' was the key to social upward mobility, enrichment, acquisition of jobs, etc.

Others (and sometimes the same people in other circumstances), even taking part in new / old activities and occupation rituals, unconsciously used the late Soviet practices of reproducing the form of symbols and utterances while almost completely ignoring their ascertaining content [14, c. 269]. Such a position of the speakers of Soviet Russian can be seen as the realization of the phenomenon of `learned helplessness'. This is a model of behavior, desirable for the totalitarian and occupational regimes, in which a person, being in a stressful environment, eventually becomes accustomed to the idea that nothing depends on his will, ability, desire [51], and therefore repeats and uses the words devoid of true content. Following Peter Sloterdijk, Serguei Oushakine suggested to look at the practices of cultural and symbolic dissociation in terms of the concept of `strategic immoralism' (the term used by Sloterdijk), which shapes tactics of `self-evacuation', that is, such social behavior and such a way of reproducing discourses that make possible the manifestations of «social alienation not hidden by fig leaves of fantasies about a better future» [52, c. 223].

However, it would be fruitful to consider here the ideas of Alexei Yurchak, who, relying on an analysis of the influences of the authoritative discourse of the late USSR, believes that the reproduction of a form with ignorance or misunderstanding of content consistently leads to an internal crisis of the power structure (here -- the occupation). Undermining is carried out not by direct resistance to the system, but by participation in its reproduction, however with its simultaneous deterritorialisation, i.e. the process of internal change of the system, its formation as another system[14, c. 268-269].

These practices of recreation of the words by the occupied people could look like this:

Checkpoint Dolzhansky (LPR). Donetsk cars are not allowed into Russia. [they keep us] All day keep in the heat. The fascists ... [53]

One has to travel to `junta' to get one's pension money every three months [54]

No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten ”, and no heads of the republic gave us any money [55]

We will all lose in the end. It's planned that way. But some will surrender. While others will no [56]

It is worth noting that this approach to understanding the ordinary practices of embodying Soviet Russian in the occupied territories can be a fruitful methodology of de-occupation aimed at the publication, analysis and reconstruction of `other, internal systems' created in prolonged situations of pressure on the one hand, and situations of being `off-site' on the other.

Significant reconfiguration of meanings took place in the zone of the `invisible' and therefore impossible to analyze existence of `internal symbolic orders'. But this does not mean that Soviet Russian ceased to be verbal embodiment of these meanings. As everywhere else in Ukraine it remained a `hidden curriculum'. The existence of this curriculum (along with other factors) could facilitate both formation / reproduction of hierarchies and the processes of introspection and self-description.

The ritual of Soviet Russian manifested also through the myth of the `eternal Great Patriotic War', caused a specific general temporality and conception of historical and political space. The world divided in Manichean way [25] by a new language `into two antagonistic camps' [45, c. 19], emerged as a world of endless war, where the fact of victory in World War II inflicted a certain social and life cycle and a certain program -- through the suffering towards happiness -- that could and should have happened only if yet another enemy is overcome. The overall temporality of Soviet Russian, despite the presence of established slogans like `forward to new achievements', was directed towards the past. It provided the rhythm and intentions that were used by some part of the native speakers of the Soviet language among the occupiers and occupied.

This rhythm, embedded in social practices, looked like an obsession with the past, and was embodied by the historical reenactment games / writing of historical science fiction, within which the myth of `eternal Patriotic War' not only told about the origin of the established order, but also substantiated the norms of social behavior, law, ethics and examples to be followed.

The trap of the cognitive urges of Soviet Russian was one of the factors that led to the fact that some of the so-called Russian volunteers and local collaborators were conscripted from among the `reenactment game players' (quote from the social network, June 4, 2014):

Opolchentsy led by a reenactor and his representative -- a science fiction writer -- are fighting against web designers, managers and other business trainers (at least there are enough of these among the ideological nationalist creeps). Total postmodernism [57].

Clearing the Kremlin of the accusations of inciting the war, Russian writer Dmitry Bykov noted that «the war in southeastern Ukraine has been unleashed by reenactment players, journalists writing for newspaper Zavtra (Tomorrow) and science fiction writers». This «peculiar subculture», -- noted Bykov -- “formulated the same national idea that the Russian authorities sought in vain during Yeltsin times. Instead of `Orthodoxy -- autocracy -- nationality' and `Forward! Towards the victory of communism' came the formidable formula stipulated by Danila from Balabanov's movies `Brother' and `Brother-2': «America is finished!» [58].

In reality, the war in Ukraine was, and still is, a war that was incited not by historical reenactors and science fiction writers but by the Russian Federation. However, the presence in the first tier of invaders of Russian Igor Girkin (Strelkov), a former military man, who in 2013 was in Ukraine and participated in the meeting of the reenactors named `Give us Kiev' [59], Fedir Berezin, born in Donetsk author of historical fantasy novels with telling names «War 2010. Ukrainian Front», «War 2011: Against NATO», which unfold in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions after the invasion of NATO countries, with Russian troops protecting people from the invaders, and of other `reenactment players', make it possible to state and (given the larger sample of texts and biographies -- to analyze) the process of turning the language into ritual and of ritual -- into action.

It should also be noted that the players in the written and social reenactments, having acquired new statuses during the occupation period, continued to reproduce the discourses of the myth of `eternal Great Patriotic War'. Thus, Fedor Berezin, appointed to the post of Deputy Minister of Defense of occupation administration of DPR in Donetsk, recorded his address to city inhabitants («all should go to fight fascism», «they used weapons of mass destruction», «enemy at the gate») to the background of the famous Soviet Second World War song «The Sacred War» [60]. In August 2014 in Donetsk, the Stalinist march of prisoners of war that took place in 1944 was `re-enacted', with Ukrainian soldiers marching instead of imprisoned Germans on the main street of the city.

It is also important to note that when Soviet Russian and the rituals instituting and supporting it became a reality of war and occupation, some of their ardent adherents were surprised and even dissatisfied:

«I ran away. Because standing up for a just cause at a checkpoint or walking against the fascists in the city is one thing, and when you have to die, you don't really like it»; «I got into an alternative reality» [57];

«Opolcheniye no longer exists. These are contract soldiers. They earn 15 thousand -- pretty good money there -- and, if necessary, they will shoot at their own people. There's such a dodge crowd there, except for a number of units ... There are plenty of people there who don't give a damn about anything» [61].

However, the resistance and discontent were not systemic, since the peculiar temporality, provided by Russian Soviet created the chronological order where the time of occupied people, determined by the language, ran in nonlinear fashion. Sometimes they found themselves back in the 1920s -- 1930s (with slogans of nationalization, expropriation, national ownership, searching for enemies of the people, denunciations and so on), then in the discourses of `post-war reconstruction' and the rise of the `new Donbas', then the occupied people were forced to agree to description of the reality using the vocabulary of the late Soviet bureaucratic language. None of these languages of living through the occupation was safe enough for resistance and discontent to receive the practical outlines and status of active deeds.

It is important to note that the myth of `eternal Great Patriotic War', broadcast mostly in speeches of Kremlin puppets in the occupied territories, set the horizons of the future. Including the horizons of the `eternal' war against Ukraine and the rest of world as the most desirable option for this war's end. The leader of collaborators Zakharchenko in 2014-2016 described the end of the war as annexation of the territories of the whole Donetsk and Luhansk regions, then -- Kyiv, Odesa, Mykolayiv, Nova Kakhovka («Our military units are ready to storm Kyiv»; «We will arrive to Odesa as hosts, and to glorious Kakhovka as well») and destruction of all Ukraine [62]. In December 2016 the `eternal Great Patriotic War' received new geographical horizons of the desired victory. In an interview with Russian TV channel Tsargrad, Zakharchenko said:

I'm not talking about [seizing] Kiev now. In fact, we need to seize not even Berlin. We need to go through it and take all of the Britain. The Anglo-Saxons are the curse of our Russian fate. If we take (Britain), then, according to all our predictions, the golden age of Russia will come. We will take back the territory that the Russian Empire lost, and will take what we had to receive since the Crimean War [63].

He also promised that the Victory Day would be celebrated in Warsaw, Berlin and New York:

No matter how hard it is for us now, no matter what hardships and difficulties we may endure, sooner or later all this will end in victory. I am sure that we will celebrate our victory together. Let it be in Warsaw, Berlin, New York [63].

No matter how ridiculous the words of the boastful leader of collaborators may sound, they are the quintessence of the meanings of Soviet Russian geopolitical discourse and the fixation of the fact that within this discourse there is no place for compromise or ending of war, since both these scenarios are considered in this discourse as a defeat, after which one can (and should) expect both the destruction of `Russian civilization as such' and systematic punitive actions against all supporters of `Russian spring' and `Russian world':

«If possible, they will kill all the inhabitants of Donbas, since according to the old Banderite tradition, people are collectively responsible for crimes», «if Luhansk region returned under Ukraine's control the population would be slaughtered», «the Nazis will take revenge on everyone indiscriminately, and the state of Ukraine will only encourage this revenge» [64].

The formation of a space of the future, in which there is either an eternal war before the final victory, or the universal destruction of the `people of Donbas', creates, at least at the time of writing, not only verbal but also a symbolic trap for any peacebuilding actions and initiatives, since any peacebuilding in Russian Soviet discourse is perceived as a `war trick of enemies' (or the introduction of Russian troops under the guise of peacekeepers), as a defeat and, in the long run, the potential for another revanche.

All these discursive-temporal shifts were in the `blind zones', remaining invisible to analysts and opinion leaders in Ukraine and the world.

Export version: lost in translation

Back in the 1980s Ilya Zemtsov was one of the first to draw attention to the fact that the Soviet language was the aggressor language. In particular, he noted that «Soviet political language conquered Eastern Europe, spread to Asia, captured part of Africa, gains ground on the American continent. It has become the linguistic mask of anyone who believes in a `bright future'. Its impact is universal. The peoples of the West also fall into the sphere of its magic: the countless repetition of slogans about peace convinces them of the peacefulness of the Soviet leaders» [13, c. 11]. Modern political Russian language automatically inherited the Soviet discourse, and consciously revived and strengthened some of its constructions (including myth of `Eternal Patriotic War'). And its influence on world leaders and average citizens remains secretly and openly aggressive. The aggressor language continues to be a weapon of war against the West in general, and against Ukraine in particular.