Leksyka konfesyjna w języku rosyjskim okresu radzieckiego

Abstract

The subject of study in the present work focuses on the lexis connected with the culture of Russian Orthodox Church. The aim of study was to establish the way vocabulary functioned in Russian language of the Soviet period, i.e. whether it underwent any qualitative and quantitative modifications under the influence of socio-political situation that was unfavourable to religion. The immediate interest of the subject results from the fact that in Soviet linguistics, because of obvious reasons, it was constantly neglected. Until quite lately the subject has been studied in Polish linguistics, too. The first publications appeared after the communism had declined. So far, however, a separate monographic study has not been devoted to it. The exemplifying material has been selected from "Slovar' sovremennogo russkogo literaturnogo jazyka" edited by Science Academy (1950-1965). Few lexical units which are not included in the above dictionary were selected from "Tolkovyj slovar' russkogo jazyka" edited by D. N. Ushakow (1935-1940). The vocabulary analysis was based on the comparison of its dictionary description (i.e. definition, possible labels and graphic representation) to the description in W. I. Dal's "Tolkovyj slovar' zhivago velikarusskago jazyka" (second edition 1880-1882). In case a unit was not found in this dictionary, "Slovar' cerkovno-slavjanskago i russkago jazyka" (1847) and "Polnyj cerkovno-slavjanskij slovar'" by G. Djachenko (1900) were used as an alternative source of selection. The study shows that the process of introducing and enforcing atheism as well as anti-religious propaganda of the Soviet period had essential influence on semantic and stylistic structure of the contemporary Russian vocabulary referring to the culture of Orthodox Church. The vocabulary as a whole was not exposed to ideological re-interpretation or completely removed to the language periphery. The above conclusion is testified by the analysed material which should be divided into two separate groups. The first group ( about 60% of the material) comprises the vocabulary that is an example of different qualitative and quantitative modifications. The former include pejorativization of confessional meaning which is indicated by negatively featured lexical means like легендарный, мифический, так называемый, е.g евангелие - 1. part of the BibIe that includes legendary stories about life and teaching of Christ. These elements imposed definite attitude of people's outlook on life to the ideas that disagreed with scientific descriptions (scientific in Marxist sense), confuted confessional meanings of defined words and, as a result, questioned the authenticity of the corresponding designations. Qualifications like буржуазный, враждебный, идеалистический, реакционный are characterized by even greater expressiveness because they are independent of context, e.g. персонализм - 1. reactionary idealistic trend in modern bourgeois philosophy according to which a human being is a base of existence. They emphasized ideological incorrectness of these concepts which came into collision with materialistic ideas. Dictionary labeIs and paralabels were the carrier of pejorative colouring in religious lexis , e.g. religious: в христианской религии, в православной церкви, у верующих which apparently in a neutral way showed an attachment of designations of defined units to religious phenomena. In fact, they warned against their ideological character. Occasionally graphic means-inverted commas in modal-estimating function, e.g. нимб - 1. brightness presented in the form of aureole (ancient statues, icons) as a symbol of sanctity and divinity - served to depreciate confessional connotations . The process of substitution of capital letter by small letter in words библиа, бог, богородица, евангелие, троица etc. generated their degradation to the class of common nouns. The generalization of significative meanings partially or fully accompanied by deprivation of sacral connotations presents a typical semantic modification, e.g. христославник - 1. a person who glorifies Christ ; замворничество - solitary lifestyle. Qualitative modifications (not semantic but stylistic ones) comprise the loss of timeliness of confessional vocabulary, which was connected with the reduction of the occurrence range of a particular designation ( божиться archaic: to swear to God) or with its complete removal from Soviet reality (епархиалка - pre-revolutionary: in colloquial speech - an alumna of diocesan school). Quantitative changes included disappearance of either one or severaI confessional meanings in polisemantic units ( бездна - 1. precipice, depth / before revolution also: hell; срачица - 1. shirt / before revolution also throne coverlet). All the meanings were etymologically related to preserved generalized secular meanings, which could have been the reason of their disappearance. Some of them started to get separated in pre-revolutionary Russian language (заступница, избавитель, раскаяние). The separate category includes confessional vocabulary that was not listed in the examined dictionaries . The analysis proves that a portion of units belonging to this group had profound terminological colouring (деисус, илитон, индития, параклис) , some of them were compound units (Богородичны, богословить, богосудный) and multi-word lexical structures (десять заповедей Божьих, моление о чаше, нагорная проповедь, переходящие праздники). In all likelihood , they were not listed because of the above characteristics. This does not mean, however, that they did not exist in contemporary Russian language, which basically refers to fixed phrases preserved by Orthodox tradition (моление о чаше, нагорная, проповедь). It is proper to add more general statement to the conclusions presented above. The author is aware that lexicographical sources used in the study as well as the whole Russian belles-lettres, scientific and publicistic literature were created under the influence exerted by censorship restrictions and certain ideological standards. This fact leads to the deduction that notified modifications were the result of manipulation, took place only on the dictionary description level and were not reflected in the language. Distorted image of Orthodox Church culture created by developed propaganda must have left the trace in linguistic consciousness of contemporary Russian society. If so, the right thing is to accept the fact that Russian descriptive dictionaries register the reality reflected in the lexical system only. The rest of the lexical units under analysis (about 40% of the material) in the Soviet period preserved the same meaning and stylistic forms as in pre-revolutionary Russian language. The phenomenon could have been influenced by intralinguistic factors, i.e. typical polysemantic structure ( неофит - 1. a person newly converted to a religion, 2. figurative: a new follower of a teaching) and their attachment to different types of word-forms . Additionally they were too deep-rooted in the linguistic awareness of Russians to undergo semantic and stylistic modifications or to play secondary role in the language, i.e. ( богослужение, епископ, заутреня). The usage range of the units must have been limited. It was not so wide as in pre-revolutionary period since in the Soviet state under atheism the status of religion - the symbol of obscurantism and the object of persecution - was not only a culture-forming factor but also state-forming means (formula of unity: Orthodoxy-Autocracy-Nationality).