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9781498575034

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Pre-1917 almost all Russians were peasants. Nakhimovsky musters difficult-to-access sources to prove a thesis: despite geographical differences, peasants had nation-wide speechways that survived into the first Soviet decades. But confronting collectivization, wars, large-scale migration into cities, mass education, and media, ex-peasants adopted standard-language usage and Soviet jargon, first superficially and haltingly, later more thoroughly. Linguists and political scientists will also appreciate the explication of urban substandard usage (prostorecie), remarkably uniform throughout the Russian-speaking world. -- Wayles Browne, Cornell University Until recently, most Russians were peasants, yet we still know sadly little about the world they lived in, and about their actual experience of the many catastrophes of the last century. Nakhimovsky writes clearly and with deep insight. Nothing I have read gives me such a vivid understanding of the world of the Soviet peasant, of the language they used, of how they thought and felt. This study also throws new light on the depiction of Russian peasants by such writers as Tolstoy and Chekhov. -- Robert Chandler, English Translator of Andrey Platonov's The Foundation Pit and Soul: And Other Stories While Russian literature was endlessly adored by literati of many cultures its most significant parts were seldom acknowledged or even mentioned. The language of the mass of Russian people i.e. Russian peasants (in the 1940s still 9/10 of them) its capacity to develop reflecting history was usually lost. Professor Nakhimovsky is to be congratulated for the way he brought up Russian language actually spoken by Russian people, its remarkable flexibility, the way it followed the daily life as much as the massive drama of what Russia's life was. Even the curses typical of the way Russian have expressed themselves daily have often more vigour than fine delicacy of others. -- Teodor Shanin, University of Manchester & Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences

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Alexander D. Nakhimovsky is visiting scholar at the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia at New York University.

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