Funny enemies: the ‘humorous performative’ in the Stalinist master narrative

Abstract

The article introduces the category of ‘humorous performativity’ as a characteristic feature of Stalinist public, judicial and political discourse. Taking the lead from Judith Butler's analysis of discursive performativity, the article suggests ways in which the application of the notion of ‘humorous performativity’ can deepen our understanding of the mechanics of Stalinist terror. At the same time, these reflections are an attempt to draw the attention of scholars to the importance of humour as a performative force in the structuring of an ideology—a topic that remains virtually unexplored.

Acknowledgement

The article forms part of a larger project on Stalinist humour.

Notes

 1. Sarcasm, irony, mockery, ridicule, etc., have traditionally been regarded as forms of humour. For a useful overview of theories of humour, see, e.g. S. Halliwell, Greek Laughter: A Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), esp. p. 7. In the context of the research of Stalinism, a useful reference is Igal Halfin who speaks of mockery, scorn and sarcasm as ‘types of humour’ (Halfin, ‘The Bolsheviks’ gallows laughter', Journal of Political Ideologies, 11 (3) (October 2006), pp. 247–268, at p. 268).

 2. The classical references are J.L. Austin's How To Do Things With Words (London/Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), and ‘Performative utterances’, in J.O. Urmson and G.J. Warnock (Eds) Philosophical Papers, 3rd edn (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 233–252.

 3. I. Halfin, Stalinist Confessions: Messianism and Terror at the Leningrad Communist University (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009), p. 380 [endnote 78].

 4. On this paradoxical omnipresence of the official, exactly because the spirit of the time was supposed to be free, relaxed, comradely, see Natalia Skradol, ‘“There is nothing funny about it”: laughter at a Stalinist party plenum’, Slavic Review, 70 (2) (Summer 2011), pp. 334–352.

 5. I. Stalin, ‘O sotsial-demokraticheskom uklone v nashei partii: Doklad na XV Vsesoiuznoi Konferentsii VKP(b) 1 noiabria 1926 goda’, in I. Stalin, Sochineniia, Vol. 8 (Moscow: OGIZ, 1948), pp. 234–297 [‘On the social-democratic deviation in our party, 1 November 1926’], in XV Conference of the All-Union Communist Party (of Bolsheviks), 26 October–3 November 1926, Stenographic Protocol (Moscow/Leningrad: State Publishing House, 1927), pp. 420–463. All the quotations from the original sources throughout the article are my translations of the original Russian texts, though I sometimes used the available English translations for consultation.

 6. The text gives a reference to Trotsky's text (L. Trotsky, The New Course (Moscow: Krasnaia Nov', 1924), p. 47).

 7. Stalin, ‘O sotsial-demokraticheskom uklone v nashei partii’, op. cit., Ref. 5, p. 275.

 8. I. Stalin, ‘Zakliuchitel'noe slovo po dokladu “O sotsial-demokraticheskom uklone v nashei partii”’, na XV Vsesoiuznoi Konferentsii VKP(b) 3 noiabria 1926 g [‘Concluding remarks on the social-democratic deviation in our party’], paper presented at the XVth All-Union Conference of the CPSU(b)). Stalin, ‘O sotsial-demokraticheskom uklone v nashei partii’, op. cit., Ref. 5, pp. 298–356, at pp. 354–355.

 9. J. Brooks, ‘Stalin's politics of obligation’, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 4 (1) (2003), pp. 167–170, at p. 50.

10. M. Foucault, ‘Two lectures’, in C. Gordon (Ed.) Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977, trans. C. Gordon et al. (New York: Pantheon, 1980), pp. 78–108, at pp. 78, 103–105.

11. J. Butler, ‘Sovereign performatives in the contemporary scene of utterance’, Critical Inquiry, 23 (2) (Winter 1997), pp. 350–377, at p. 356.

12. J. Butler, ‘Sovereign performatives in the contemporary scene of utterance’, Critical Inquiry, 23 (2) (Winter 1997), pp. 350–377Ibid., p. 351.

13. J. Butler, ‘Sovereign performatives in the contemporary scene of utterance’, Critical Inquiry, 23 (2) (Winter 1997), pp. 350–377Ibid.

14. Halfin, Stalinist Confessions, op. cit., Ref. 3, p. 262. For a more detailed discussion of the issue, see Halfin, ‘Bolsheviks’ gallows laughter', op. cit., Ref. 1.

15. J.A. Cassiday, ‘Marble Columns and Jupiter Lights: theatrical and cinematic modeling of Soviet show trials in the 1920s’, The Slavic and East European Journal, 42 (4) (Winter 1998), pp. 640–660, at p. 642.

16. S. Fitzpatrick, Tear Off the Masks! Identity and Imposture in Twentieth-Century Russia (Princeton, NJ/Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005), p. 13. See also her discussion of the practice of staging trials at various levels, and her use of the metaphor of the theatre, in ‘How the mice buried the cat: scenes from the Great Purges of 1937 in the Russian provinces’, Russian Review, 52 (1993), pp. 299–320, esp. p. 301.

17. For discussions of the Stalinist carnivalesque, see, besides the often referred to in this article, Halfin (e.g. Stalinist Confessions, op. cit., Ref. 3, p. 425 [endnote 49], where he addresses the debate between Sheila Fitzpatrick and Michael Ellman as to the justifiability of the application of the term ‘carnival’ to the Stalinist universe), also E. Dobrenko, ‘Gossmekh, ili Mezhdu rekoi i noch'iu’, Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 19 (1993), pp. 39–45, at pp. 41–43 (‘Soviet comedy film: or, the carnival of authority’ (trans. Jesse M. Savage)), Discourse, 17 (3) (Spring 1995), pp. 49–57); S. Žižek, ‘Toward the theory of the Stalinist musical’, in The Parallax View (Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press, 2006), pp. 288–295; R. Stites, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 99. Cf. also Katerina Clark's suggestion of a direct connection between Bakhtin's writing on the carnivalesque and the theatricality of the period, since ‘masking, or more particularly unmasking, were central to Stalinist rhetoric about “tearing off the masks” of the enemies of the people to reveal their true selves’ (K. Clark, ‘M.M. Bakhtin and “World Literature”’, Journal of Narrative Theory (Special issue: Benjamin and Bakhtin: New Approaches, New Contexts, ed. John Docker and Subhash Jaireth) 32 (3) (2002), pp. 266–292, at pp. 282–283).

18. Stalin, ‘O sotsial-demokraticheskom uklone v nashei partii’, op. cit., Ref. 5, p. 332.

19. Stalin, Stalin, ‘O sotsial-demokraticheskom uklone v nashei partii’, op. cit., Ref. 5, pp. 330–331.

20. See, e.g. A. Bogdanov, Vox populi: Fol'klornye zhanry sovetskoi epokhi (Vox populi: Folk Genres of the Soviet Era) (Moscow/St.Petersburg: NLO, 2009), in particular pp. 58–63 (chapter ‘O prostote i pravde’ (‘On Simplicity and Truth’), as well as N. Kozlova, ‘Uproshchenie—znak epokhi!’ (‘Simplification is a Sign of the Era!’), Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia (Sociological Investigations), 7 (1990), pp. 11–21.

21. Stalin, ‘O sotsial-demokraticheskom uklone v nashei partii’, op. cit., Ref. 6, p. 316.

22. On the history of this figure in the urban folklore of St. Petersburg, see I. Borisova and G. Priamurskii, ‘Peterburgskii dvornik: Gosudarstvo i chistota’ (‘The Street-Cleaners of St. Petersburg: The State and Cleanliness’), Neprekosnovennyi Zapas, 2 (2006), pp. 241–256.

23. The release of tension has traditionally been seen as one of the primary functions of humour, and of laughter as a reaction to it. See, e.g. M. Weeks, ‘Beyond a joke: Nietzsche and the birth of ‘super-laughter’, Journal of Nietzsche Studies, 27 (2004), pp. 1–17, at p. 4; V. Holman and D. Kelly, ‘Introduction: war in the twentieth century: the functioning of humour in cultural representation’, Journal of European Studies (Literature and Ideas from the Renaissance to the Present), 31 (3–4) (123) (September 2001), pp. 248–263, at p. 248.

24. Butler, ‘Sovereign performatives’, op. cit., Ref. 11, p. 353.

25. Foucault, ‘Two lectures’, op. cit., Ref. 11, p. 97.

26. In one way or another, nearly all the analyses of the Stalinist discourse referred to in this article mention the insulting language of the show trials. However, not one of them focuses on the particular performativity of curses and insults in this context.

27. Protsess Antisovetskogo Trotskistskogo Tsentra (23-30 ianvaria 1937) (The Trial of the Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Centre (23–30 January 1937)) (Moscow: Iuridicheskoe izdatel'stvo, 1937), p. 27.

28. A. Vyshinskii, Sudebnye rechi (Court Speeches) (Moscow: Gosiurizdat, 1955), p. 398.

29. M. Odeskii, ‘Absurdizm Danilla Kharmsa v politiko-sudebnom kontekste’ (‘The absurd in Daniil Kharms's writings in the political and social context’), Russian Literature, 69 (3–4) (August–November 2006), pp. 441–449.

30. Butler, ‘Sovereign performatives’, op. cit., Ref. 11, p. 351.

31. Butler, ‘Sovereign performatives’, op. cit., Ref. 11Ibid., p. 360.

32. Vyshinskii, Sudebnye rechi, op. cit., Ref. 28, p. 402.

33. P. Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (Ed. and intro. John B. Thompson, tr. Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson) (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), p. 42.

34. Butler, ‘Sovereign performatives’, op. cit., Ref. 11, p. 360.

35. R.A. Martin, The Psychology of Humor: An Integrative Approach (New York: Academic Press, 2006), p. 63; M. Weeks, ‘Beyond a joke’, op. cit., Ref. 23, p. 3 (this latter author refers to Kant, who is famously considered to be ‘the father of the “incongruity theory”’).

36. Vyshinskii, Sudebnye rechi, op. cit., Ref. 28, p. 390.

37. Halfin, ‘Bolsheviks’ gallows laughter’, op. cit., Ref. 1, p. 262.

38. ‘Bolsheviks’ gallows laughter’, op. cit., Ref. 1Ibid., p. 261.

39. Butler, ‘Sovereign performatives’, op. cit., Ref. 11, p. 356.

40. For an alternative point of view that emphasizes the performativity of the show trials in the theatrical sense, see Julie Cassiday's text, where she claims that, ‘[a]lthough the stage and screen were initially intended to augment the propaganda of actual trials, they ultimately modified the very message they disseminated and made the Stalinist show trial a theatrical spectacle played to a movie audience’ (‘Marble columns’, op. cit., Ref. 15, p. 642).

41. M. Dolar, A Voice and Nothing More (Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press, 2006), p. 201 [endnote 3].

42. M. Dolar, A Voice and Nothing More (Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press, 2006), p. 201 [endnote 3]Ibid., p. 119.

43. The first edition of the text came out without an indication of the name of the author. On the question of the authorship, see, e.g. E. Dobrenko, ‘Total'naia lingvistika: Vlast’ grammatiki i grammatika vlasti' (‘Total linguistics: the power of grammar and the grammar of power’), Russian Literature, LXIII (2–3–4) (2008), pp. 533–621, at p. 593; E. Dobrenko, ‘Mezhdu istoriei i proshlym: Pisatel’ Stalin i literaturnye istoki sovetskogo istoricheskogo diskursa' (‘Between history and the past: writer Stalin and literary sources of Soviet historical discourse’), in H. Günther and E. Dobrenko (Eds) Sotsrealisticheskii kanon (The Socialist-Realist Canon) (St. Petersburg: Akademicheskii Proekt, 2000), pp. 639–672, here p. 640.

44. Dolar, A Voice and Nothing More, op. cit., Ref. 41, p. 113.

45. K. Clark, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1981, 1985), p. 38. I thank the anonymous reviewer of this article for drawing my attention to this point.

46. J.V. Stalin Archive, Istoriia Vsesoiuznoi Kommunisticheskoi Partii (Bol'shevikov). Kratkii Kurs (Moscow: Goslitizdat, 1945), p. 4 [History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks). Short Course] (New York: International Publishers, 1939).

47. Stalin Archive, J.V. Stalin Archive, Istoriia Vsesoiuznoi Kommunisticheskoi Partii (Bol'shevikov). Kratkii Kurs (Moscow: Goslitizdat, 1945), p. 4 (History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks). Short Course) (New York: International Publishers, 1939)Ibid., pp. 253, 263, 270, 272, 277, 280.

48. Stalin Archive, J.V. Stalin Archive, Istoriia Vsesoiuznoi Kommunisticheskoi Partii (Bol'shevikov). Kratkii Kurs (Moscow: Goslitizdat, 1945), p. 4 (History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks). Short Course) (New York: International Publishers, 1939)Ibid., pp. 225, 224, 139, 229.

49. S. Boym, ‘Paradoxes of unified culture: from Stalin's fairy tale to Molotov's lacquer box’, The South Atlantic Quarterly (Special issue: ‘Socialist Realism without Shores’, edited by Thomas Lahusen and Evgeny Dobrenko), 94 (3) (Summer 1995), pp. 821–834, at p. 830; G. Orlova, ‘Rozhdenie vreditelia: Otritsatel'naia politicheskaia sakralizatsiia v strane Sovetov (20-e gody)’ [‘The birth of the saboteur: negative political sacralization in the country of Soviets (1920s)’), Wiener Slawistischer Almanach, 49 (2003), pp. 309–346, at pp. 311–312.

50. Stalin Archive, Istoriia Vsesoiuznoi Kommunisticheskoi, op. cit., Ref. 46, pp. 241, 24, 265, 240, 244, 246, 247, 262.

51. On this see, e.g. M. Geller, Mashina i vintiki: Istoriia formirovaniia sovetskogo cheloveka (London: Overseas Publications Interchange, 1985), p. 272 [Cogs in the Wheel: The Formation of Soviet Man] (trans. David Floyd) (New York: Knopf, 1988).

52. U. Eco, ‘Il linguaggio politico’, in I linguaggi settoriali in Italia. A cura di Gian Luigi Beccaria (Milano: Bompiani, 1973), pp. 91–105, at p. 101.

53. Stalin Archive, Istoriia Vsesoiuznoi Kommunisticheskioi, op. cit., Ref. 46, p. 247.

54. Stalin Archive, Stalin Archive, Istoriia Vsesoiuznoi Kommunistichesko, op. cit., Ref. 46Ibid., p. 225.

55. Butler, ‘Sovereign performatives’, op. cit., Ref. 11, p. 356.

56. W. Benjamin, ‘Geschichte schreiben heißt also Geschichte zitieren’, in Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser (Eds) Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 5 (Frankfurt am Main, 1972–1986), p. 595.

57. The instances are too numerous to list as page references.

58. Stalin Archive, Istoriia Vsesoiuznoi Kommunisticheskoi, op. cit., Ref. 46, p. 278.

59. R. Jakobson, Iazyk i bessoznatel'noe [Language and the Subconscious] (Moscow: Gnozis, 1996), pp. 96–98.

60. Butler, ‘Sovereign performatives’, op. cit., Ref. 11, p. 353.