Soviet phraseology

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Soviet phraseology, i.e., the Russian language of the epoch of the Soviet Union, has a number of distinct traits that reflect the Soviet way of life and Soviet culture and politics. Most of these distinctions are ultimately traced (directly or indirectly, as a cause-effect chain) to the utopic goal of creating a new society, the ways of the implementation of this goal and what was actually implemented. Clearly the topic of this article is not limited to Russian language, since this phraseology permeated all national languages in the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, Russian language was the one of "inter-nationality communication" in the Soviet Union, although it was never declared official language of the state, therefore it was the major source of Soviet phraseology.

The major driving forces in Soviet word coinage were new notions and agitprop slipping into what is known now as doublespeak.

[edit] Beginnings

An initial surge of intentional word coinage appeared immediately after the October Revolution. The declared goal of Bolshevik was "to abolish the capitalist state with all its means of oppression". At the same time, the instruments of the state were objectively, necessary, and they did exist, only under new names. the most notable example is People's Commissar/People's Commissariat which corresponded to minister/ministry (and in fact the latter terms were restored in 1946).