SOVIETINIO VELTĖDŽIAVIMO FENOMENAS KASDIENYBĖS PRAKTIKŲ IR JŲTRAJEKTORIJŲ POŽIŪRIU
THE PHENOMENON OF SOVIET VAGRANCY FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF DAILY PRACTICES AND THEIR TRAJECTORIES

Summary/Abstract: The essay criticizes Alexei Yurchak’s theory of consta¬tive and performative dimensions, attempting to show how the anthropologist, in his analysis of late soviet society, ignores the impact of the constative dimension on performative choices. The author demonstrates how attachment to certain norms and rules of the soviet life, effected through the constative dimension, did not only open up possibilities in the performative dimension, but also limited the range of choices, i.e. socio-political structures determined the variation and character of potential practices. Employing the notion of practices and their trajec¬tories, the essay deals with one of the soviet everyday phenomena – vagrancy – and its place within soviet work ethics and discipline. Vagrancy is an apt object for analysis because, in the official discourse of the regime, vagrants were declaimed as “anti-social and parasitical” elements and thus pushed well beyond the margins of society. The further analysis reveals, however, that not even vagrants were able to evade the regime’s structural impact. Stagnant structures engendered certain vices of soviet work ethics and discipline (disintegration of internal order, chronic absenteeism and being late to work, unbalanced staff-management relations, high rates of employee turnover) and formed a stream of “staff volatility” which is often called the volatility of labour. Vagrants adapted themselves to this volatility of labour and established feigned-work practices. These practices were hardly exceptional: being similar to the behaviour of other soviet workers, they could be regarded as merely extreme instances of the latter. Therefore, the trajectory of labour time expropriation was drawn across soviet work ethics and discipline.

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