АНЕКДОТ В ЭПОХУ ЦЕНЗУРЫ: СПОСОБЫ ПУБЛИЧНОЙ РЕПРЕЗЕНТАЦИИ (опыт диахронического анализа анекдотов на материале журнала «Крокодил»)
ANECDOTE IN THE ERA OF CENSORSHIP: TYPES OF PUBLIC REPRESENTATION (EXPERIENCE OF DIACHRONIC ANALYSIS OF ANECDOTS ON THE MATERIAL OF THE MAGAZINE KROKO

Summary/Abstract: In order to study anecdotes diachronically, we need elaborate methods including precise principles of selection and analysis of the material. Unfortunately, this is a major problem for the diachronic study of oral genres in general. It is generally known that before the first sound recording devices appeared in the 19th century, the authentic characteristics of oral speech had been described and discussed by writers in discussions of stylization, rather than categorization or typification. While analysing anecdotes, this problem becomes even more evident because numerous published collections of recordings and descriptions of Russian oral speech of the 1970s by scholars studying colloquial speech provide no examples of authentic performances of anecdotes. Officially, anecdotes in the USSR were never published. Nevertheless, it is well known that at that time some were published unofficially and beyond the reach of censors (these were the editions published abroad, as well as some Samizdat publications). In some of those unofficial publications, the anecdote was analyzed as a genre, but in our opinion their material was very poor and did not do justice to authentic performances of anecdotes. In the paper, the recordings of anecdotes in the Soviet humorous journal Krokodil of 1970s have been discussed (the Smiles from different latitudes column). That column which belonged at the same time to the official and non-official culture was an interesting, though artificial phenomenon: it was an attempt to combine the really folk and free laughter (“Soviet anecdote culture”, very important for the non-official culture in Russia in late-Soviet period) with the strictly politically oriented satire. In the paper, the manner of recording of anecdotes, characters of anecdotes, and the image of the author and the reader of anecdotes have been analyzed. Thus, we may reconstruct an image of the ideal addressee of the anecdote: a witty, self-ironical pessimist, who shares universal human values, and who, of course, does not share any aggressive, false, or inhuman features of Communist ideology, even though the reader is not strong enough to openly oppose these features. KEY WORDS: telling an anecdote, manner of recording anecdotes, Soviet anecdote culture.

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