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Decoding the 1920S: a Reader for Advanced Learners of Russian DECODING THE 1920S: A READER FOR ADVANCED LEARNERS OF RUSSIAN With commentary and exercises by Nila Friedberg PDX Open: Open Access Textbooks Portland State University Library To my parents and in memory of Olga Kagan Copyright © 2006 by Isaak Babel, heirs Copyright © 2018 by Isaak Babel, heirs Copyright © 1989 by Mikhail Bulgakov, heirs Copyright © 1995 by Ilia Ilf, Evgeny Petrov, heirs Copyright © 2011 by Andrei Platonov, heirs Copyright © 2008 by Mikhail Zoshchenko, heirs Map data © 2013 Google Introduction, commentary, and exercises, copyright © 2021 by Nila Friedberg COVER ART: El Lissitzky, “The Announcer” (Ansager) from Figurines: The Three-Dimensional Design of the Electro-Mechanical Show Victory over the Sun, 1920–21. Robert Leunis & Chapman, Hannover, 1923. COVER DESIGN: Cyrus Wraith Walker and Ilana Henley-Perstein BOOK DESIGN: Irina Kuzmina The commentary and exercises by Nila Friedberg are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) You are free to: Share—copy and redistribute the commentary and exercises in any medium or format Adapt—remix, transform, and build upon the commentary and exercises The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms. Under the following terms: Attribution—You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. No additional restrictions—You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits. NonCommercial – You may not use the material for commercial purposes This publication was made possible by the PDXOpen publishing initiative. Published by Portland State University Library Portland, OR 97207-1151 Portland State University is a member of the Open Textbook Network Publishing Cooperative INTRODUCTION Why the 1920s? The materials presented in this book were developed for an advanced-level content- based Russian language course at Portland State University entitled “Russian Literature of the Twentieth Century: The 1920s.” Literature of this period is a major part of the Russian canon, but is notoriously difficult for learners of Russian to read in the original, due both to its stylistic complexity and the relative obscurity of its historical, political, and cultural references. And yet, this decade is crucial for understanding Russia – not only in the Soviet period, but also today. This was the period, after all, when Mikhail Zoshchenko, Isaak Babel, Mikhail Bulgakov, and Andrei Platonov meticulously documented the birth of the “New Soviet Man,” his “newspeak” and Soviet bureaucratese. Given the pronounced “Soviet nostalgia” in the political discourse of contemporary Russia, the “Soviet Person” still needs to be studied, and literature provides the best window into this Person’s world. The 1920s was the period when Alexandra Kollontai, a Marxist revolutionary and a diplomat, wrote essays and fiction on the “New Soviet Woman,” and her legacy in contemporary Russia remains relevant. This period saw the creation of numerous satirical works – but today’s learner needs guidance to understand the essence of this satire, whether pro-Soviet or critical of the Soviet experience. This was also the period when Babel experimented with creating a literary representation of dialects (e.g., Odessa Russian or Jewish Russian). These varieties of language have not disappeared. Bureaucrats still use some form of bureaucratese. Numerous contemporary TV shows imitate the dialects that Babel described. Moreover, Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog gave rise, due largely to its film adaptation, to catch-phrases that still appear throughout contemporary Russian media, satirical contexts, and everyday conversation, in the speech of ordinary citizens and politicians alike. Thus, the Russian literature of the 1920s does not belong exclusively to the past, but has relevance and interpretive power for the present. Clearly, American students who wish to pursue a career in humanities, media analysis, analytical translation, journalism, or international relations must understand this period and the linguistic patterns it established. They need to learn to “read between the lines,” to see political nuances; to identify humor and propaganda; to pinpoint a political stance; to differentiate between educated, non-standard, or bureaucratic registers; to learn that language (including Russian) is not monolithic, but includes a variety of dialects and idiolects. All of this teaches students to detect hidden messages about texts and their speakers, and ultimately aids in the development of other interpretative skills, beyond the analysis of literature. Portland State University is home to the Russian language Flagship, one of eight intensive Russian Flagship programs in the country that provide “undergraduate students with pathways to professional-level proficiency in Russian” https://www.( thelanguageflagship.org/russian). The Flagship program places robust expectations on its students and faculty: students are expected to achieve ACTFL’s Advanced Low level of Russian proficiency prior to their final year (which takes place abroad), i.e., by this time they should be able to “demonstrate the ability to narrate and describe in the major time frames of past, present, and future in paragraph-length discourse … [and] use communicative strategies such as rephrasing and circumlocution.” (ACTFL 2012: 6). With these goals in view, we might ask: how can discussion of literature be combined with rigorous language pedagogy expectations? How can one teach 1920s prose in a language class, if the prose is decidedly different from everyday speech due to its poetic devices, figures of speech, and allusions; if the prose, that is, can hardly serve as an imitative language model for a learner? This textbook aims to offer a solution to the problem, proposing language assignments that would, on the one hand, help students transition to ACTFL’s Advanced proficiency level, but at the same time promote meaningful engagement with literary texts. It also aims to offer a solution for multilevel classes that include heritage Russian speakers, Intermediate High, Advanced, or even Superior-level readers, the latter being “generally aware of the aesthetic properties of language,” but not necessarily familiar with the “texts in which cultural references and assumptions are deeply embedded” (ACTFL 2012: 21). In particular, the book will make clear that the methods used by Olga Kagan and her coauthors in their textbooks focusing on film (Cinema for Russian Conversation), nonliterary contexts (Russian: From Intermediate to Advanced), or literary texts of a less complex nature (Sofia Petrovna) – are likewise useful and applicable to the linguistically challenging poetic prose of the 1920s. As in Cinema for Russian Conversation, the assignments in this textbook are multilevel ones. Some check the basic comprehension of texts and elicit narration (which is appropriate for ACTFL’s Intermediate High students), while others ask students to attend to style and figures of speech, or detect irony or nonstandard dialects – activities challenging enough for heritage speakers and for ACTFL’s Advanced High or Superior level students. Structure of the Book The textbook is structured as follows. Each chapter has the same exercise format. PRE-READING ASSIGNMENT (ПЕРЕД ЧТЕНИЕМ) and PREPARATORY WRITTEN ASSIGNMENTS (ПОДГОТОВИТЕЛЬНЫЕ ПИСЬМЕННЫЕ ЗАДАНИЯ), which include assignments 1–7, are completed at home. DISCUSSION AND TEXTUAL ANALYSIS (ОБСУЖДЕНИЕ И АНАЛИЗ ТЕКСТА), which includes assignments 8–15, is completed in class. SUPPLEMENTARY ASSIGNMENTS (ДОПОЛНИТЕЛЬНЫЕ ЗАДАНИЯ), which include assignments 16–19, are optional and include videos, essays, presentation topics, and vocabulary or grammar review. Assignment 1 (Задание 1. Перед чтением) is appropriate for Intermediate High or higher level students, and is completed either orally or in writing. The goal of this assignment is to turn students from passive readers of explanatory footnotes to active “looker-uppers”; in a sense, students will be creating footnotes of their own. After completing assignment 1, students read the text at home. After reading the text, students complete all or some of the PREPARATORY WRITTEN ASSIGNMENTS (ПОДГОТОВИТЕЛЬНЫЕ ПИСЬМЕННЫЕ ЗАДАНИЯ) at home. Assignments 2 and 3 typically check students’ basic comprehension of the plot, and can be completed by Intermediate High-level students. In many chapters, the questions in assignment 3 employ the present tense and prompt students to practice using this tense in order to facilitate “narration in all time frames,” as required by ACTFL’s Advanced level. Assignment 4 typically lists quotes from the text and asks students to translate them; in some chapters, where the text exhibits a multitude of voices (i.e., polyphony), the assignment also asks to identify who is speaking to whom and when. Due to the difficulty of some translation examples (e.g., false cognates), the assignment is most appropriate for Advanced and Superior-level students. Assignment 5 consists of multiple-choice questions, typically (though not in all chapters) asking students to guess the meaning of fixed expressions фразеологизмы( ), idioms, colloquialisms, or false cognates from the context; these are of use for students of any level enrolled in the course. Assignment 6 consists of the “Lexical-Grammatical
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