The bibliography provides a list of Boris Uspenskij’s publications in English, including works written in co-authorship and various reprints/reissues. For the most part, Uspenskij’s publications in English are translations of his books and articles originally written in Russian and previously published in the Soviet Union/Russia. The first English-language publication of his work, the monograph Principles of Structural Typology appeared in 1968; the current bibliography consists of 65 entries from a period spanning from 1968 till today.

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Semiosis : semiotics and the history of culture : in honorem Georgii Lotman

Boris Uspenskij in English: Bibliography

"My life nowadays is most distressful and miserable," complained Prince Mikhail Mikhailovich Golitsyn in a letter to his brother-in-law on 2 April 1711. The prince, a member of a large and illustrious aristocratic family, was one of the young "volunteers" sent abroad by Peter I (r. 1689-1725) to study "nautical sciences." (1) In the letter from Amsterdam, Golitsyn bemoaned his fate, which separated him from his wife and family. Nor was he getting much from his studies. "I could spend my entire life learning [navigation], and I still would not master it," the unfortunate aristocrat despaired. One reason for Golitsyn's sense of hopelessness was that he did not know any foreign languages. Besides, the 27-year-old Muscovite believed that he was simply too old to learn new tricks: "my age is already past these studies." Most important, however, the prince complained about his inability to go to sea because of constant seasickness. In fact, Golitsyn was quite certain that he had no chance of "carrying out this task [learning navigation]," for his "nature [natura] cannot bear seamanship." However, as the prince himself well understood, all this did not matter much to Peter, who promised a "grave disaster" to those "volunteers" who failed to master navigation or did not spend a sufficient amount of time at sea. This is, perhaps, an archetypal example of Peter I's trademark disregard for the desires and preferences of his subjects. As we know, Peter made every effort to emphasize the fact that state servitors had no say in choosing the mode, time, place, and length of service to be rendered by them (although in practice the nobles, of course, quite often found ways to pursue their preferred life strategies by resorting to foot-dragging, corruption, and similar methods). Several years after Peter's death, however, the situation began to change. When the government in 1731 established the Noble Cadet Corps, it explicitly refused to draft young nobles into this school by force, hoping instead to attract those who actually wanted to study. (2) Although service remained obligatory, in the third decade of the 18th century young Russian noblemen were given increasing opportunities to choose the branch of service they wanted to join. This freedom to choose was codified in the decrees of 6 May and 31 December 1736 and 9 February 1737, which proclaimed the right of young noblemen to choose the school and the branch of service "according to [their] own desires." (3) Much like the overall relaxation of the regime after the death of Peter I, this formal legislative recognition of individual preferences has traditionally been interpreted as an example of the rise of an increasingly self-assertive and self-conscious nobility, which gradually wrestled its freedoms from the hands of the emperor's weak successors. (4) As we know, the nobility did, indeed, play a key role in the numerous palace revolutions of the 18th century; especially significant in this respect is the succession crisis of 1730, when the noble elite put forward a number of demands on both "political" and "bread-and-butter" issues) However, the extent to which the nobility retained any actual influence over the government's decision making after the crisis of 1730 and, no less important, exactly how this influence was exercised in practice still remains to be demonstrated. (6) This article seeks to offer an alternative perspective on the relationship between the post-Petrine monarchy and its servitors by exploring the motivations behind the policies toward the nobility pursued by the government of Empress Anna Ioannovna (r. 1731-40). In particular, it focuses on Field Marshal Burchard Christoph von Munnich (1683-1767), one of a number of foreign-born military experts who played key roles during that decade. (7) As the head of the Military College, von Munnich decisively shaped state policies toward the nobility. Among other things, he directed the establishment of the Noble Cadet Corps, the single most important elite educational institution of the period; he was also one of the guiding spirits behind the drafting of the decree of 9 February 1737, which set the basic framework of noble lives for the next 25 years. …

"An Infinite Variety of Inclinations and Appetites": Génie and Governance in Post-Petrine Russia

Juri Lotman’s well-known distinction of primary modeling system versus secondary modeling system is a lasting legacy of his that has been adhered to, modified, and refuted by semioticians of culture and nature. Adherence aside, modifications and refutations have focused on the issue whether or not language is a primary modeling system, and, if not, what alternatives can be made available to replace it. As Sebeok would concur, for both biosemiosis and anthroposemiosis, language can only be a secondary modeling system on top of the biological experience of Umwelt or human sensory system. This paper proposes to explore the possibility of a “preverbal” modeling system suggested by Lotman’s spatial concept of semiosphere, and discuss its implications in cross-cultural dialogue. The well-known distinction of primary modeling system versus secondary modeling system suggested by Lotman and others (Lotman 1977) is a lasting legacy of the Tartu School’s that has been adhered to, modified, and refuted by semioticians of culture and nature (Sebeok 1991; 1994; Sebeok, Danesi 2000). Adherence aside, modifications and refutations have focused on the issue whether or not language is a primary modeling system (hereinafter PMS) and, if not, what alterna1 It would be inaccurate to attribute this distinction to Lotman. Sebeok (1991: 49) identifies A. A. Zaliznjak, V. V. Ivanov, and V. N. Toporov (Zaliznjak et al. 1977 [1962]) as the original users of the terms in their joint paper for the Moscow-based Academy of Sciences. It must be noted, however, that Sebeok and Danesi do not explicitly make the PMS and SMS distinction; instead, they suggest the gradational and hierarchical relationships among strata, for example, a situation in which natural language mediates between the most abstract mathematical model and the least abstract but most connotated religious model (Zaliznjak et al. 1977: 47).but most connotated religious model (Zaliznjak et al. 1977: 47).

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Is language a primary modeling system? On Juri Lotman’s concept of semiosphere

By giving us a horse's perspective on human life, Lev Tolstoi's Kholstomer (1886) has usually been recognized in the west as a stellar example of the author's use of “defamiliarization.” Most of the critical attention the story has received in Russia, by contrast, consists of Soviet-era studies diat examine the creative history of the text and/or remark on its satiric elements. In this article, Ronald D. LeBlanc examines instead the treatment of the themes of sex, love, and motherhood in Tolstoi's story about a castrated horse. In particular, he explores the significance that castration— with its accompanying cessation of sexual desire—appears to have in this story about a selfless gelding, a tale that may be read as the expression of a desire on the author's part to be unburdened of the affliction of sexual lust and thus to be freed to pursue a more spiritual, less carnal existence on earth.

No More Horsing Around: Sex, Love, and Motherhood in Tolstoi’s Kholstomer

Yur(i)y Mikhailovich Lotman was born on February 28th, 1922 in Petrograd (formerly and presently St. Petersburg), where he studied Russian philology, and graduated in 1950 in Leningrad (formerly and presently St. Petersburg). The talented young scholar soon became an expert on Russian 'dekabrist' literature (named after participants of the clandestine and ruthlessly smashed political movement, culminating in the revolt of December 1825 against the tzar). Secret societies existed in Russia from about 1810 on, practicing anticlericalism, the cult of freedom, freemasonry, and amateur plots against tyranny. This glorious moment in Russian literary history was immortalized by participants like Pushkin, and later admirers such as Nekrasov, Tolstoy, and Lotman. Officially, it was also the early peak of Russian 'revolutionary' literature during and after Stalin's time — unofficially, a dangerous topic for free-minded intellectuals in the Soviet Union. Lotman, an excellent as well as eccentric young man, finally received in the fifties a university teaching position at Tartu University in a tiny, oppressed republic in the larger Union (formerly and presently Estonia, an independent republic of a small Finno-Ugric people). Being 'exiled' from Leningrad to this provincial town, he was first seen as a dynamic 'colonist', who was not dealing with the problems of the 'aborigines', but with the 'glorious revolutionary traditions of the unsurpassable Russian culture'. He soon wrote his dissertation on Radishtchev (in 1951), but after a relatively slow career he became full professor of Russian literature in 1963. His expertise in various topics (first of all, Russian literature between 1789 and 1848, but more widely, Russian culture from the Middle Ages until today) made him very popular there. He was a reincarnation of the old-fashioned (German) tradition of literary scholarship dealing with the paraphernalia of writers and their works: how, for example, umbrellas, coaches, dinners, and card-playing occur (and can be understood) in literature; or what constitutes the meaning of duels and masquerades in literary works of art. The third area of his interest

Semiosis : semiotics and the history of culture : in honorem Georgii Lotman

Citations

Boris Uspenskij in English: Bibliography

"An Infinite Variety of Inclinations and Appetites": Génie and Governance in Post-Petrine Russia

Is language a primary modeling system? On Juri Lotman’s concept of semiosphere

No More Horsing Around: Sex, Love, and Motherhood in Tolstoi’s Kholstomer

Commemorative essay. In memoriam of ‘Lotmanosphere’

Related Papers (1)

Classics of semiotics