The ideologization of the Russian language after the 1917 Revolution (based on the materials of the Krasnaya Gazeta)

Gao Liya ORCID: 0000-0002-9133-3542 PhD in Philology Postgraduate student; Department of General and Russian Linguistics; Peoples' Friendship University of Russia 117198, Russia, Moscow, Miklukho-Maklaya str., 6, office 5 877191721@qq.com

1. Introduction

Language is constantly changing under the influence of internal laws and external processes. For linguists, there is no doubt that external processes have the strongest influence on it.: "The role of language in mediating cultural transformations: language not only reflects cultural changes, but can also actively influence them. Communication processes, including language communication, can become a tool for spreading new ideas, values and cultural norms" [Guo Hanwen, 2023, p. 31]. The most effective external factors of language development are cardinal political, economic and social transformations taking place in society. "Language, as the main means of communication, plays a key role in shaping society, and society, in turn, influences the development of language and its use. Language carries not only the function of transmitting information, but also reflects social relations, cultural values and the social structure of society" [Tkebucheva, 2023, p. 983].

There have been several periods in the history of the Russian language in which significant changes in public life stimulated significant transformations in the language. The relevance of our research is due to the fact that the Russian language has been experiencing one of these periods since the 1990s, when the political system changed and the processes associated with it came into force. To understand modern language processes, it is necessary to consider the impact of social transformations on the Russian language in previous stages of its development.

Very significant changes occurred in the Russian language after the October Revolution of 1917, when the capitalist system was replaced by a socialist one, which affected the cultural, economic, and social structure of society. S. A. Nikolsky notes that many images appeared in the language, created as an ideological product. "Its content was the following ideas: the Bolshevik party led by Lenin, which expressed the will of the people, overthrew the bourgeois Provisional Government, gave "peace to the peoples and bread to the hungry," transferred land to the peasants and factories to the workers; the "whites" who wanted the restoration of tsarism — the urban bourgeoisie, rural kulaks, hostile social strata and groups, as well as hoping to conquer the Soviet republic, foreign interventionists unleashed a Civil war in the country, but were defeated; the new proletarian government opened the way for the previously oppressed masses, a new life began in the country, a new Soviet man was born." [Nikolsky, 2023, p. 230]

Linguists note that when external circumstances change, the language reacts very quickly, including by expanding its instrumental capabilities. "Changes are taking place at all levels of the language system: phonetics is changing towards simplification, word-formation processes are intensifying, the vocabulary of the language is replenished with new words, and syntax is being transformed. As a result, the functional load on the language increases dramatically, and external pressure can affect the internal structure of the language and have a direct impact on its development." [Savina, 2023, p. 298] The transformations mentioned include the active word formation of nouns with the suffixes -schina, -change, -ization, abuse of the office, established phrases typical of business style, dearchaization, increased expressivity, the appearance of neologisms, the appearance of numerous abbreviations and other processes.

The transformations that took place in the language after October cannot be called accidental. As A.V. Matveeva notes, "by changing the language, it is possible to rebuild public thinking, which is successfully used by revolutionaries, speakers and government representatives" [Matveeva, 2017, p. 57]. K. V. Zuev believes that "it is language that becomes the object of manipulation that can influence the thinking and worldview of the country's population, and also, to stereotype his behavior" [Zuev, 2005, p. 3]. One of the ways to consciously influence the Russian language in order to influence its native speakers became its ideologization after the revolution of 1917.

Ideologization is understood by researchers as "a form of control over an individual's behavior for compliance with ideological canons" [Suchilkina, 2016, p. 29]. Ideologization implies the inculcation of certain ideas among a large number of people. At the same time, this process also becomes myth-making. "Over time, ideologization loses touch with the original fact; the fact, being repeatedly repeated, deformed and transformed into an existing semantic condensation independently and independently of the source, forms a myth — about stupid and rebellious Old Believers, about an excellent ruler of the state, about dangerous opponents of the current government" [Zagumennov, 2022, p. 810]. In Soviet times, ideologization affected various aspects of human life, including language. Her goal in relation to language was "to consolidate in the mass consciousness special stereotypes that would allow manipulating both society as a whole and the ruling elite of the state" [Suchilkina, 2016, p. 30]. To define ideologization, it is necessary to understand what an ideology is, the postulates of which reflect ideologization. In the philosophical dictionary, ideology is defined as "a system of political, legal, moral, aesthetic, religious and philosophical views in which people's attitude to social reality is recognized and evaluated" [KFS, pp. 129-130]. Based on this definition, we understand the ideologization of language as its subordination to a system of political, legal, moral, aesthetic, religious and philosophical ideas characteristic of a certain period of society's development.

The ideologization of the language was carried out in various fields of its use, primarily in newspapers. It was from newspapers that citizens learned about what was happening in the country. The newspaper was changing public consciousness.

The language of the Soviet newspapers of the first post-revolutionary years is considered by many researchers. V. I. Kim notes that an important component of it were slogans that "found a lively response from the Soviet workers" [Kim, 2015, p. 40]. T. V. Savina, analyzing the language of the newspaper Pionerskaya Pravda in the 1920s, reveals negative evaluative characteristics in it, such as treacherous, predatory, lackeyish, malicious [Savina, 2018, p. 93], including those expressed by colloquial vocabulary (bourgeois, Bourgeois) [Ibid., p. 94], the use of stable associative phrases such as power-loving Pan Pilsudski [Ibid., p. 96], etc. All these features are undoubtedly related to the ideologization of the newspaper's language, in connection with which the language underwent transformations reflecting an "ideologically oriented coordinate system" [Logunova, 2013, p. 131] and corresponding to the socio-cultural paradigm formed by state policy.

The purpose of this study was to identify ways of ideologizing the language of journalism that affect readers' perception of reality.

The subject of the study can be described as fundamental transformations in linguistic structures of different levels of the Russian language during the October Revolution. Hence, it would be appropriate to use periodicals based on the example of Krasnaya Gazeta as an object of research.

The methods of scientific research are the search and structuring of an array of theoretical and practical works on this topic. Historiographical and descriptive methods have made it possible to describe the realities in which the most striking transformations of language took place. The study of media texts was conducted using the method of content analysis, contextual analysis.

The publication Krasnaya Gazeta became the empirical basis for the study, and issues 1 to 296 for 1920 were thoroughly analyzed. The newspaper objectively reflects the changes that have taken place in society and the linguistic system, as it is the mouthpiece of a new ideology, an advanced publication that describes the most important events in the style typical of the post-revolutionary period. Krasnaya Gazeta was created by V. Volodarsky, a leader of the Russian revolutionary movement, in January 1918 and was published daily until February 1939. Its publication was initiated by the organs of the CPSU(b) and the Petrograd Soviet (later the Leningrad Soviet), and the newspaper became "the second most important propaganda mouthpiece of the St. Petersburg Bolsheviks after Petrogradskaya Pravda" [Izmozik, 2010, p. 13].

2. Linguistic means of ideologization in the publications of the Krasnaya Gazeta

Krasnaya Gazeta was created by V. Volodarsky, a leader of the Russian revolutionary movement, in January 1918 and was published daily until February 1939. Its publication was initiated by the organs of the CPSU(b) and the Petrograd Soviet (later the Leningrad Soviet), and the newspaper became "the second most important propaganda mouthpiece of the St. Petersburg Bolsheviks after Petrogradskaya Pravda" [Izmozik, 2010, p. 13].

This led to the fact that from the very moment of its creation, the newspaper was designed to cover the activities of the young Soviet state and, first of all, the events taking place in Petrograd. At the same time, the ideologization of the newspaper space was achieved by various means, including linguistic ones.

On the pages of the newspaper we see lexical units, the purpose of which is to name new phenomena of life associated with revolution and revolutionary changes in society. Here are a number of such lexemes found in the text of only one short article — "The New Initiative of the Petrograd Workers" [KG, No. 140, p. 2]: proletarians, proletarians, non-party, communists, bourgeoisie, toiler, initiative, etc. Many of the lexemes appear in combinations: Petrograd workers, ordinary worker, labor movement, red Petrograd, trade unions, Polish gentry, genuine communism, labor schools, generally useful work, the reconstruction of the whole world, a great undertaking, party organizations, etc. As we can see, in the structure of vocabulary describing new phenomena, semantic groups are formed, the components of which are often opposite in meaning: workers, toilers, bourgeois proletarians, former rulers of the world, etc. With the help of such words and combinations, events taking place in the country are described, and specifically this article describes the creation of rest homes for workers in estates previously owned by representatives of the bourgeoisie: "The island where the richest part of the bourgeoisie luxuriated has become an island where the most tired part of the proletariat rests" [Ibid.]. The peculiarity of this vocabulary is that it does not have a high stylistic coloring, does not have a solemn sound, but, nevertheless, conveys an important idea for the reader about the concern of the party for the common people, that the new country is a state for ordinary workers, not for the elite.

These words are simply the names of those realities that began to be described in the newspaper in connection with changes in the political life of the country, the names of "new phenomena and circumstances that required new (in one way or another) names" [Selishchev, 2003, p. 156]. They become instruments of ideologization due to the events and realities described with their help. It is these words that convey to readers the idea of the strength of the social changes that have taken place, of the stable existence of a new world that is designed for workers to ensure their better lives. They are found in almost all newspaper publications: "... The workers in all countries are already strong enough to adequately respond on this day to the hatred and malice of capitalism" ("Prepare for May 1!") [KG, No. 90, p. 1]; "When the revolutionary people overthrew the bourgeois system All European newspapers have raised a fierce howl against the "boorishness" and the "republic of the illiterate" ("National Education and Soviet Power") [KG, No. 280, p. 4].

In many articles of the Krasnaya Gazeta, conveying the revolutionary pathos of the era, there are various figurative and expressive means. For example, in the editorial dedicated to the fiftieth anniversary of V. I. Lenin, we see the epithets: "When, in moments of hopeless darkness, we hesitated, lost heart... our resilience was revealed in him, passing from him back to us"; metaphors: "We endured, we remained hammers"; phraseological units, including those with elements of transformation: "This is our Lenin! Flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone"; rhetorical questions: "And now, when he writes decrees..., isn't that a hammer-cutter working at the forge?" (we see here, in addition, one of the contexts of using the expanded metaphor given above), including their chains: "Who Doesn't remember the 17th year? Who does not remember Putilov, Aivazov, Lesner [meaning the workers of the Putilov factory, the factories of P. P. Aivazov and G. A. Lesner]? Who doesn't remember the crowd of a hundred thousand?"; anaphora: "And he is with us, he is ahead of us", as well as the previous example and the phrase "This is our Lenin!", which periodically occurs in the text at the beginning of paragraphs; syntactic parallelism: "We made him like this — this is our pride, our honor. He made us like this — this is his merit, his genius" [KG, No. 87, p. 1] (With the help of this technique, the mutual influence of the party and the people is emphasized, thereby conveying the idea of their unity and inseparable connection) and other means that help to create an uplifting mood, convey joy about that that Lenin was "vigorous, healthy, and strong" [Ibid.], and that he was celebrating his fiftieth birthday. Articles of this type, filled with figurative means, expressive vocabulary, exclamations and slogans, are designed to strengthen readers' understanding that the revolution that took place three years ago was a common victory and joy for all working people.

Expressive means are often found in headlines — the most powerful part of the publication, designed to attract the reader's attention, ideologically and emotionally influence his perception of what the article is about. This may be a metaphor: "The fate of the fragments of Yudenich's army" [KG, No. 28, p. 2]; metonymy: "The hammer and the plow will win!" [KG, No. 31, p. 2]; hyperbole: "Death throes and bloody dungeons" [KG, No. 28, p. 2]; antithesis: "Victory or death" [KG, No. 28, p. 2]; rhetorical questions: "Isn't it time?" [KG, No. 34, p. 4]; rhetorical exclamations: "Take and take an example!" [KG, No. 30, p. 1]; question-and-answer technique with a question in the title and an answer in the text of the article or note: "What should I read?" [KG, No. 28, p. 4], etc. Such headlines increase the emotional background of the newspaper, encourage the reader to experience feelings of concern, empathy, resentment, interest, etc., which means they increase the ideological power of publications.

Attention is drawn to the abundance of military metaphors related to the existence of the state in a civil war: "Be on guard, Petrograd!" (KG, No. 98, p. 1), "Shock Industrial groups" (KG, No. 98, p. 4), etc. Actions in the rear are positioned as a component of the war being waged on the fronts.

Some of the expressions that appeared in the newspaper's language as vivid and expressive can turn into cliches and become formulaic. For example, in the headings "Tasks on the grain front" [KG, No. 20, p. 4], "News from the labor front" [KG, No. 21, p. 1] as the name of the permanent heading, "To the industrial front" [KG, No. 21, p. 2] we see the stamps labor front, the bread front and the industrial front, built initially on the basis of a military metaphor — a reinterpretation of the word front. There are headlines in which the direct and figurative meanings of this word collide: "On the fronts of the military, on the fronts of labor" [KG, No. 26, p. 1], which indicates the conscious treatment of the newspaper's authors with phrases that have become formulaic and the desire to revive them.

Another example is the boilerplate use of a combination that has lost its imagery under the banner: "Under the banner of the III International" [KG, No. 23, p. 2]. In addition, the headings that use the control lexemes look boilerplate: "Workers' control and catering" [KG, No. 24, p. 3], "Women's control" [KG, No. 24, p. 4] or the question: "The Polish question" [KG, No. 27, p. 1], "The food question" [KG, No. 27, p. 3]. A.M. Selishchev wrote in 1927 about such expressions: "Many of them had first, the emotional meaning. But as they spread in wide circles, they lost their emotional connotation. Being used frequently in speech, some of the favorite words and combinations have lost not only their emotional coloring, but also their real meaning" [Selishchev, 2003, p. 115].

It seems to us that in the articles of 1920, these expressions have not yet acquired the qualities of a stamp. For ordinary workers, the majority of newspaper readers, they are still strong and sought-after means of language that have a great influence on them and their views, their ideas about the situation in the country.

The clerical style becomes part of the language of the Krasnaya Gazeta newspaper — "the common name of the phenomenon in the Russian language, which consists in the fact that words inherent in the official business style are used in other literary styles, as well as in the spoken language. These words, in turn, are called clerical phrases" [Abayeva, 2022, p. 12]. For example: "Modern living conditions force us to pay special attention to the physical condition of children" ("Child Health protection") [KG, No. 46, p. 4]. This sentence is oversaturated with clerical-style words that are located in each of its parts: modern living conditions, pay special attention to the physical condition.

The negative properties of these stylistic elements are undeniable for researchers. Clerical style words depersonalize newspaper text and reduce the degree of its impact on the reader, in addition, "thanks to the clerical style, what is said seems more significant" [Anisimov, 2019, p. 643]. However, in the newspaper of 1920, it seems to us that they play another role, which cannot be described unambiguously as a sign of poor use of language resources: with their help, readers are shown that life has completely settled into a rut, has been established and is developing according to certain principles and rules. That is, the clerical style becomes a means of ideologizing the language, forming a certain perception of reality among readers.

Colloquial vocabulary comes into stylistic contrast with the vocabulary of the clerical style. In the article "It's a shame", telling that "some citizens" shirk from cleaning the house territory with the help of "all kinds of certificates", we read: "Let other committees [that is, committees of the poor, an abbreviated word, a sign of the time] not take into account different pieces of paper" [KG, No. 46, p. 4]. With the help of a stylistically reduced word of paper, dubious certificates are named here, which are not reasons to exempt from labor: "Such certificates, of course, have no force, and therefore the teacher, at the request of the brigade commander, was fined for refusing to clean the house" [Ibid.].

Ideologization also manifests itself as an artificial polarization of evaluation: bad — good, friend — foe. The polarization of the means of expressing appreciation leads to the fact that the high style is used to tell "about one's own", and the low style is used to tell "about others". This is clearly seen in the following example, where the colloquial word is included in the title of the article: "Yudenich stole and was arrested" [KG, No. 22, p. 1]. Here, again, we see not the accidental use of a stylistically reduced word, but its fulfillment of a certain function — a negative characteristic of the behavior of the general of the White Army. The article aims to show the general not as the leader of the white movement, but as a thief who embezzled "sums of money from the army" [Ibid.].

A spoken word can also become a tool for bringing the author and the addressee of the text closer. For example, during the 1920 campaign to combat typhus, this disease was called in two ways: the official compound name typhus and the colloquial word typhus. At the same time, in the headlines located on one page of the newspaper, we see the predominance of the sypnyak lexeme: "The fight against typhus begins today," "Lectures on measures to combat typhus," "To fight typhus," "There will be no regular Council meeting on Wednesday, as all members are mobilized to fight typhus. zypnyak", "Zypnyak Week" [KG, No. 31, p. 3]. These headlines, in addition, are another example of a military metaphor, with which the newspaper describes many phenomena — the fight against whites, illiteracy, typhus, mobilization, etc. By the way, there is also a template-type heading on this page based on a military metaphor: "On the western front" [Ibid.].

Among the morphological means of language that contribute to its ideologization, one can note the collective we — the frequent use of the pronouns we and our to designate the subject on whose behalf the article or note is written. For example: "It seemed that an ominous vicious circle of crises had closed in, which was daily intensifying our devastation" ("Broad Opportunities") [KG, No. 45, p. 2]; "We, women workers and peasants of all countries, realized that our interests were linked to the common interests of the entire proletariat and peasantry" ("Under the banner of the Communist International") [KG, No. 179, p. 4]. It is in this way — from the first person plural — that most of the publications are constructed, and in some sentences we can find several forms of these pronouns at once: "We are sure that our brothers in the West will find a way to get to us in whatever by all means" ("An important step") [KG, No. 22, p. 1]. The headings contain the corresponding forms of the 1st person plural verbs.: "We will overcome everything" [KG, No. 32, p. 3].

The pronouns we and our allow the authors of articles, firstly, to create the impression that they speak on behalf of the broad masses of working people, and secondly, to unite themselves and readers. As a result of using this technique, the reader should feel that he himself is partly the exponent of the thoughts that are conveyed in the articles and notes of the newspaper, that the newspaper is intended specifically for him and reflects his living needs, that the main purpose of the government, which is associated with the newspaper, is to understand the reader's key problems, help him, take care of his work and a desire to make his life easier and express his interests.

Slogans are of great importance in the structure of the newspaper, most of which take the form of rhetorical exclamations and appeals: "Down with sloppiness!" [KG, No. 26, p. 3], "Down with sloppiness and theft!" [KG, No. 27, p. 3], "We must work!" [KG, No. 27, p. 4], "Join our ranks!" [KG, No. 27, p. 4], "To fight and fight!" [KG, No. 29, p. 1], "Down with the devastation!" [KG, No. 29, p. 3], "Let's all go to the fight!" [KG, No. 30, p. 2], "May the ruin disappear! Long live labor!" [KG, No. 31, p. 1], "We will win!" [KG, No. 35, p. 2], etc. Slogans are the headlines of articles with the most pronounced ideological meaning. V. I. Kim notes that slogans had a significant impact on readers, most of whom were illiterate, and they began to use the strongest slogans themselves in their letters to the newspaper and in oral speech [Kim, 2015, p. 38]. This proves their importance as a means of ideologizing the newspaper's language.

3. Conclusions

An analysis of the language of the issues of Krasnaya Gazeta, published in 1920, showed that the newspaper's publications used a whole range of linguistic tools through which the ideologization of the language was achieved. Language tools helped to introduce many important ideological postulates into the reader's perception: ideas about the strength of the new world, the state's concern for ordinary people, the joy of life in Soviet society, the unity of all workers in the struggle for a new life, the equality of all citizens of the new world, the importance of the needs of ordinary readers, the expression in the newspaper of common problems for authors and readers and so on . The newspaper pursues a conscious policy of linguistic rapprochement with the people and exerting ideological influence on them through language. We are witnessing how, after the revolution of 1917, the language of journalism becomes one of the means of ideologizing society.

The ideologization of language in the post-revolutionary period, reflected in the Krasnaya Gazeta, demonstrates the effect of external laws of language development, language change under the influence of political transformations of society. The scale of linguistic changes is undoubtedly determined by the scale of political and ideological transformations. Whatever happens in society, language sensitively absorbs it and accurately reflects it. However, in the language of the first post-revolutionary years, we see a conscious nature of influence on the language in order to ideologize it and, as a result, to ideologize society.

The study of the language of Russian newspapers in the first years after the October Revolution of 1917 has great prospects. Many features of the language of that time, reflected in the language of the newspaper, deserve attention, such as the military metaphor, the formation of neologisms, the use of abbreviated names, etc.