ABSTRACT
Stephen Kotkin's idea of 'Speaking Bolshevik' has been a mainstay or touchstone of early Soviet historiography for two decades. For subscribers to the Soviet subjectivity approach, learning to speak Bolshevik seemed to necessitate forgetting or at least disowning any other language you might have known. This chapter examines the survival of pre-Soviet paradigms, or what we might call 'cultural registers', evident in citizens' critical humour, focusing specifically on the awareness of pre-1917 times and the persistence of religious discourse. It then studies from several perspectives the manner in which ordinary citizens related to Power, drawing parallels with practices under tsarism but also criticizing such comparisons when they focus more on form than upon content, contemporary meaning, and perception. The chapter concludes by reflecting on what the 'crosshatching' approach can add to our understanding of change and continuity in these tumultuous times.
