How Tartu-Moscow Group Was Made?

Abstract

Tartu-Moscow Group was one of the most amazing phenomena in the world of semiotic and Russian humanities in general. In the paper I try to describe and explain the phenomenon of that scientific school using theoretical categories which it introduced. It is a legitimate procedure since, as was pointed out by the Group’s members, scientific texts describing the culture are themselves texts of culture. In the first part I present two semiotic ideas of Yurii Lotman: the idea of creativeness as a creative translation and the theory of binary and ternary systems. In the second part I attempt to apply the first idea to the explanation of innovative activity of the Group. I argue that the source of its creativity was great diversity of theoretical frameworks and attitudes of the Group’s members combined with unity provided by a common theoretical language and a way in which the Group was organized. In the third part of the paper I indicate that the discourse of the Tartu-Moscow Group was ternary and distinguished it from the prevailing binary communist culture. The discourse of the Group was a subversion, rather than inversion of the dominant ideological discourse. Only for that reason the Group could be creative. In conclusion I draw some structural similarities between the Group, literary salons of 19th Russia and the Polish social movement of Solidarity.