How to Recognize a Complaint among Other Genres of

In the Soviet period the practice of writing to the authorities was extremely popular. The authorities stimulated the flow of information from below. For their part, citizens felt the need to make regular appeals to the authorities. It was one of only a few channels (and on some issues, the only one) for reporting problems in the functioning of the system. Besides, the various effects of a totalitarian-authoritarian society in different periods of the Soviet era gave rise to a need for communication with the authorities among citizens, resulting in streams of private letters to the leaders, greetings, thanks, and so on. People wrote a lot and for a variety of reasons, and therefore the desire of researchers to classify the arrays of appeals, highlight genres, and limit areas of interest, makes perfect sense. Meanwhile no attempt at classification has achieved clarity and unambiguity in separating one genre of appeal from the others.

In fact, researchers are not the first to try to classify applications by genre.

Initial attempts at classification have been the work of officials, who developed bureaucratic mechanisms for the effective handling of appeals. Each of the versions of laws dealing with complaints and appeals—from the very beginning of the Soviet period to 2006—necessarily contains a classification.

The decree of 1919, which established the Central Bureau (Decree of NKGK 1919), introduced two main types of applications: complaints and statements.

A Decree of 1968 established a triple classification of applications: suggestions, statements, and complaints, and a unifying term “applications” covering all three (Decree of Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR 1968). The same classification was reproduced in Law No. 59, in effect presently (Law No. 59 2006). Between these two laws, the classifications changed, and sometimes

“complaint” was completely excluded from the category of appeals to the authorities (see chapter 3).

According to legislation, each type of appeal is linked to its tasks, functions, and scenarios of bureaucratic processing. In practice, this ideal classification serves more as an approximate guideline for sorting of applications, but it has never been ignored entirely. The next stage of classification of applications is done by the employees of the apparatus receiving the applications. The work always starts from the review of recently received appeals, since the first task to solve is defining the problem and relating it to the competence of the addressee. This review establishes the genre and the further route of the application. There were and are no clear requirements for addressing appeals or general stylistic guidelines differentiating the applications by genre. This stage of classification depends on the particular employee tasked with evaluating incoming correspondence.

Sometimes, the authors of appeals themselves define the genres by titling their appeals. This is an important classifying argument; however, it cannot be trusted completely. If we believe that the author is likely unaware of the intricacies of bureaucracy, then we cannot be sure how consistent her views will be with the genres of official classification. On the other hand, if we believe that the author is aware, then we cannot exclude the possibility of manipulation. In other words, if bureaucracy processes complaints more efficiently than all other genres of appeal, then why would an author label her message any other way?

An application may be reclassified several times during processing. Finally, they are placed in archives, where they have to be classified once again in accordance with the logic of archival storage. At this stage applications may be re-sorted on new criteria. As a result, the researcher deals with an array of applications which are very different, and which she must reclassify again from the perspective of her own research. When selecting texts for

my research, I was guided by one simple rule: if the text contained a direct or indirect request for fairness, then it could be considered a complaint. It turned out to be the most difficult to specify a complaint among the types of appeals having semantic, functional, and institutional intersections: a petition, a denunciation, and an administrative lawsuit. The following subsections explain my classification methods.

Complaint versus Petition

Translation of the term zhaloba as “petition” is normalized in academic discourse. It is explainable in terms of the practice of translation. “Petition”

is really a rather close equivalent of zhaloba, especially in the context of Western legally modernized countries, from which most English scholarship on the subject comes.

The word “petition” was created in the eighteenth century from the Latin root “petō,” which means “I assault, I attack, I demand.” In English the meaning of the term “petition” is very close to the universal notion of application, which may mean both addressing the authorities or the courts.⁵ With this versatility and variability of meanings, the noun “petition” is very similar to zhaloba. Both zhaloba and petition constitute a peaceful alternative for conflict resolution.

Hence, petition is a notion and phenomenon belonging to Western political culture, formed primarily in Western Europe and North America. A petition is a forceful demand, while zhaloba is a humble request. Petition does not imply the political loyalty or weak position of an applicant, while zhaloba does.

Zhaloba normally works as an individual emotional application, prompted by an individual problem, but the petition is typically understood as a formal written demand, signed by many people, ⁶ aimed at protecting a common good. Furthermore, a petition is usually comprehended as an initial act that can galvanize and mobilize people to further political action (Almbjär 2019:1), while the mechanism of complaint was traditionally used in Russia to extinguish public discontent and prevent protests.

5 Cambridge Dictionary. “Petition.” Retrieved on June 30, 2019 (https://dictionary.

cambridge.org/ru/словарь/английский/petition).

6 Oxford Dictionary. “Petition.” Retrieved on June 30, 2019 (https://en.oxforddictionaries.

com/definition/petition).

In the context of contemporary Russian and, especially, Soviet reality, petition acquired specific meanings. Petition as a genre of application to the authorities was delegitimized in the Soviet period, and was in some decades illegal. Collective applications have never been prohibited officially. Plenty of complaints signed by many people are available in the archives, although they are never labeled petitions. The concept of “petition” could be used to designate a collective complaint as an illegitimate or seditious form of appealing to the authorities. Nérard gives an illuminating example of the use of the word: “At the meeting of the Bureau of the Soviet Control Commission in December 1936, N. Antipov takes the floor in order to criticize the collective letter, sent to the Commission” (Nérard 2004:78). The letter is a complaint by nature, but before sending it, the authors “collected” the signatures. Thus, they sent a “petition,” which, according to Antipov, the addressee cannot allow. The “petition” thus acquired a negative connotation, increasing the risks for its authors. Thus, a collective letter could easily be labeled a petition, which in minor cases could lead addressees to ignore it, and in serious ones could bring reprisals on authors’ heads—especially during the early years of the Soviet period. In the late Soviet period the official attitude toward collective letters was noticeably softened, but the genre of petitions, in the Western sense, was never welcomed by the regime.

In the second part of the Soviet period hostility to petitions manifested itself overtly. The development of the petition movement took place in between 1965 and 1968 on a wave of increasing dissident sentiments. Aleksander Sungurov connects the emergence of this social phenomenon with the resignation of Khrushchev and the relative easing of the regime that lasted until the entry of Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia (Sungurov 1998:32). Late-Soviet petitions were open letters to the party-state elite, expressing some collective opinion on policy issues, compiled by prominent figures of science and culture in the USSR.

The themes of these letters were warnings against the possible rehabilitation of Stalinism and protests against the beginning of political trials. During this period the concept of a petition acquired the notion of a democratic means of fighting for rights, transplanted from democratically developed countries.

The development of the movement led to the banning of petitions and increasing repressions against petitioners. In March 1966, three petitions signed

by famous figures in Soviet cultural and scientific life warned the Politburo that its actions were not approved. The signatories (including Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn) were labeled parasites, yet their petitions reached the West, aroused criticism, and injured the Soviet image abroad. In September 1966 the XXIII Congress denounced the protestors and introduced articles 190-1 and 190-3 (slander) into the Criminal Code. These articles were frequently used at the closed trials of petitioners and demonstrators (Lozansky 1989:7–8). Thus, under the conditions of Soviet society, the petition was excluded from the set of legitimate forms of appeal to the authorities. The concept itself was highly marginalized and endowed with negative connotations alongside collective action and open protest, which were severely suppressed by the state.

In contemporary Russia, especially in recent years, the Western type of petition has increased in strength. The contemporary Russian petition retains the meaning of a collective appeal to the authorities pursuing protection of collective goods. Petitions are now legitimate and quite effective. Through international websites like change.org and avaaz.com Russian petitions are attached to a global practice of petitioning. It is important to understand that in the Russian context a petition is not the same as a complaint. This is a fundamentally unique form with its own formal and informal regulations, possibilities of influence, and limits of effectiveness. Petitions are excluded from the category of appeals to the authorities regulated by the law No. 59.

So these “new” petitions are not directly related to the complaint mechanism in Russia, and developed separately.

Complaint versus Denunciation

The genre of denunciations is the most studied in the entire Soviet and post-Soviet history of appeals to the authorities. This is not surprising, since the phenomenon of denunciation affected such a large number of spheres of human existence, and opens up so many questions concerning both the motives of the authorities and human nature itself. The phenomenon of denunciation during the reign of Stalin presents an outstanding case of how the authorities could use the mechanism of appeals for their own purposes, subordinating everything to control, including the internal motives and moral choices of people. In this section, I compare the denunciation and the

complaint in order to identify points of contact, traces of mutual influence, and also to feel the fundamental differences between these two forms of appeals to the authorities.

Due to the brightness and complexity of the phenomenon, the concept of denunciation sometimes seems to fit the general definition of appeals to the authorities—at least during the Soviet period. A review of Soviet legislation and historical research proves that denunciation is actually a modified form of complaint that arose in specific sociopolitical conditions for a rather short period, which limited to the late 1920s to early 1940s.

The format of the denunciation is derived from the complaint simply because the regulatory framework governing work with complaints, as well as the institutional infrastructure serving this work, arose before the first flowering of denunciation. Work with denunciations was carried out partly by the Soviet bureaucracy of complaints, which had already been established by the end of the 1920s. The Bureau of Complaints, which was founded in 1920 and after the reform of 1923 became the part of the administrative system, was an important body participating in the consideration of denunciations (Nérard 2004). In the process of increasing denunciations, however, the circle of addressees was expanded and specified.

Nérard in his book consistently shows that the prevalence of appeals to the authorities in the form of denunciations was the result of a deliberate policy of the Soviet government. Since the mid-1920s a number of measures were taken by the authorities in support of this genre. The first thing was the removal of the word “denunciation,” which bore the stamp of an immoral act, from the official discourse. This was because the term had negative associations with the practice of informing on or betraying someone to the authorities. According to Nérard, until 1938, the concept was completely absent from official texts. The term “signal” was introduced into active use instead of “denunciation.” Soviet official discourse created norms that justified the act of transmitting information and released it from feelings of shame and betrayal. “Signaling” to the authorities was not meant to be synonymous with “denunciation to the authorities.”

In 1927, the state began to develop legislative and ideological support for whistleblowing. The efforts of the authorities were reinforced by the generally

deplorable situation in a country suffering from mass poverty and hunger, experiencing mass migrations from villages to the cities. Simultaneously, researchers note a sharp increase in literacy precisely in this period. In generalized indicators, ignoring regional diversity, in comparison to the levels of 1913 the percentage of literate people in the USSR had almost doubled by 1930, from 33% to 63% (Sokolov 1999).

The following year, in 1928, a campaign of self-criticism was launched (kampaniia samokritiki). Self-criticism was explained by socialist propaganda as a necessary response to the evil resulting from excessive bureaucratization (biurokratizm), the increasing pressure of capitalism, and the resistance of hostile social groups (for example, kulaks). In February 1937 the authorities started a vigilance campaign (kampaniia bditel’nosti). It called on people to suspect everyone of sabotage and spying, to be attentive to the behavior and conversations of everyone around.

Initially, the People’s Commissariat of Working-Peasant Inspection (RKI) was the main addressee receiving and processing denunciations, and after 1934 the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) was added. The production of denunciations was intensified by a cohort of professional informers (stukachi) among workers (rabkory) and peasants (sel’kory). As a result denunciation acquired specific features. Firstly, the disclosure of certain phenomena, processes, or actions was to be the main motive for application.

Secondly, denunciations used a specialized vocabulary, determined by the class approach, normative ideas about the behavior of a Soviet person, and popular clichés from the emerging language of the Soviet ideology. Thirdly, denunciations had a particular circle of addressees. Finally, applications were to be signed. Anonymous letters were generally prohibited, except for cases when a public official was denounced:

It is necessary to specify your last name and address correctly, because sometimes additional information is required ... . If the complainant, for some reason—especially when exposing saboteurs and malicious bureaucrats—prefers not to disclose his or her last name, he or she may make such a statement (Zhaloby passazhirov 1934).

In fact, real denunciations were often anonymous.

Meanwhile, classification of denunciations experiences the same problems as classification of any other genre of applications. Despite a clear definition of the addressees, it was possible to send “signals” everywhere. If the addressee recognized the characteristics of a denunciation, the application could be forwarded to RKI or NKVD. Similarly, the RKI and NKVD received a lot of different sorts of appeals, not just denunciations. As a result of sorting and forwarding archives were built which are available today for study.

Nérard, who worked in the archives, says that the selection of denunciations from the total mass of letters is the result of analytical assessment, the criteria for which are not as straightforward as it may seem. Most of the appeals stored there are ordinary complaints, containing requests for help and assistance in solving private problems. At some point the regime created the conditions under which a revelatory letter became the primary code in communication between citizens and the authorities. Regardless of whether citizens believed in the existence of “enemies of the people,” “alien elements,”

or “saboteurs,” these categories temporarily became significant elements of the political language and, therefore, filtered into letters of complaints, as a complaint has to be composed in the language of its recipient:

Documents that we find in accessible and open archives do not meet expectations. There are no or almost no letters of denunciations, as they are represented in films or works of art. No or almost no anonymous short, sharp notes. You can usually find extensive, reasoned and signed statements. Charges, typical for denunciations are often included in long letters of complaints. If we have a letter addressed to the highest authorities with a complaint about someone’s unfair decision (for example, unlawful dismissal), the author of the decision is named by name, disclosed in flaws or punishable actions, is it necessary to talk about a denunciation (Nérard 2004:4)?⁷

7 All the direct quatations from Nérard (2004) were translated by Elena Bogdanova.

Of course, there were denunciations that were written purposefully as a powerful tool of political repression. These “real” denunciations are dissolved in a huge ocean of ordinary letters, complaints, and statements. Furthermore, an application compiled in accordance with the rules of denunciation could pursue the same purpose as a regular complaint. As much as the standard complaint, a denunciation could be used as a tool to protect private interests and restore justice. In a certain period of time, the feedback channel which citizens habitually used for solving their particular problems acquired dangerous features.

It is well known that denouncing was associated with a large number of risks and threats from the side of Soviet government, or from the side of “the people’s” avengers, who punished informers in their own way. It is also known, meanwhile, that decisions on denunciations could be made very effectively.

The code of disclosure together with the accusatory lexica became for a time common and popular, and took the place of important arguments in the texts of the appeals. The period of denunciation influenced the formation of the language of the Soviet complaint. In the following chapters, I show that characteristics of the denunciation were not completely developed until the end of the Soviet period, and the vocabulary of ordinary complaints retains their traces.

Complaint versus Administrative Appeal

In legal and socio-political sources, the complaint mechanism is usually called the “administrative way of solving problems.” The appeal itself is called “an administrative complaint.” The administrative way is usually distinguished from the judicial one, which is triggered by a court complaint, a lawsuit or criminal statement, carried out under the conditions of the judiciary, and makes decisions under the norms of legislation. Work with a complaint addressed to the authorities occurs within the state administrative apparatus.

In this sense, the hero of this thesis is the administrative (for the addressee) complaint and the bureaucratic apparatus that ensures its circulation.

A distinction between judicial and administrative complaints was commonly accepted until recently. However, if we label any complaint addressed to the authorities as an administrative complaint, we risk facing new intersections—this

time due to historical features of the existence of administrative justice in Russia.

The discourse of administrative justice which has been formed in recent years insists on the need to introduce specific terms denoting the law and specifying features of procedural relations in administrative cases: administrative case, administrative lawsuit, administrative complaint, administrative claimant (applicant), administrative defendant, etc. (Salishcheva 2003). In this sense, the concept of “administrative complaint” (substantively) means addressing violations and abuses stipulated by the administrative code. In contemporary

The discourse of administrative justice which has been formed in recent years insists on the need to introduce specific terms denoting the law and specifying features of procedural relations in administrative cases: administrative case, administrative lawsuit, administrative complaint, administrative claimant (applicant), administrative defendant, etc. (Salishcheva 2003). In this sense, the concept of “administrative complaint” (substantively) means addressing violations and abuses stipulated by the administrative code. In contemporary