situation 552.sit.61 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

If the Tsarist Russian state was very bureaucratic, the Soviet State was even more so. Stalin capitalized on the Russians' traditional view of language and signs in general (be they icons or political posters) as primary. Language (the document) determines reality, and not vice versa. This situation has a host of corollaries. Lacking a document means that one does not exist in some important sense. Anyone who was arrested and executed, particularly if he was an "enemy of the people," could become a nonperson. His existence could be expunged from the record. Photographs were retouched to show the new reality (see the new book The Commissar Vanishes, by David King). Names were changed: when Trotsky became an "enemy of the people" anyone with that surname could become a victim; many changed their names (this in spite of the fact that "Trotsky" was itself the Revolutionary name of Lev Bernshtein, so anyone with the real surname was not a relative!). When Beria, head of the NKVD, fell into disfavor, the B volume of the Soviet Encyclopedia had already come out. Subscribers were sent an expanded page on the Bering Straights and instructed to paste it in over the article praising Beria. The enemy ceased to exist!