The Soviet empire of signs: A social and intellectual history of the Tartu School of Semiotics (Iurii Lotman)

This dissertation examines the interrelationships between science and society by focusing on the case of the Tartu School of Semiotics, which was led by Iurii Lotman and was active in the 1960s--1980s in the Soviet Union. Based on fieldwork interviews, participant observation and archival research conducted primarily in Moscow and Tartu (Estonia), this study reconstructs the intellectual paradigm of the Tartu School, demonstrates its intellectual significance and traces its reception in the Soviet Union and the West. Furthermore, the intellectual history of the School is illuminated through the social history of its participants' engagements in the social contestations over the definition and power of knowledge, culture and the intelligentsia in Soviet society.; The dissertation argues that the School's original theoretical insights and research agenda offer valuable contributions to the contemporary debates on culture, history and modernity. Yet---the argument goes---the Tartu intellectual paradigm was not only an extension of past intellectual traditions or contemporary intellectual currents; it also reflected and refracted its producers' efforts to impose their vision of social reality and their own place in it in the course of Soviet "academic wars." In particular, the dissertation traces the connections and affinities between the evolution of the Tartu paradigm "from structures to texts" and the transformation of the School's social strategies from attempts to gain institutional power within Soviet academia to the establishment of the informal social network of "second science."; As such, the Tartu School stands as a revealing case for understanding the informal public sphere, subversive practices and myths, as well as patterns of elite struggles in Soviet academia and society. Beyond having purely historical significance, the findings of this dissertation have implications for understanding post-Soviet culture and politics of science and intellectual elites. By adopting a "symmetrical" perspective on science and society, this study develops a theoretical and practical critique of reductionist approaches, especially strong in the field of Soviet and Russian studies. Finally, by making comparisons and tracing interactions between Soviet and Western scholarship, this history of the Tartu School adds a comparative and transnational edge to contemporary sociology of knowledge and science studies.