“Delusion about History” as a Socio-Cultural Diagnosis of the 1960-1970s: Andrej Sinjavskij and Arkadij Belinkov

Abstract

Arkadij Belinkov (1921-1970) and Andrej Sinjavskij (1925-1997) were not members of one literary movement, but their works are often considered jointly as samples of “dissident criticism”. In this article I hope to argue that they can both be interpreted as successors to the Russian Formalism methodology of the 1960s. But they used the results of philological interpretations to solve the existential problem – i.e. the self-identification of a subject in the historical process. It was necessary for Belinkov and Sinjavskij because they both rejected the Soviet (and Hegelian) image of history as the teleologically aimed stream. Belinkov and Sinjavskij independently invented the new – personal and existential – justification of the history of culture.