Forgotten Pioneers of Soviet Semiotics

Abstract

In his study of the history and doctrine of Russian Formalism Erlich noted that substantial progress had been made in the development of the theory of language and semiotics between 1916 and 1926, especially in the early twenties. Before that time the science of signs was “virtually non-existent” in Russia. By 1930, the new discipline of semiotics was “well under way,” however, no longer in Russia but in Czechoslovakia (1969:158). Erlich described the political suppression of the Formalist movement in the Soviet Union in 1930, as well as subsequent campaigns against “Formalism” in music, the arts and comparative literary history in 1936 and 1949.