GHOSTS of the unburied dead are not only a supernatural phenomenon. As Alexander Etkind’s superb study of Russian cultural memory makes all too clear, they affect literature, art, public life and mental health too.

　　含冤而死的人阴魂不散，这不仅仅是一种超自然现象。亚历山大•艾特坎德对俄罗斯文化记忆的卓越研究清晰地揭示出，冤魂也影响到文学、艺术、社会生活及人们的心理健康。

　　Mr Etkind―shortly to leave Cambridge University for a post in Italy―won acclaim for his previous book, “Internal Colonisation: Russia’s Imperial Experience” (2011), which showed how the country’s rulers in past centuries treated their own people as badly as other empires have treated their colonies. His new book, “Warped Mourning”, looks at the memory of the Stalinist terror: different from the Holocaust, he argues, because of its suicidal and random nature. Those persecuted by Adolf Hitler typically knew the reason, however hateful and twisted, for their suffering. Most of Josef Stalin’s victims had no idea. They included the hapless victims of the authorities’ requirement for quotas of subversives, those named in random denunciations, and loyal communists; even those who until recently had been implementing the purges.

　　艾特坎德先生即将短期内离开剑桥大学，在意大利的一个新岗位上工作。他在2011年出版的前一本著作《内部殖民：俄罗斯帝国的体验》曾赢得了读者的赞誉。他在这本书中向读者展示了过去数百年间俄罗斯统治者们对待本国人民的残暴。他们对待本国人民的做法与其它帝国对待其殖民地如出一辙。而他的新作《扭曲的哀伤》则分析了斯大林的暴政留给俄国人的记忆。他认为发生在俄国的恐怖中出现了众多的自杀现象，而且具有随机性，这一点与发生在纳粹德国的大屠杀不同。受到希特勒迫害的人一般都知道加在自己头上的“罪名”是什么(尽管有些“罪名”极其变态，令人痛恨)。而大多数斯大林暴政下的牺牲者却死的不明不白。他们有的是在当局定下“破坏份子”的数额时不幸成了凑人头的牺牲品;有的是在胡乱告发中被人点了名;有些人是忠诚的共产党人;而有些人直至被捕前还在执行清洗任务。

　　The result, Mr Etkind argues, is a double mourning: for lost lives and years on the one hand, and, for many, lost ideals too. Uncertainty compounds suffering. Many loved ones simply disappeared. Their relatives did not know why they had been taken, whether they would return, who would follow them, and who might be taken next.

　　艾特坎德先生认为其结果导致了双重的悲哀：一方面是为无辜的生命和迷失的年代而悲哀，另一方面是为许多人丧失了理想而悲哀。那时人们是痛苦中夹杂着不安。许多亲人如同人间蒸发一样就不见了。其亲属不知道他们被逮捕的缘由，也不知道他们是否还能被放回来。谁会是下一个失踪者?又该轮上谁被抓了?

　　Mr Etkind ranges expertly through cultural theory, finding in film, literary criticism, linguistics, art and philosophy the effect of the Stalinist trauma on later Soviet and now Russian generations. He sees a taste for grotesque magical realism as one of the consequences: vampires and walking beefsteaks, or, to take an example from Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a giant frozen salamander discovered in the tundra, roasted and devoured by starving prisoners. Another strand is absurd pseudo-historical encounters―magical historicism―epitomised by Alexei German’s 1998 film “Khrustalyov, My Car!”, where a doctor, the victim of gang-rape in one of the gulag prisons, is summoned to attend to a dying Stalin.

　　艾特坎德先生从文化理论、电影故事、文学评论、语言学、艺术和哲学等方面进行了内容广泛的专业探索，分析了斯大林时期的暴政对后苏联时期至现在的俄罗斯这数代人产生了何种影响。他发现其后果之一就是这几代人喜爱荒诞的魔幻现实主义作品：如吸血鬼与行走的僵尸，或者如亚历山大•索尔仁尼琴(Alexander Solzhenitsyn)的作品中讲述的一个故事。故事描述了一群饥饿的囚犯在北极的荒原中发现了一头巨大的火蜥蜴，他们立即将这头冰冻的神兽烤熟后狼吞虎咽地吃掉。他发现这几代人还迷恋上了荒诞不经的伪历史加魔幻历史主义的作品。阿列克谢•日尔曼(Alexei German)1998年导演的电影《哈鲁斯坦洛夫，开车!》，就是这类作品的典型代表。在这部电影中，一位医生被抓进一所古拉格集中营，在狱中惨遭轮奸。但她却受命去照料影片中临终的斯大林。

　　Excursions into high theory (readers who know the work of Walter Benjamin, a German-Jewish critic, will feel quite at home here), are punctuated with searing personal testimonies, some from Mr Etkind’s own family. When his grandfather returned from the gulag, his own son pushed past him, not recognising the shabby old man sitting on the stairs.

　　瓦尔特•本雅明(Walter Benjamin)是德籍犹太人，他是一位文学批评家。凡读过他的作品的读者如果再来读艾特坎德先生的这本充满了高深理论的著作，那一定会感到非常亲切。您会不时在这本书中读到亲历者们痛苦的个人回忆。而有些回忆就来自作者的家庭成员。当他的祖父从古尔格集中营中被释放回家后，他的亲生儿子从这个坐在楼梯口的老人身旁擦身而过，但却没有认出这个衣衫褴褛的人是谁。

　　The author highlights some extraordinary attempts by gulag inmates to make psychological and moral sense of their fate. Yulian Oksman, for example, was a prominent historian (a risky profession in the Stalin era) who spent nine years in some of the harshest camps. After he was released he devoted himself to the detailed textual analysis of an obscure document: a letter from a 19th-century critic, Vissarion Belinsky, to the novelist, Nikolai Gogol, criticising his “sermons” in a country where serfdom was tantamount to slavery. What Russia needed, said Belinsky, was “the awakening in the people of a sense of their human dignity lost for so many centuries amid dirt and unfreedom.”

　　本书作者着重描述了一些古拉格集中营内被囚者们很普通的尝试，目的是要从心理与道德层面厘清他们的命运。例如，于连•奥克斯曼(Yulian Oksman)是一位杰出的历史学家(斯大林统治时期一种高风险的职业)，他在几所最严酷的集中营内被囚禁了9年。获释后他全身心地投入到一份晦涩难懂的原始文件的仔细研究中。这是一篇19世纪的文学批判文章，是维萨里昂•别林斯基(Vissarion Belinsky)写给小说家尼古拉•果戈理(Nikolai Gogol)的一封信。他在信中批判果戈理是在一个农奴等同于奴隶的国家里“布道”。别林斯基在信中说，俄国真正需要的是“唤醒民众做人的尊严。他们的这种意识在经历了这么多世纪的禁锢后已经被埋在厚厚的泥土中了。”

　　Mr Etkind describes it as an “astonishing letter…one of the strongest appeals for freedom that has been written in Russian.” After surmounting multiple obstacles over many years, Oksman’s monograph proving the letter’s authenticity (and sharpening its meaning) was published in the Soviet Union: a small victory, but a heroic one.

　　艾特坎德先生称这封信“读来令人吃惊，……这是迄今为止俄罗斯人对自由最强烈的呼唤。”历经多年，克服了许多障碍后，奥克斯曼的专著终于出版了。该书不仅对这封信提供了权威的证明，而且进一步阐明了其思想。在苏维埃时代这样一本书能够出版发行虽然只是一次小小的胜利，但却闪耀着英勇无畏的光芒。

　　But the lingering impression of Mr Etkind’s book is absence. Germans pick over their Nazi past remorsefully and remorselessly. Nothing like this happens in Russia. The “work” of mourning started in the Khrushchev years, and again in the late Soviet era, but then fizzled out. Little effort is made now, within what Mr Etkind calls Vladimir Putin’s “oily grip”. Memorials to the victims of Stalinism are rare and typically low-key and cryptic. It is hard to make sense of something so painful and pervasive, and all the harder when so few want to talk about it.

　　但艾特坎德先生的这本书尚无法给读者留下挥之不去的印象。德国人始终以反省的心情不断提及纳粹德国那段历史，而俄罗斯却全无这种现象。在赫鲁晓夫时代出现了 “伤痕文学”与“反思文学”作品，在苏联后期这类作品又兴盛一时，但随后就销声匿迹了。而在普京统治下的俄罗斯，现在几乎没有人去触碰这类作品。艾特坎德将普京的统治称为“圆滑的专治”。现在很少有追忆斯大林时代受害者的作品面世。个别作品即使提到，也都非常低调和隐晦。现在要将当年某件极端痛苦的事情查个水落石出真是太难了，而在很少有人愿意谈及这件事的情况下就更是难上加难。