Word and deed: “blat” according to lexicographical data

Abstract

The article is devoted to the description of semantic properties, etymology and dynamics of the evolution of lexical indicators of the use of family and friendship ties in society – the tokens “blat” and “blatnoy”. The purpose of the article is to identify the semantic and pragmatic characteristics of the lexical units “blat” and “blatnoy” on the material of explanatory, synonymous and etymological dictionaries, as well as Internet sources of the lexicographic character by means of a semantic analysis of vocabulary definitions of these lexemes. It is established that the use of kinship and friendship, as well as just acquaintances in selfish interests has always existed in human society, it fits well into the division of the world into “friends” and “strangers”. Cronyism, protectionism, patronage are a functional analogue of a bribe – all this is an instrument of individual and group survival and prosperity due to violation of justice standards. At the same time, blat as receiving any benefits bypassing existing rules through personal connections is a phenomenon largely limited by the time and space of the Soviet state and a kind of indicator of the era. Of the two dominant varieties of blat (commodity-service and career-official), the former has gone into the past along with shortages and queues, and the names “nepotism”, “protectionism” and “patronage” continue to exist to denote the latter. The word “blat” is a partial interlinguistic equivalent: when translated into other languages, it finds partial correspondence, since only the career-official value is translated into the target language, and specifically the Soviet commodity-service meaning is not taken into account. Despite the fact that the word “blat” is present in several etymological dictionaries of the Russian language, its origin remains sufficiently unclear. In lexicography, the word “blat” has two main meanings: blat1 – “crime, theft” and blat2 – “connections, acquaintances that make it possible to get something, to achieve something in an illegal way”, between which no intermediate semantic connections are visible, which gives reason to consider these meanings as homonyms, and not lexical-semantic variants. The synonymic chain to the blat2 lexeme in the meaning of “useful acquaintance” is quite representative, although there is no “blat” in the most voluminous synonymous dictionary of the Soviet era by A. P. Evgenyeva, either for ideological reasons, or because of the vernacular color of this token. At the same time, “blat2” is presented among numerous reactions to stimuli of “acquisition” in the associative dictionary.