Materialism of the Decembrists in the context of Soviet culture in the mid-twentieth century

The article explores the way of conceptualizing Decembrism in the monograph The Decembrists’ Movement by M. V. Nechkina. The author places primary emphasis on the historical narration of the scientific, atheistic and educational ideas and activities of the Decembrists. He reveals the signs of the secondary semiotic system, reconstructs the semiotic code (where the text functions as a sign system, giving rise to the phenomenon of semiosis), and defines the semantics of these signs. The author demonstrates that the conceptualization of Decembrism was carried out in the monograph at the level of the secondary sign system. Through the signs of the materialistic code - scientificity, atheism and enlightenment - the historical narrative of the monograph correlated with the exemplar texts of the Soviet culture. Due to these correlations the historical narrative acquired additional semantic depth - in addition to explicit research results, it also contains a latent, culturally determined level. The narrative of the Soviet historian speaks not only of the scientific, educational and atheistic views of the Decembrists, which is quite obvious if we consider the text at the level of a denotative sign system. Due to the elements of the materialist code, the text contains the connotations of the undoubted revolutionary spirit of the Decembrists. So, Nechkina’s text is undeniably polysemantic. Therefore, the analysis of her works cannot be complete without taking into account the corresponding cultural and semiotic code.