Giving meaning to “Green book”: charter of Union of prosperity in M. V. Nechkina monograph “Decembrists’ movement”

The aim of the article is to deconstruct M.V. Nechkina’s interpretation of The Charter of the Union of Prosperity (the “Green Book”). The theoretical basis of the study is based on the Roland Barthes’ idea of connection between ideology and connotations. The analysis of connotations as well as methods of their inclusion into the text of M.V. Nechkina’s monograph “The Decembrists’ Movement” help to reveal a mechanism of historical narrative ideologization. M.V. Nechkina interpreted the “Green Book” as a text indicating revolutionism of the Union of Prosperity. Adding desirable sense to the text of the “Green Book” M.V. Nechkina used connotative sign system. Such collocations as nobility class, narrow-mindedness, words like secrecy, conspiracy, an opposition between the “Green Book” and the Entitlement Charter for Nobility, an indication of the difference between the “Green Book” and the charter of the German Tugendbund, the analysis of a hypothetical content of the second part of the charter of the Union of Prosperity are signifiers of a particular connotative system of signs. All of these signifiers refer to one signifier - revolutionism. These signifiers obtain their meaning through context immersion - the context of the history of French Revolution and of Lenin’s views on Decembrists’ movement. A reader of the monograph must possess a relevant cultural code in order to grasp the meaning, and it was exactly what M.V. Nechkina relied upon.