“NecroSpeak” and “Trench Slang”: The Worlds and Languages of Russia’s War in Ukraine

To mark the publication of Alexandra Arkhipova and Iurii Lapshin’s Ethnographic Dictionary of War (in Russian, Echo Books, Berlin, 2026), the Centre Marc Bloch welcomes Alexandra Arkhipova (Laboratory of Social Anthropology (LAS), EHESS, France) for a lecture entitled:

“NecroSpeak” and “Trench Slang”: The Worlds and Languages of Russia’s War in Ukraine 

This lecture presents an ethnographic study based on a corpus of 6,987 letters sent by Russian combatants and their loved ones to the Russian Human Rights Ombudsman, supplemented by Telegram exchanges and interviews with former Russian military personnel.

It shows how NekroSpeak—an official language imposed from above by the government and the media, whose primary function is to avoid naming the war and to euphemize death—interacts with and contrasts against the Trench Slang, born from below on the front lines, which puts words to realities that the language of power cannot—or must not—name.

Discussant: Dr. Felix Krawatzek (ZOIS)

The session will be held in English