In the labor camp, Uspensky's dictionary was born. "On the way to the camp, I encountered some convicts who were using a sort of prison jargon," he remembers. "In the camp, people were talking in a Russian so rich in slang terms and thieves' cant that at first I couldn't understand it."

The language, he soon discovered, was filled with political connotations, embodying a bitterness, and an irony, found nowhere else in Russian society. "Censorship there looks attentively, not only at every book, but at every poem, every postcard, even at music," he explains. "Language used in an ironical or satirical form is the single means of expressing protest. In its very savageness it makes for an understanding of the hypocrisy of the situation."

Some of the words poke fun at party leaders, others at the political situation itself. In camp jargon, the word for the Soviet Union means "big zone." "The prison camps are usually called zones, since if you try to go on or off them, you are usually shot at," Uspensky explains. "This word just means that the whole country is a big prison."

Marxistka, a terms that literally means a woman who embraces Marxist political beliefs, has come to mean, in the Moscow vernacular, a prostitute who walks Marx Avenue in Moscow. Another phrase which originally meant 'to change views to keep in line with the party line,' has taken on a new connotation. It now refers to a conformist who adheres to the party line, fluctuating even as the party line shifts.

While at the camp, Uspensky compiled an elaborate index file and filled 15 notebooks with catchwords and slang phrases. And when he left the camp--at the insistence of a group of prominent writers and friends, he was released a year early--he carried with him 7000 notecards written in a code that only he could understand.

For two years after his release from the camp, Uspensky lived in self-imposed exile outside of Leningrad. But after Ginsberg's arrest his friends in the dissident movement induced him to begin acting. He started by gathering money to defend the arrested and support their families. Gradually, he became more and more involved in protests, signing letters to the government, and even holding press conferences with foreign journalists. Eventually he participated in the dissident movement at the highest level, working with men like Andrei Sakharov and General Greronko.

Throughout this period, Uspensky continued his work on the dictionary, expanding the book to include the language of over 200 social groups within the Soviet Union. Twenty years after he made the first note, Uspensky (whose work is now funded by a federal grant), has collected more than 30,000 words. Seventyfive per cent of them have never been registered in any dictionary despite the fact that they are in everyday usage. He hopes to publish his work next year. "The authorities want to purify the language, to make it like distilled water," he says. "But no language can exist on that principle."

The dictionary eventually led to Uspensky's flight from Russia. His involvement in the dissident movement was accompanied by an ever-increasing danger--to both himself and his work. The KGB summoned Uspensky as an eyewitness when his friends were arrested, bugged his flat and searched his apartment, going through his card file and scattering his notes. A month before Uspensky left the Soviet Union, a group of thugs attacked him. "They were apparently drunk hoodlums, but I could tell they were working for the KGB," Uspensky says, explaining, "They were too well informed, They called me an anti-Soviet, and there is no way they could have known that."

Fearing that his near-finished card file would be confiscated in the next search--or that something would happen to him before it was completed--Uspensky decided to leave his country. The government was only too happy to see him go. Two weeks after he applied to emigrate, his papers came through.

"So I left," he says. "I went out of the country I had defended, the country I love, the country that is my country. They kicked me out. I am glad. So are they."