The essay explores lexical coincidences in the works of YuriTynianov and Osip Mandelshtam — coincidences which appeared in differenttime periods, independently of each other.In the second half of the 1920s, Tynianov wrote the novel Death of the Vazir-Mukhtar which, while dealing with events of the 1820s, anticipated the soon-to-be disappearance of free artistic speech.Ten years later, Tynianov's anticipation became a reality — reflected inMandelstam's poem “Lamarck”. Freedom of creative activity did not disappearcompletely but became, in many respects, a thing of the past. Even if the hopefor the return of free expression still existed, no one imagined when this eventwould take place. Loyalty to the regime and assentation were the signs of thetimes. Studies of Soviet artistic life in that period reveal the extreme degree ofthe unnatural selection aimed at creating unwavering servants of the regime.One of such servants wrote: “In today's situation, genius and villainy are twocompatible things: the killing of a Mozart may assist history”.Such “assistance to history” became a Soviet norm and, according toindependent Russian émigré observers, led to a situation in which Sovietliterature lost the position within world literature obtained by the Russianclassical literature of the 19th century and acquired unmistakably provincialtraits. As Shigalev declared in Dostoyevsky's Demons, “All are slaves and equalin their slavery”.Analogous processes were taking place in cinema, where pro-regimeservilism — due to cinema's ability to influence the audience more rapidly andmore powerfully than literature — acquired its most dangerous form. This wasfully understood by the Bolshevik regime which held cinema in high regard.“Creating art? No, doing what you were told to do”, — this was how Sovietfilmmaker Leonid Trauberg later described those times.