Trials and Tribulations

This chapter tells the story of public speaking in Russia from the imposition of greater restrictions on the public sphere in 1867 through to the eve of Alexander II’s assassination in 1881. It shows that in this period the focus of the Russian public switched from the zemstvo to the courtroom, where a number of high-profile trials took place (and were reported, sometimes in stenographic detail, in the press). The chapter examines the careers and profiles of some of Russia’s leading courtroom orators. It also explores the activities of the Russian socialists (populists), in particular the ‘Going to the People’ movement of 1873–4 and later propaganda efforts in the city and the courtroom. It ends by considering the intensification of public discourse at the end of the 1870s: the Russo-Turkish War saw a surge of patriotic mobilization, but at the same time the populist adoption of terrorism seized public attention.

Introduction

The introduction considers the place of the spoken word in Russian history, presenting a pre-history of rhetoric and oratory in Russia before the 1860s. Examples are drawn from sermons, literature, theatre, and the universities, as well as from the political practice of Russia’s rulers. The introduction goes on to explain the significance of public speaking in Russia’s ‘stenographic age’, highlighting the challenges of modern mass politics and communications. It further offers comparisons between Russian political culture and the political culture of Britain, Germany, and the United States, paying particular attention to the place of oratory in the political imagination. It concludes by outlining the structure and rationale of the book.

Soviet Talk

This chapter describes the Bolsheviks’ creation of a new kind of public sphere in the 1920s. Although intolerant of opposition or dissent, they expected ordinary people to participate in routine forms of Soviet life such as meetings and conferences: unlike in the tsarist era, Russians now had to know how to speak in public. The Bolsheviks were themselves very active as speakers in their own public or semi-public gatherings (meetings, congresses, plenums), and their words were disseminated to an audience of newspaper readers or party functionaries: like their Duma predecessors, the Bolsheviks relied heavily on their stenographers. The chapter ends with a discussion of the shift to Stalinist rhetoric in the early 1930s.

The Rise of Political Speech, 1895–1905

The turn of the century saw a surge of mobilization. Socialist propaganda among the working class was making inroads, students were turning more radical, and the Russian empire saw a further wave of political trials, this time involving largely working-class defendants, in the early 1900s. Educated society was becoming more vocal at professional congresses and local assemblies, and the more radical zemstvo elements came together in a ‘liberation’ movement. Charismatic churchmen, foremost among them Georgii Gapon in St Petersburg, found new ways of speaking to the grievances and concerns of the common people. All these pressures culminated in the 1905 revolution, which forced hitherto unthinkable concessions from the tsarist government. Even then, the revolution was suppressed only with great difficulty and after a striking innovation in Russian political culture and rhetoric: the creation of a kind of workers’ parliament, the St Petersburg Soviet, which existed from mid-October to early December 1905.

Revolutionary Talk, 1917–18

The February Revolution brought an explosion of public talk as Russia gained the long-awaited freedoms of speech and assembly. Yet it was far from clear how this talk could be politically structured. The success of the Provisional Government seemed to depend on its outstanding rhetorician, the charismatic Aleksandr Kerensky, who kept up a frenetic public speaking schedule to audiences both civilian and military. On the Left, the Petrograd Soviet attempted to convert the popular cacophony of the revolution into effective socialist politics. Beyond the Soviet, the Bolsheviks sought to sway workers and soldiers with their radical anti-war message. In the second half of 1917, Kerensky’s charisma waned, and his desperate attempts to revive his flagging authority at a ‘State Conference’, ‘Democratic Conference’, and ‘Pre-Parliament’ all fell flat. Although the Bolsheviks’ seizure of power was more a coup than a popular uprising, it was preceded by a vigorous and increasingly effective propaganda campaign. After the October Revolution, the new regime moved quickly to suppress freedom of speech for its opponents but redoubled its own propaganda efforts. Nonetheless, it remained unclear how this still very precarious regime should best seek to address the society it aspired to rule.

Public Speaking in the Age of the State Duma

The main fruit of the 1905 revolution had been the creation of an imperial parliament, the State Duma. Although the status of this body was challenged by the tsarist government and its legislative achievements are sometimes considered modest, it was a formidable rhetorical school for Russia’s new political class. Its debates were recorded by stenographers and brought to an eager newspaper-reading public. This chapter reviews the rhetorical performance and significance of the Duma through its four iterations: the short-lived first and second, which were dominated by outspoken critics of the government; the more conservative third, which nonetheless saw a good deal of rhetorical combat between left and Right; and the chequered fourth, which by late 1916 was producing fierce criticism of the government’s wartime performance. The chapter also explores various forms of extra-parliamentary rhetoric (public lectures, zemstvo and municipal assemblies, preaching).

Glasnost’ in Practice

This chapter examines the effects of the Great Reforms of the 1860s on Russia’s emerging public sphere. It starts by examining the more engaging rulership style of the new Emperor, Alexander II. It then discusses the adoption of a new technology, stenography, that was designed to provide an accurate record of proceedings in the new institutions of the reform era. It goes on to consider the workings of those new institutions—the zemstvo, the municipal duma, and the courtroom—with special reference to the scope they offered for oral debate and oratory. The chapter also considers three other important venues for public speaking in the 1860s: the university, the theatre, and the church.

Epilogue

The epilogue to this book sketches out the story of public speaking and rhetoric in Russia from the 1930s to the early twenty-first century. It compares and contrasts the rhetorical styles of several leaders: Nikita Khrushchev, who led the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964; Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary from 1964 to 1982; Mikhail Gorbachev, who led the Soviet Union from 1985 to its dissolution in 1991; and finally Vladimir Putin, the current president of Russia. It discusses wider norms of public speaking in the later Soviet period, especially in advice literature on ‘cultured speech’. The epilogue also briefly assesses the implications of the audiovisual media for public speech.

Small Deeds and Muffled Voices

The assassination of Alexander II brought a predictable crackdown on Russia’s public sphere, though not before the trial of the terrorists had been given prominent coverage in the press. The ensuing period brought the defeat of government reform projects and the heyday of Konstantin Pobedonostsev, the arch-conservative Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod. Pobednostsev had no time for liberal ‘talking-shops’, but he aimed to revitalize the Orthodox Church by increasing the quantity of priests and the quality of their preaching. In this era of counter-reform, the theatre and the university became the most lively secular venues for the spoken word. Nonetheless, local government—whether the municipal duma or the zemstvo—was not quiescent and began to mobilize once again with the famine of 1891–2.