The Rhetorical Rise and Demise of Democracy in Russian Political Discourse Volume 2

Post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s saw a surge in civic participation. The traditional power structure officially relinquished control of political rhetoric and a nascent civil society had begun to emerge. Free elections and political partisanship between reformist and conservative elements of Russian society spurred on by Russia's economic troubles gave a Wild West tenor to public rhetoric that was reflected in the election campaigns of 1993 1995 and 1996. In this volume the authors examine through a series of contemporaneously written essays the arc of government rhetoric during the height of media freedom the quest for a new national identity and the struggle for self-government.<br>