In December 2021 Academic Studies Press published The Rhetorical Rise and Demise of “Democracy” in Russian Political Discourse, Volume One: The Path from Disaster toward Russian “Democracy” by David Cratis Williams, Marilyn J. Young, and Michael K. Launer. In the early 1980s the Communist Party still maintained nearly total control of political messaging in the USSR. This situation began to change after KAL007 was shot down in 1983. Then came Chernobyl (1986), which led to the development of a nascent civil society and, ultimately, the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Volume One focuses on analysis of rhetoric, public address, and political argumentation during the late Soviet period. Various studies (some previously unpublished) describe interactions between the US and USSR concerning these events.
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Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies at The University of Texas at Austin