{"title":"The Genealogy of the “Leader of the People”: Images of Leaders and the Political Language of the Russian Revolution of 1917","authors":"Boris Ivanovich Kolonitskii","doi":"10.1163/18763316-04502002","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Boris Kolonitskii continues his studies of the cult of Alexander Kerensky in 1917 and the larger issues of the vocabulary used to describe leaders and the nature of cults and their relationship to authoritarianism in Russian and Soviet history. He reviews the linguistic fields surrounding such revolutionary figures as Miliukov, Rodzianko, Chernov, Plekhanov and Lenin and shows how politicians may become hostages of their own rhetoric. Hero image terminology can sanctify the leader. But even negative publicity or criticism can lead to the strengthening of the cult image. The construction of cults is subject to reversals and shifting creativity. Cults have pre- histories and are vital to our understanding of 20th century politics.","PeriodicalId":43441,"journal":{"name":"RUSSIAN HISTORY-HISTOIRE RUSSE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2018-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"RUSSIAN HISTORY-HISTOIRE RUSSE","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18763316-04502002","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
The Genealogy of the “Leader of the People”: Images of Leaders and the Political Language of the Russian Revolution of 1917
Boris Kolonitskii continues his studies of the cult of Alexander Kerensky in 1917 and the larger issues of the vocabulary used to describe leaders and the nature of cults and their relationship to authoritarianism in Russian and Soviet history. He reviews the linguistic fields surrounding such revolutionary figures as Miliukov, Rodzianko, Chernov, Plekhanov and Lenin and shows how politicians may become hostages of their own rhetoric. Hero image terminology can sanctify the leader. But even negative publicity or criticism can lead to the strengthening of the cult image. The construction of cults is subject to reversals and shifting creativity. Cults have pre- histories and are vital to our understanding of 20th century politics.
期刊介绍:
Russian History’s mission is the publication of original articles on the history of Russia through the centuries, in the assumption that all past experiences are inter-related. Russian History seeks to discover, analyze, and understand the most interesting experiences and relationships and elucidate their causes and consequences. Contributors to the journal take their stand from different perspectives: intellectual, economic and military history, domestic, social and class relations, relations with non-Russian peoples, nutrition and health, all possible events that had an influence on Russia. Russian History is the international platform for the presentation of such findings.