Popular Claim Making in an Authoritarian Regime: Soviet Letters to the Editor

• In Event: 066 - Section on Political Sociology Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 03. The Politics of Culture

Abstract

How do citizens make public claims in authoritarian regimes when the traditional avenues of contentious politics are forbidden and prescribed political interactions are exclusive? This paper examines the political discourse of Soviet citizens through letters to the editor during the late period of stagnation (1978-1982). Letters to the editor represent an under-utilized source of political discourse in the social sciences and offered Soviet citizens a tolerated way to participate in the political life of their communities. The paper discusses how letters to the editor also gave elites opportunities to display their responsiveness to citizen concerns. The paper then outlines a few of the common conventions that letter writers use to make claims on authority. Letter writers avoid making claims that suggest larger social or systemic problems by simply describing situations or singling out by name particular persons and organizations. These particularized conventions suggest that political discourse was highly circumscribed during this period, but still allowed citizens to get action on issues and participate in their communities.

Author

• Andrew D. Buck, University of Southern Indiana