Totalitarianism has been an object of extensive communicative research since its heyday: already in the late 1930s, such major cultural figures as George Orwell or Hannah Arendt were busy describing the visual and verbal languages of Stalinism and Nazism. After the war, many fashionable trends in social sciences and humanities (ranging from Begriffsgeschichte and Ego-Documentology to Critical Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis) were called upon to continue this media-centered trend in the face of increasing political determination of the burgeoing field. Nevertheless, the integration...

Although the asymmetrical concepts have been well-known to scholars across the social sciences and humanities, their role in structuring the human world has never been an object of detailed research. 35 years ago Reinhart Koselleck sketched out the historical semantics of the oppositions Hellenes/barbarians, Christians/pagans, and Ubermensch/Untermensch, but his insights, though eagerly cited, have been rarely developed in a systematic fashion. This volume intends to remedy this situation by bringing together a small number of scholars at the crossroads of history, sociology, literary...

This book provides a systematic account of media and communication development in Soviet society from the October Revolution to the death of Stalin. Summarizing earlier research and drawing upon previously unpublished archival materials, it covers the main aspects of public and private interaction in the Soviet Union, from public broadcast to kitchen gossip.The first part of the volume covers visual, auditory and tactilechannels,such as posters, maps and monuments. The second deals withmedia, featuring public gatherings, personal letters, telegraph, telephone, film and radio. The concluding...