Epilogue

Abstract

The epilogue to this book sketches out the story of public speaking and rhetoric in Russia from the 1930s to the early twenty-first century. It compares and contrasts the rhetorical styles of several leaders: Nikita Khrushchev, who led the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964; Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary from 1964 to 1982; Mikhail Gorbachev, who led the Soviet Union from 1985 to its dissolution in 1991; and finally Vladimir Putin, the current president of Russia. It discusses wider norms of public speaking in the later Soviet period, especially in advice literature on ‘cultured speech’. The epilogue also briefly assesses the implications of the audiovisual media for public speech.