Power and Praise: The Case of the Late Brezhnev Era

Abstract

The culture of praise in the late Brezhnev era was highly developed and ritualistic. This research explores the purpose of praise in Soviet society and maps out its different faces through a structural analysis of letters to the editor. We conceptualize praise as a kind of symbolic capital that Soviet citizens use to signal their loyalty to one another. Soviet citizens expressed agreement through public praise of others published on the pages of widely-circulated newspapers. The analysis demonstrates variation in the structure of praise that depends on its direction, location, topics and the identities of givers and receivers. We identify three stable types of praise—peer valorization, clientelistic, and paternalistic praise. Soviet citizens used these faces of praise to exchange with others in different situations, but also helped reproduce Soviet authority by highlighting the achievements of others up and down the social ladder.