Political Communication
The project deals with the question of whether “political“ communication in the sense of its definition in our Collaborative Research Center (SFB - 584) was possible in 20th century European dictatorships, as one of its decisive factors, i.e. fearless acts of communication, was not granted. At the same time, however, dictatorships attributed great significance to the communication with their populations. Up to this point, the comparison of dictatorships has first and foremost foregrounded repressive elements in the light of popular dissent and resistance. Everyday strategies of assimilation have been carved out for single nations, but not comparatively examined as politically significant mechanisms central in conserving and stabilizing dictatorships. This project operates from the premise that none of the “European” dictatorships under consideration here were forced to discipline their people through repression exclusively. Instead, they managed to communicate community-constituting values (such as unity of the people, Volksgemeinschaft, paternalism). Therefore, they could count on a considerable willingness for either active participation or benign neglect on part of the so-called “silent majority” (e.g. the NSDAP as the party of those believing to have been left behind during the Weimar era).
We need to analyze mechanisms and media by means of which the dictatorships attempted to control the topics of political communication. Apparently, the stability of the dictatorships was crucially dependent on their ability to establish taboos (in the case of National Socialism, for instance, the Holocaust within the
Reich even though it was conducted almost publicly in the east; in the case of the Soviet Union, the famine of 1932/33, or corruptive practices as prerequisite for the functioning of the administrative command economy). One of the conditions imminent for the existence of the dictatorships was the population’s willingness to misrecognize decisive facts and practices on which the regime was built, and which the vast majority of the population practiced actively. The question of political communication in dictatorships accordingly must also prominently address the aspect of silence and the successful establishment of taboo topics in public and, possibly, private discourse.
Speaking of “political communication”, I have to ask first whether this communication was a precondition for rule in dictatorships, and secondly whether it fits the definition of the “political” in use in the SFB of our faculty. With regard to rule, the answer seems easier: if it is possible to show that dictatorships were required this form of communication to function, we may speak of “political communication”. We should expect to find this communication in effect after the establishment of dictatorships. The crucial question for research therefore is to show that collapse of these dictatorships stood in direct connection to their loss of control over communication. This would offer an alternative explanation to that of popular rebellion against dictatorships. As Nazi Germany collapsed under external force, I have to analyze the collapse of the communist regimes in the 1980s in this light.
The research focus coming from our definition of the political is different. We use three conditions: First: communication must aim at having a broad impact, sustainability and obligatoriness. This condition obviously is fulfilled in dictatorships if communication is a prerequisite for their functioning. The second condition is that communication refers to imagined collective entities either explicitly or implicitly. This was the case without a doubt with the Volksgemeinschaft in Germany, and with the unity of the people or the “Soviet people” from 1936 onwards in the Soviet Union. Thus, the crucial point is the third condition: does communication under dictatorships deal with rules of social life, power relations or the limits of what can be said and done? Is communication in dictatorships about the change or the movement of boundaries of the political? This is a challenging question. There is evidence that dictatorships carefully watched communication and reacted to it. There seemed to be changes in the regimes’ inclusive tactics. However, it is hard to say whether this included bargaining strategies to, for instance, discuss certain rules and norms. Changes could easily be decided from above. A question in this respect is to what extent admitting apolitical behavior is one of the basic strategies of dictatorships, tolerating in the end different peoples’ identities (peasants under Stalin, workers under Nazi rule). After all, there were realms which allowed criticism of the status quo (as a valve, maybe?). How were these criticisms channeled? Did the population merely reproduce the regime-given linguistic patterns (outlining communication as a state event) or did it, in fact, change the limits of what could be said either temporarily or constantly via communication?
People obviously instrumentalized the linguistic regulations of the regime as well as the underlying paternalistic perspective when they used linguistic and argumentative molds for their personal interests. To which extent they actually shared these means, or whether they reflected on them critically, or reinterpreted them according to their own reading is an aspect that needs to be clarified, but is rather difficult to grasp. In any case, the public did not interrupt communication with the regimes until the very end; quite the contrary, as the number of letters seems to have increased. What needs to be cleared up is how significant the “institutionalization” of communication with the population was in the socialist dictatorships, which, as must be remembered, guaranteed an examination of and a reply to each individual petition within a certain deadline.
The perspective on “communication” must take into consideration the long-term cultural imprints of the respective populations, which created different preconditions and prerequisites for the dictatorships’ functional mechanisms. These played a crucial role in their establishment, and they continued to show after the systems had collapsed, rendering this comparison multi-layered despite its restriction on 20th-century Europe. The contingently contrastive comparison of National Socialism and Stalinism is at the core of the project, even though Italy, Spain and Portugal could be incorporated, depending on the literature. Looking at the “dictatorships of the 20th century” includes the long-term comparison between Germany and Russia, which, however, must also consider the internal juxtapositions between National Socialism and the GDR as well as the Stalinist and post-Stalinist Soviet Union in accordance with the critical caesurae of 1945 and 1953. Post-1945, the different cultural imprints of the emerging socialist dictatorships fosters stimulating inquiries for comparisons including at least Poland and Hungary in particular.
To what extent dictatorships were successful in communicating basic ideas of their ideology to the people can be derived from observing the lasting effects after the end of their rule. This was evident from union behavior in the Federal Republic of Germany, and it is evident from people’s political behavior and value orientation in all East European Countries, including the former GDR until the present day with regard to political and social questions.
In analyzing the role of communication, we have to take into account that the official ideology of dictatorships never describes the real mechanism of their functioning. The strong gap between rhetoric and deeds, between official and unofficial norms only becomes obvious in asking how the regimes could function at all. The archival sources are silent on this aspect, presenting the necessary behavior for the functioning as deviation. For example, the command economy never worked exclusively on the dicator’s orders. In order to fulfill the commands, the officials had to make use of corruptive practices and black markets. They would never have admitted to this. Officials and rank and files became used to live with this discrepancy between words and deeds and lost awareness of it. This is a weakness of approaches such as “Speaking Bolshevik”.
As communication in general is an approach too broad to work with, I pay special attention to communication from below, from the subjects to officials and to the ruler. In addition, I focus on written communication, including social practices.