Listening to comrade Stalin: multimodality and code-switching in public response to the leaders’ speeches in the twentieth century

Abstract

It is customary to associate the twentieth century communication with extraordinary high informational content setting it apart from interaction in the earlier, less technologically and socially ‘advanced’ periods of history. Departing from systems theory, this article disputes the maximization of efficiency in informational exchanges within the societies in question (Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and ‘New Deal’-USA), noting in particular the vulnerability of highly unstable totalitarian regimes to informational and social explosions. After discussing general mechanisms or reducing communicative complexity (from linguistic redundancy to ritualistic behaviour), the article briefly summarizes the extended use of these techniques in interactions between ‘totalitarian’ leaders and their followers, and offers statistical data contrasting low informational content of followers’ feedback to the speeches of Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler to the corresponding data on the ‘democratic’ president Franklin D. Roosevelt.