TY - JOUR
AU1 - Lovell, Stephen
AB - GLASNOST’ IN PRACTICE: PUBLIC SPEAKING IN THE ERA OF ALEXANDER II In early March 1881, the new Russian emperor Alexander III called a meeting of his government to discuss a reform proposal put forward by Mikhail Loris-Melikov, the Minister of the Interior. This was an inauspicious moment to contemplate reform, since the previous emperor, Alexander II, had been assas- sinated only a week before. Nevertheless, many of the leading ministers stuck to their view that the reform — whose main com- ponent was the creation of a consultative body that would be more representative of Russian society than the mandarin State Council — was advisable and indeed essential. Halfway through the meeting, however, a powerful dissenting voice was heard. Konstantin Pobedonostsev, the most eloquent and unbending representative of statist conservatism, launched into an attack on the concept of reform (and, effectively, an indictment of the entire reign of Alexander II). Using a term that he repeated with the force of an incantation, he insisted that the reforms of the 1860s and 1870s had merely brought Russia ‘talking-shops’ (govoril’ni). The last thing the country now needed was more of the same. The talk had to end; it was time to 
TI - Glasnost in Practice: Public Speaking in the Era of Alexander II
JF - Past & Present
DO - 10.1093/pastj/gts020
DA - 2013-02-15
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/glasnost-in-practice-public-speaking-in-the-era-of-alexander-ii-ouZ2EIkxWN
SP - 127
EP - 158
VL - 218
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -