Abstract
In the Russian context deliberative speech, i.e. an open and free exchange of arguments that leads to political consensus, developed rather late, and it existed only for short periods of time, namely after the revolution of 1905 and the transformation period between Perestroika and post-soviet Russia. For a depiction of the Russian tradition of political rhetoric it is therefore necessary to take into account a number of genres and discourses. Instead of the dialogical character, which - according to the Aristotelian model - is characteristic of deliberative rhetoric that is based on speech and counter-speech, these different types of speech and texts (e. g. sermons, panegyrics, epistles, political speeches) possess mostly monological forms. As such they serve the purpose of stabilizing and legitimizing the government until the end of the 19th century, in the Soviet Union also of mobilizing the masses, while in the Putin era they are a central element in the multi-media fashioning of ideological ‘truth’.
