Mächtige Signale. Informelle Kommunikation und Herrschaft an Stalins Hof,1927–1940

Powerful signs. Informal communication and power at the court of Stalin, 1927–1940

The article examines the relationship between informal communication and domination at the court of Stalin. For this purpose, two types of communicative situations – distance and proximity – are distinguished and analysed with respect to their operating modes and the informal communication's impacts of domination. In both cases, the impacts of domination of the informal communication's mechanisms were based on identical factors. There were complex interactions between the impacts of domination of informal communication and the emergence of Stalin's sole reign. On the one hand, rumours allowed Stalin to subdue his rivals and to keep them at bay; on the other hand, the disciplinary power of informal communication increased to the same extent as Stalin's personal power grew. The chosen approach allows to illustrate key aspects of Stalin's exercise of power and to identify the actors’ scopes as well as the rules that they had to obey. In doing so, the approach serves to illustrate some key aspects of the Stalinist practice of power and demonstrates how actors dispose leeway and under what rules they had to obey.