Representation Rhetoric of the Civil War in “Izvestia” (October 1917 – January 1918)

Abstract

The aim of the article is to address the question of the meaning and the specificity of the concept of the "civil war" in Izvestia of the Central Executive Committee and the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, a newspaper which reflected the views of the Bolsheviks and their allies. This case study examines the genealogy of the language of the civil war from October 27th, 1917 to the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, a momentous event on the path to the frontal Civil War. The article reconstructs a basic repertoire of the rhetorical techniques of representation, revealing what could be said in public about the civil war and under what conditions. It demonstrates the dynamics and the contexts of rhetorical "mobilization" and "demobilization", when the militaristic rhetoric of Izvestia switched to peaceful, and vice versa, correspondingly to the usage frequency of the term "civil war". The language of class struggle, and revolutionary mythology, especially that of the French Revolution, constituted the basis of Izvestia's rhetorical strategy aimed at legitimizing the policy of the Council of People's Commissars. The concept of the "civil war" had multiple meanings in Izvestia denoting a "condition", a "circumstance", and a "threat", in different circumstances, related to past, current, and future events. It is shown that constant criticism was levelled not only at the bourgeoisie, but also at the so-called right-wing socialist parties, which were held responsible for the civil war. The civil war was semantically designated in the past, present, and future tenses. The principle of a "just civil war" was explicitly expressed on the eve of convocation and during the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, justifying the acts of violence. The article concludes that the concept of floating signifier can be applied to the civil war as a means of refocusing the research into the issue of political communication.