What is it about?
What is it like to live in a society that encourages its citizens to praise their ‘dear leaders’ publicly? In the USSR, public praise of elites, underlings, and colleagues became a currency to get things done because criticism was mostly forbidden.
Featured Image
Photo by Norbert Braun on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Ingratiating yourself to others publicly isn’t just a Soviet activity; people publicly praise others now in different situations. We could just see the praise better in the Soviet Union because the Brezhnev era was an extreme case.
Perspectives
Praise between people of unequal status is fairly standard in politics - even in democratic polities. I was surprised however by praise between relative equals because it valorized people working in occupations that normally do not get recognized publicly .
Andrew Buck
University of Southern Indiana
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Power and Praise: The Case of the Late Brezhnev Era, Sociology Lens, June 2025, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/johs.70001.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
