Reagan’s Soviet Rhetoric: Telling the Soviet Redemption Story
Mark LaVoie, "Reagan’s Soviet Rhetoric: Telling the Soviet Redemption Story"
English | ISBN: 1793647984 | 2021 | 141 pages | PDF | 984 KB
English | ISBN: 1793647984 | 2021 | 141 pages | PDF | 984 KB
How did Ronald Reagan go from calling the Soviet Union an “evil empire” in his first term as president to saying the US had “forged a satisfying new closeness” with the Soviets by the end of his second term? In Reagan’s Soviet Rhetoric: Telling the Soviet Redemption Story, rhetorical scholar Mark LaVoie examines the ways Reagan negotiated his shift from a vehemently anti-communist discourse to a rhetoric of guarded optimism about the future of US-Soviet relations that ultimately revealed a Soviet redemption narrative. Following Reagan’s Soviet rhetoric from his 1947 testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee to his Farewell Address in 1989, LaVoie considers the President’s use of “Soviet/Nazi analogy,” “historical narrative,” “reciprocity,” and other rhetorical strategies in creating the narrative. Scholars and students of rhetoric, history, and international relations will find this book particularly interesting.
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