ABSTRACT
It was one of the more awesome ironies of the later twentieth century that the final arrival in power of more enlightened leadership in the 1980s Soviet Union came too late, and came up against Western leaders who chose to go for ideological and economic victory rather than conflict resolution. The additional irony was that, in the East, the reforming hegemonic discourse of a discredited authoritarian system, finally talking good sense on the major issues, was democratically rejected on account of the pent-up frustrations of the people, while in the West, effective, controlling, but insane world-threatening hegemonic discourses held sway among peoples who believed themselves to be free and the bearers of liberation. The study of dominant discourses and public attitudes in the 1980s is indeed a fascinating and alarming one. This chapter, like the previous one, poses and contextualises the issue, then seeks to throw useful light on the subject through examination of specific symptomatic discursive materials.
