Citation: Postoutenko, Kirill. 2022.

Personality Cults from a

Communicative Standpoint. Religions

13: 627. https://doi.org/

10.3390/rel13070627

Academic Editor: Xavier Marquez

Received: 27 April 2022

Accepted: 2 July 2022

Published: 6 July 2022

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral

with regard to jurisdictional claims in

published maps and institutional affil-

iations.

Copyright: © 2022 by the author.

Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

This article is an open access article

distributed under the terms and

conditions of the Creative Commons

Attribution (CC BY) license (https://

creativecommons.org/licenses/by/

4.0/).

religions

Article

Personality Cults from a Communicative StandpointKirill Postoutenko

Special Research Area 1288 ‘Practices of Comparing’, Bielefeld University, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany;kirill.postoutenko@uni-bielefeld.de

Abstract: Drawing upon a wide variety of personality cults in religion, culture and politics fromAncient Egypt to our times, the author attempts to present a summary view of this phenomenon froma communicative standpoint. Personality cult is seen as an attribution of universal and eternal socio-cultural significance to certain beings, messages and interaction scenarios in defiance of changes inand diversity of the surrounding reality. The communicative implementation of such a cult involvesthe suspension of some of the most basic mechanisms of social coordination. Thus, deification ofpolitical, cultural or religious leaders eliminates the subordination of individuals to their social roles,whereas canonization severs the ties of certain selected texts with the contexts of their production andreception. Last, but not least, random signaling between the subject of cultic adoration and his or hersubordinates runs counter the standard cooperation rules in interaction (‘turn-taking’). Illustratingthese points, the article points out at specific communicative pathologies accompanying personalitycults and jeopardizing the stability of their socio-cultural environments.

Keywords: personality cults; deification; canonization; random signaling; turn-taking; social role

1. Introduction

It is not immediately obvious why anyone would want to add his or her two cents tothe seemingly boundless discussion of personality cults. However, a close look at the bodyof work featuring the term in question offers a few reasons for dealing with the seeminglyworn-out subject. Upon close observation, the wide and steady stream of publicationsdevoted to the cults of personality breaks down into many smaller creeks running parallel toeach other. Not only the cults of gods, kings/queens, saints, heroes, luminaries and dictatorsare studied apart from each other, but the specialists on, say, Ancient Egypt, Roman Empire,Christian religion, Middle Age monarchy and twentieth-century totalitarian politics rarelylook across time periods, areas and forms of cultic adoration (for notable exceptions, seeFrazer [1890] 1994; Brehier and Batiffol 1920; Bloch [1924] 1983; Seltman 1953; Kantorowicz1958, pp. 180–87; Gagé 1961, pp. 47–68; Tucker 1971; Valensise 1986; Zobermann 2000;Gordon 2001; Auffarth 2003; Assmann and Strohm 2010). It seems like some preliminarycontextualization of political personality cults among the related phenomena in religionand arts might facilitate interchanges within the scattered field.

Furthermore, the persistent vagueness of the term, invented by Karl Marx in 1877 as anegative “asymmetrical concept” (Blos 1919, p. 286; Koselleck 1989, pp. 212–15; Plamper2004, p. 25; Kirchner 2011, p. 883), calls for some terminological clarification. To date,following in Marx’s footsteps, quite a number of scholars have used the word combinationfor the condescending othering of religious, cultural and political backwardness (seeanalysis in Zakharine 2020). This state of affairs has led to the questioning of the term’sscholarly value (Odesskiı and Fel’dman 2004, p. 77; Apor 2017, pp. 27–30). A case forsticking to the old terminology, despite all its flaws, could arguably be made if a certainbranch of scholarship was capable of overcoming disciplinary boundaries and socio-culturalbiases (see Pittman 2017, pp. 535–36). In my opinion, communication science, integratedinto social systems theory, stands a good chance of cleansing the notion of personalitycults from its fuzziness and implicit arrogance (for the first communicative approaches to

Religions 2022, 13, 627. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13070627 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions

Religions 2022, 13, 627 2 of 17

the topic, see Marin 1983; Burke 1992; Wintrobe 1998; Buschel 2004; Rolf 2006; Riall 2007;Kirchner 2011; Leese 2011; Plamper 2012; Halder 2013; Kolb and Vitale 2016; Postoutenkoand Stephanov 2020a, 2020b; Zakharine 2020). In the past, communication and interactionstudies have been instrumental in explaining socio-historical changes, while steering clearfrom ideological generalizations. Thus, both the formation of empires and their downfallwere convincingly related to the relative strength of networks exchanging informationbetween the center and the periphery: the vast and diverse super-states were reasonablystable as long as they could timely process both commands and feedbacks by means ofefficient symbolic codes (such as writing), channels with adequate throughput capacityand networks with sufficiently wide coverage (Neumann [1942] 1970; Innis [1950] 2007,p. 137; McLuhan 1967, p. 40; Inose 1972, pp. 117–18; Krippendorff 1986, p. 64; Flusser 1996,pp. 27–28). The model of imperial communication jointly created in these studies appearsto be valid for such disparate societies as Ancient Rome, Mughal India and Nazi Germany(Junge and Postoutenko 2021, p. 906), so I do not see why media and communicationscience should fail scholars in the study of the closely related phenomenon of personalitycults. In any case, the studies of personality cults in broad spatio-temporal perspectiveshave helped to track down their genealogy (see, for instance, Cohn 1970; Kantorowicz 1958).The further expansion and generalization of this approach on the basis of the ideologicallyneutral methodology will soner or later shed the light on the working mechanisms ofpersonality cults across historical epochs, regions and socio-cultural systems.

Of course, a short article of a single author could do little more than offer someprovisional scaffolding for the future studies, drawing upon some empirical findings andexamining previously outlined hypotheses.

2. Creation of Personality Cults: Deification

Personality cults could be understood as the selection and promotion of certain livingbeings whose presence, activities and artefacts are attributed universal and eternal socio-cultural significance. This allegedly absolute value is deemed invariant to its surroundings:neither the unstoppable time nor the boundless variety of the environment are claimed tohave any bearing upon the meanings generated in conjunction with the objects of personalitycults. In this vein, the distinctive features of Joseph Stalin’s cult of personality are his allegedpresence in every part of USSR, his projected life expectancy beyond all Soviet citizens and hisability to find a key for every lock (Postoutenko 2020, pp. 171–72, 179).

These examples allegorize the inescapable paradox of personality cults, which, inpractical terms, might be called deification: the living being immanently present (i.e., sensu-ally perceptible) in a certain specific location for some naturally limited period of time isascribed transcendent significance extending beyond all temporal and spatial limitations(Luhmann 2000, p. 77). This ascription loses much of its verve if applied to dead objects,distant physical systems or simple creatures uncapable of grasping their own distinctive-ness. The sun, snakes or stones could well be objects of cultic adoration (Weissenborn 1904,p. 34; Nakamura 1992, pp. 27–28; van der Toorn 1997), but their observable fluctuationsare far too dependent on the respective environments to allow for any significant interplaybetween the abstract and the immediate, let alone its strategic deployment in the socialfield (Schrödinger 1968, p. 44; Luhmann 1987, p. 197). Simply put, deification under nor-mal circumstances requires at least some sort of dialectic relation between the discernibleindependent behaviour of a single organism hic et nunc and its compulsory implicationsurbi et orbi. The reflexive awareness of the cult should not necessarily antedate deification,but could hardly be absent altogether: at 14, Jiddu Krishnamurti was not yet convinced byCharles Leadbitter and other leading theosophists that he was about to save the mankind,but in a few years the future world guru felt fit for the purpose and acted accordingly(Williams 2004, p. 46). All things considered, the chances of non-human individuals tobe deified appear slim, which may be due to the socio-cultural conventions regardingindividuality rather than the actual functioning of human systems (Gilbert et al. 2012).

Religions 2022, 13, 627 3 of 17

Before discussing the special relation between transcendence and immanence in per-sonality cults, it is worth casting a brief glance upon their production in natural andsocio-cultural systems. Generally speaking, if the scope of variations in the syntagmati-cally ordered successions of systemic states is too small to be grasped from within eachindividual standpoint, the system would be perceived as largely invariant to time andspace, and occasionally spotted alterations would acquire the status of anomalies. Thus,the exact transmission of genetic information from one generation of a species to another iscommonly seen as the norm, whereas the mutations of DNA, harmful or not, are brand-marked as “typos” (Pray 2008; Flusser 1996, pp. 309–10). Hegel’s contradistinction betweenthe “unchanging” natural law—the law “as such” (überhaupt)—and the fickle “legal law”transposes this antonymy into the social realm: whereas Naturgesetze are claimed to bealways “right” (richtig) and sort of evergreen, Rechtsgesetze are subject to the mortals’ limitedworldview and general human falibility (Hegel [1821] 1996, p. 16).

In social systems, the transcendence of power has hardly ever been a merely quanti-tative extension of its immanence: even in pre-historical hereditary kingship, the ruler’schange normally implied the handover of communication channels linking an incumbent tothe everlasting higher spirits (Mair 1964, pp. 180–81). Later on, the otherworldly dimensionof the highest political authority was incorporated into the job description of a monarch:already the Zoroastrian

Religions 2022, 13, x FOR PEER REVIEW 3 of 18

regarding individuality rather than the actual functioning of human systems (Gilbert et al. 2012).

Before discussing the special relation between transcendence and immanence in per-sonality cults, it is worth casting a brief glance upon their production in natural and socio-cultural systems. Generally speaking, if the scope of variations in the syntagmatically or-dered successions of systemic states is too small to be grasped from within each individual standpoint, the system would be perceived as largely invariant to time and space, and occasionally spotted alterations would acquire the status of anomalies. Thus, the exact transmission of genetic information from one generation of a species to another is com-monly seen as the norm, whereas the mutations of DNA, harmful or not, are brandmarked as “typos” (Pray 2008; Flusser 1996, pp. 309–10). Hegel’s contradistinction between the “unchanging” natural law—the law “as such” (überhaupt)—and the fickle “legal law” transposes this antonymy into the social realm: whereas Naturgesetze are claimed to be always “right” (richtig) and sort of evergreen, Rechtsgesetze are subject to the mortals’ lim-ited worldview and general human falibility (Hegel [1821] 1996, p. 16).

In social systems, the transcendence of power has hardly ever been a merely quanti-tative extension of its immanence: even in pre-historical hereditary kingship, the ruler’s change normally implied the handover of communication channels linking an incumbent to the everlasting higher spirits (Mair 1964, pp. 180–81). Later on, the otherworldly dimen-sion of the highest political authority was incorporated into the job description of a mon-arch: already the Zoroastrian

xᵛarənah (‘glory’) could be read as the divine source of a king’s infallibility (Boyce 1975, p. 66),

and Alexander the Great’s attempts at enforcing the divine charisma of kings in the prov-inces were clearly aimed at decoupling the transcendent foundations of kingship from local circumstances and personal qualities of ruling individuals (Boak 1916, p. 296). At least since 13th century, the relation between the transcendence and the immanence of princely rule acquired in theology and legal scholarship decidedly platonic traits: the stainless and everlasting dignitas of the crown was contrasted by legal scholars and theol-ogists to the fleeting, fallible humanness of its bearer, and the defence of the first from the second in medieval English courts was not unknown (Kantorowicz 1957, p. 370; Jussen 2009, p. 106). For the modern reader, this neat dichotomy resembles a textbook sociologi-cal differentiation between roles and persons (Luhmann 2003, p. 41): the social order is considered stable as long as the performance of major societal functions does not depend on the performers’ individual traits (Dahrendorf 1971, p. 33; for a general perspective see also Luckmann 1979, p. 296; Atlan 1984, p. 115). In this sense, the dignity of a crown, a school district or a public transportation company does not depend on the tastes, habits and talents of kings, teachers and drivers: governing, teaching and moving people remain honourable occupations even if the postholders are not up to their tasks. Perhaps the clear-est formulation of this idea is to be found in The Leopard of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampe-dusa, where Ciccio Màlvica—a self-appointed spokesman of the 19th century Sicilian no-bility—is credited with the following defiant statement: “A single sovereign may not be up to his task, but the monarchic idea remains the same—it is “cleansed from people (svin-colata dalle persone)”. Tomasi di Lampedusa ([1957] 2002, p. 14). In democracies, whose secular version of transcendence elevated voting to the status of natural law (Sozen 2019), the same indifference to the immanent representation of dignitas was expressed by Walt Whitman after the U.S. presidenaital election in November 1884: “the heart of it not in the chosen—//the act itself the main, the quadrennial choosing” (Whitman [1884] 2008; com-pare Luhmann 2002, p. 369). The last example highlights the dream of perfect political succession resting on the unfailing institutional foundations: albeit the leap from ‘before’ to ‘after’ is a crucial step in making political successions work (Luhmann 1987, p. 388), its informational value, ideally, should be kept to a minimum.

(‘glory’) could be read as the divine source of a king’sinfallibility (Boyce 1975, p. 66), and Alexander the Great’s attempts at enforcing the divinecharisma of kings in the provinces were clearly aimed at decoupling the transcendent foun-dations of kingship from local circumstances and personal qualities of ruling individuals(Boak 1916, p. 296). At least since 13th century, the relation between the transcendenceand the immanence of princely rule acquired in theology and legal scholarship decidedlyplatonic traits: the stainless and everlasting dignitas of the crown was contrasted by legalscholars and theologists to the fleeting, fallible humanness of its bearer, and the defenceof the first from the second in medieval English courts was not unknown (Kantorowicz1957, p. 370; Jussen 2009, p. 106). For the modern reader, this neat dichotomy resemblesa textbook sociological differentiation between roles and persons (Luhmann 2003, p. 41):the social order is considered stable as long as the performance of major societal functionsdoes not depend on the performers’ individual traits (Dahrendorf 1971, p. 33; for a generalperspective see also Luckmann 1979, p. 296; Atlan 1984, p. 115). In this sense, the dignity ofa crown, a school district or a public transportation company does not depend on the tastes,habits and talents of kings, teachers and drivers: governing, teaching and moving peopleremain honourable occupations even if the postholders are not up to their tasks. Perhapsthe clearest formulation of this idea is to be found in The Leopard of Giuseppe Tomasidi Lampedusa, where Ciccio Màlvica—a self-appointed spokesman of the 19th centurySicilian nobility—is credited with the following defiant statement: “A single sovereignmay not be up to his task, but the monarchic idea remains the same—it is “cleansed frompeople (svincolata dalle persone)”. Tomasi di Lampedusa [1957] (Tomasi di Lampedusa [1957]2002, p. 14). In democracies, whose secular version of transcendence elevated voting to thestatus of natural law (Sozen 2019), the same indifference to the immanent representation ofdignitas was expressed by Walt Whitman after the U.S. presidenaital election in November1884: “the heart of it not in the chosen—//the act itself the main, the quadrennial choosing”(Whitman [1884] 2008; compare Luhmann 2002, p. 369). The last example highlights thedream of perfect political succession resting on the unfailing institutional foundations:albeit the leap from ‘before’ to ‘after’ is a crucial step in making political successions work(Luhmann 1987, p. 388), its informational value, ideally, should be kept to a minimum.

To be sure, this seductively simple hierarchy faced a barrage of criticism from thestart. Already Plato’s pupil Aristotle was reluctant to accept the very subordination ofthe imperfect matter to the perfect form (Colingwood [1945] 1960, p. 68), and modernsocial sciences insist on the circular causality between types and tokens, roles (crowns)and persons (kings/queens) (see Sargent and Beardsley 1960, pp. 66–70; Goffman 1961,p. 139; Turner 1978, pp. 1–23; Argyle et al. 1981, p. 177; Kaufman and Umpleby 2018,

Religions 2022, 13, 627 4 of 17

p. 4). Fabrizio Corbera, Màlvica brother-in-law and confidant, clearly had the upper hand(and the last word) in the argument with his relative, pointing out that the kings fallingshort of expectations would eventually damage the idea of monarchy as such (Tomasi diLampedusa [1957] 2002, p. 15). The belief in the ultimate wisdom of political transcendencewas further undermined by the unstable and confused mechanisms enabling the rotation ofdivinely or ortherwise selected chief executives. For all the paeans to the sacred invincibilityof hereditary monarchy (or democracy), coupled with the occasionally warm invitationfor the political opponent to partake in rotation—“have their turn” (Churchill [1941] 1974,p. 6403)—the instability at transition points from one ruler to another has been quitecommon (Kurrild-Klitgaard 2000, pp. 63–84; Boureau 2006, p. 25; Kokkonen and Sundell2014, p. 440; Márquez 2017, p. 126). Given these formidable uncertainties in mind, theauthority lent to the transcendental framework of personal power is all the more remarkable:thus, most of the definitions of tyranny coined after the rise of democracy in Antiquitystress the violation of the term limits, popular will or other general rules of leader selection(Schmitt [1921] 1994, p. 19; Bell 1975, pp. 49–50; Perlmutter 1981, pp. 1–2). Still, theperpetually contested primacy of the transcendent in securing the foundations of politicalleadership resulted in the sporadic personality cults of empowered individuals. It couldbe now worthwhile to go over the most productive scenarios of deification laying thefoundations of such cultic veneration.

It has been mentioned before that deification upsets the relations between the tran-scendent significance of executive political roles and the immanent presence of individualspersonifying them. Shaky from the start in non-cultic personal rule (Roth 1968, p. 195;Jackson and Rosberg 1984; Guliyev 2011), the dominance of the everlasting and universalabstract roles over their local, sensually perceptible embodiments is virtually turned upsidedown in personality cults: while the inimitable traits of an object of adoration are consideredessential for the power execution, its official designation becomes accidental, secondaryand, in some cases, easily replaceable (Ursprung 2010, p. 153). For example, the commoncharacterization of Queen Victoria as the “mother, wife and queen”—in that order—wasclearly, if allegorically, promoting personal affection toward the closest relatives as thefoundation of successful imperial rule (Plunkett 2020, p. 81; for other similar examplessee Blakemore 1988, pp. 31–33; Postoutenko and Stephanov 2020b, p. 254). Alternatively,the bare masculinity of the early Benito Mussolini and Vladimir Putin, stripped of officialtitles, household responsibilities and (some) clothing, was sold to the more alienated fol-lowers impervious to family tales (Eatwell 2006, p. 152; Sperling 2016; Swan 2016). Thelavish celebrations of ruler’s birthdays as national holidays in Ancient Rome, VictorianGreat Britain, imperial and Nazi Germany, Socialist Yugoslavia and Vietnam, CommunistRomania, the Soviet Union and late-20th-century Liberia might be another example ofinalienable personal feature elevated to the status of the foundational state ritual (Ennker1987, p. 543; Kieh 1988, p. 15; Kraaz 1993, p. 47; Gabanyi 2000; Herz 2003, p. 51; Sretenovicand Puto 2004, p. 211; Wieviorka 2010, pp. 160–61; Dror 2016, p. 448; Giloi 2020, pp. 107–14;Marin 2020, p. 220; Plunkett 2020, p. 66; Postoutenko 2020, pp. 187, 191; Stephanov 2020,p. 65; Tikhomirov 2020, p. 127; Gill 2021). The most consistent inversion of type-tokenrelation could probably be registered in non-hereditary autocracies: in the political careersof Nicolae Ceaus, escu and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the endurance of a single individual atthe helm of a state was favourably contrasted to the turnover of his political roles, whichwere all of limited importance and duration (Joppien 2020, p. 243; Marin 2020, p. 218).

Expectedly, this turnaround of transcendence and immanence in the composition ofpolitical leadership has often been accompanied by the respective reassignment of theirattributes. For instance, beginning with the reign of Augustus in Rome, the worshippedleaders were quite often considered eternal and universal during their lifetime, and it wasthis property of the chosen individuals that conferred timelessness and totality upon thePax Romana (Charlesworth 1936, p. 123; Instinsky 1942, pp. 317–18; Étienne 1986, p. 445;Balbuza 2014, pp. 49–66). In a similar vein, the rule- or custom-based heredity securinglegitimacy via institutional channels was often replaced by selective inventive genealogy,

Religions 2022, 13, 627 5 of 17

based on personal likeness (real or staged) with the prominent deified individuals of thepast: depending on crcumstances, the lacking or deficient pedigree was borrowed eitherstraight from the otherworldly realm (Augustus portrayed as Jupiter) or metonymicallyinferred on the basis of the past successful deifications (Bokassa I imitating NapoleonI, see Ward 1933; O’Toole 1983). This linear ordering was accompanied by attributionsof specific superhuman properties the individual objects of cultic veneration: the listincluded the abilities to stop running elephants (Emperor Jahangir), offer instant solultionsfor all imaginable problems on the spot (Mao Tse-tung, Ceaus, escu and Hugo Chávez),set standards for cultural and economic goods (Ceaus, escu and Wilhelm II), summarilyfulfill the national ideals of all times (Mátyás Rákosi), predict the future (Benito Mussolini,Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, M obutu Sese Seko and Francisco Franco), possess allthinkable knowledge (Emperor Jahangir and Joseph Stalin), reign over the whole universe(Elisabeth I), heal the sick by touch (Vespasian, Henry IV, Charles II and Alexander I) andeven live longer than any of their followers (Joseph Stalin; see Bloch [1924] 1983, p. 614;Rougier 1959, p. 614; Gandhi 1975, p. 47; Hasler 1980, pp. 482–83; Ziethen 1994, p. 182;Belsey and Belsey 1995, p. 12; Apor 2009, p. 55; Tarasova 2009, p. 24; Anooshahr 2020, p. 56;Giloi 2020, p. 109; Marin 2020, p. 226; Márquez 2020, p. 31; Postoutenko 2020, p. 179).

To be sure, the task of confining lofty transcendent properties of cultic rule to the beingsof flesh and blood, however extraordinary, has been anything but easy (Nilsson 1978, p. 298):the ability to reach out to the distant past and future, make universally valid judgments orperform magic tricks was sitting incongruously with familial lovingness. As a result, many,if not most, images of the cultic personalities were heterogeneous combinations of acquiredotherworldly transcendence and retained down-to-earth immanence (Zakharine 2020, p. 13;Giloi 2020, p. 107; Postoutenko 2020, p. 174): for all his tireless self-promotion in the “new”media (Kohlrausch 2009), the last German Emperor was for some of his admirers first andforemost “the most personal personality (die persöhnlichste Persöhnlichkeit,” see Mann [1914]2021, pp. 138, 142). (Even before Wilhelm II applied this formulation to Jesus (Mann [1914]2021, p. 320), it popped up in Hegelianistic references to the Christian God revealing Hisuniversal divinity through particular humanity (see Michelet 1852, p. 118)).

Depending on context and customs, this binary could be played out in public spherein two distinct ways. The first scenario, close to—but by no means identical with—“theking’s two bodies” (Kantorowicz 1957), consisted of staging and, whenever applicable,perpetually reproducing in the media the face-to-face interactions between rulers and theirsubjects on equal terms (chatting, parading, working together, etc.) concurrently with thefollowers’ deferential upholding of the leaders’ unsurpassed greatness (from ceremonialuses of oversized portraits and insignia to overblown praise and applause). Alexander I’spatient and apparently cordial conversations with ordinary subjects, Joseph Stalin’s humblemarching with workers (on a photomontage poster) or Adolf Hitler’s meal with soldiers at thefield kitchen ran more or less parallel to the magnificent fireworks surrounding Alexander’smonogram, Stalin’s gigantic monuments at squares and memorials and Hitler’s deus-ex-machina-like descent from the skies to the Nuremberg Party Rally at the beginning of LeniRiefenstahl’s staged documentary Triumph of the Will (Stephanov 2020, pp. 66–77; Postoutenko2020, pp. 176–77). The second option of consecutively combining the otherworldly and thedown-to-earth images in the performance of the same cultic personality worked best withthe unscrupulous (or desperate) chancers capable of self-invention: the list of examples couldstretch all the way from Caligula (who switched from humility to self-deification) to Erdogan(who proceeded from the role of a conversation partner eagerly feigning interactional parity tothat of a confrontational tribune angrily reproaching and threatening his absent interlocutors;see, respectively Márquez 2020, p. 36; and Joppien 2020, p. 239).

Another obvious difficulty lies in the solipsistic curtailment of role transcendencein its subordination to personal immanence: how could a temporal and spatial infinityof a ruler be packed in—let alone derived from—his or her finitness? In early religionand art, the reflexive statements of cultic individuals were often offset by pointing fingerat therelated otherworldly agencies: whereas Jesus in the Bible insisted on his coming

Religions 2022, 13, 627 6 of 17

in his father’s name (John 5.43; see Postoutenko 2013, pp. 146–47), Horace’s unashamedself-promotion to eternity—exegi monumentum aere perennius—was said to be ordered bythe Muses (Hor. Od. 3.30, 4.8). However, many cultural, religious and political leaders wereready to embrace cultic solipsism more openly (Schulz-Buschhaus 1998, pp. 152–53). Inthe concurrent version of deification, the objects of cult were frequently spotted veneratingtheir own transcendent hypostases: whereas Ramses II did not mind worshipping hisown image, Joseph Stalin scolded his critics for their (laughable) attempts to precise“Stalin’s formulations” (Kantorowicz 1957, p. 498; Postoutenko 2019, p. 371). As forthe consecutive scenario of cultic (self-)empowerment, the rulers in question, in fact, wereacting as emergent autopoetic systems, creating more semantic organization out of less(Padgett and Powell 2012): in self-coronation rituals, pervasive in Russia after 18th centuryand best-known in the case of Napoleon I, the venerated leaders were effectively generatingdivine preordainment with their bare hands (Chernyavsky 1969, pp. 89–91; Aurell iCardona 2020, p. 299). Truth be told, albeit Napoleon’s self-coronation greatly contributedto his personality cult, the recurrent autogenetic manipulations of Russian tsars in mostcases failed to establish any noticeable cultic adoration (Hughes 2012, p. 147). This stateof affiars once again underscores the heightened probability of deification at the pointsof potential risk for the well-oiled rotation mechanisms: whereas the power of roles overpersons playing them remains strong, this likelihood, however, fails to turn into certainty.Inversely, deification could well be a starting point for the “routinization of charisma”resulting in more or less orderly executive successions with or without personality cults, aswas the case of many tyrannies from early Ancient Greece to North Korea (Weber [1919]1972, p. 142; Perlmutter 1981, pp. 1–2; Tertitskiy 2015).

3. Sustainment of Personality Cults: Canonization

In the discussion of deification above, the power agents—kings, presidents and othermagicians—effectively worked as messages taken out of context and sent across the socialsystems in which they belonged. Rather than faithfully impersonating their executiveroles, the deified individuals interiorized the ostensible transcendence of their noble offices,styling themselves as unique embodiments of absolute power and infallible rightness.Many early personality cults worked reasonably well without external communicativedevices: some Egyptian pharaohs and Mesopotanian kings were deified without a no-ticeable recourse to any special texts (Assmann 2001, pp. 57, 137; Shupak 2001, p. 545).However, more often than not, deification is accompanied by a rather similar commu-nicative practice, which migh be called canonization. It could be described as the socialselection and promotion of messages invariant to the state of the system they come from,including its internal (other senders and recipients, habitual codes, preexisting messages,preferred channels, etc.) and external (time and space) parameters (Postoutenko 2016,p. 204). Generally speaking, canonization is a legitimate and popular practice in its ownright, often detectable in socio-cultural areas far away from personality cults: such as aprofoundly and pointedly decontextualized genre as proverbs survived and flourishedacross cultural traditions, languages and political systems without ever relying on anydeified agencies (Mieder 2004, p. XII; Tannen 2007, pp. 50–51). Still, in many cases, neitherdeification nor canonization is strong enough to secure the cultic veneration of leaders andtexts in a changing, diverse world (Goody 1998, p. 15).

The relations between deified individuals and canonized messages varied dependingon socio-cultural systems in the background, epochs and pure chance (Dovic and Helgason2016, p. 75). Indeed, the objects of personality cults could form the content of the respectivemessages (Jesus in the Bible), be their authors (Homer with the Odyssey and Iliad) or worksomewhere in between, turning non-encoded—“Divine”—energy flows into signs (ProphetMuhammad in the Qur’ân; see Postoutenko 2020, p. 164). Although digital codes allowingfor a long-term preservation of information could be seen as a necessary preconditionfor canonization (von Neumann [1945] 1992, pp. 1–4; Luhmann 1987, p. 223; Hahn 2000,p. 241), the non-interactive media of writing and print are probably not essential: the

Religions 2022, 13, 627 7 of 17

literal meaning of sruti, the Hinduist analog Scripture, is “the heard [word]” (Colpe 1987,pp. 81–82), and the frantic speeches of one of the Sybils—the famous female oracles atDelphi—were credited by Heraklitus with a shelf life of 1000 years (DK B92).

It is easy to register further similarities between the semantics of canonized messagesand the significance of its deified correlates. In both cases, the paradigmatic presuppositionsproscribing the semantics of individual tokens were suppressed in favor of their allegedtranscendental significance: although the rules of creating and perceiving epic poems, ha-giographic recollections and theological pamphlets could hardly be more different, Homer’sheroic poems, the Bible and the Qur’ân were, at various times, regarded as the sources ofall thinkable knowledge (Stern 2003, pp. 237–38; Assmann and Assmann 1987, pp. 20–21).Furthemore, for all their periodical reshuffles, protracted formation phases and muddledorigins (Flesseman-van Leer 1964, pp. 404–5, 416–17; Ritter 1987, p. 95; Goldberg 1987,pp. 203–4; Zymner 1998, p. 35; Stordalen 2007, pp. 17, 19), canonic messages were oftenexpressly treated as sensually perceptible manifestations of their absolute significance: thealleged ability of the Torah scrolls containing the name of God to spread sanctity throughtactile contact with its readers exhibited the same conflation of symbolic, iconic and indexicalcodes as the French royal thaumaturgy (Friedman 1993, p. 126; Lim 2010, p. 514; Taylor2012, p. 294; Barton 2017, pp. 86–87). Last, but not least, the emancipation of canonizedmessages from any traditions, environmental causes, communicative contingencies andeven respective messengers gave a mighty boost to their predominantly autogenetic inter-pretations within respective socio-cultural systems. In this sense, it is only fitting that theQur’ân effectively proclaims its own canonicity (Boisliveau 2011, p. 166).

The neat structural parallelism between canonization and deification should not, how-ever, distract from the complexity of their interrelations in personality cults. A vast majorityof the aforecited (and other) studies devoted to the production and use of canon draw uponreligious and cultural communication. In those social subsystems, the relations betweentranscendence and immanence are usually markedly different from politics: whereas theabstract significance of the venerated individuals is continually upheld in canonic mes-sages and derivative meta-messages, their immediate presence either remains temporarilysuspended until some sort of Second Coming (religion) or has been canceled altogether dueto the inavoidable mortality of the messengers (art). To be sure, many religious narrativesemphasize the interplay of some invisible abstract principals of the Divine and their earthlyhuman animators, such as Moses, Muhammad or Jesus (Crüseman 1987, pp. 63, 67–68;Watson 2018, p. 48; for the terminology see Goffman 1981, p. 144). Nevertheless, the canonictexts of art and religion are typically used as the principal, incontrovertible and final sourcesof information about the deified writers and prophets, unendingly communicated aroundthe globe by means of symbolic (telling about X), iconic (depicting X) or indexical (created byX) signs. How could these strict, long-standing, wide-ranging chronological and causalorders grow and function in political personality cults with their subordination of theglobal and the eternal to the local and the situational?

The scarsity of studies addressing these questions in the political realm precludesreliable generalizations, but a few tentative remarks based on 20th-century Soviet historycould serve as working hypotheses. First of all, whenever personality cults in politicsbecome dissociated from personal rule, the forced canonization could pave the way topolitical irrelevance and preemptive memorial veneration. For example, the launch ofVladimir Lenin’s Complete Works in 1920, at the peak of his activity during convalesence inthe suburban Gorki residence, was clearly Joseph Stalin’s attempt to relegate the founder ofBolshevism to the backwater of history, shielding his “post-canonic” writings from the gen-eral reader (Postoutenko 2019, p. 367). However, canonization in the political realm shouldnot necessarily mimic the production of literary or religious canon: rather, some basicfeatures of canonicity can be successfully attuned to the different systemic parameters. Thefuzziness of canon could be the case in point: the post-factum rearrangement of religiouscanonic texts (see above) legitimizes periodical retroactive adjustments of absolute andeternal truths to the political situation in the cultic environment. The multiple changes of

Religions 2022, 13, 627 8 of 17

historical chapters in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia in accordance with the political demandsof the day and the changing cult personnel are just one of many examples (Wolfe 1969,p. 271). The fact that each subsequent version of historical truth about the Soviet Unionand its deified leaders was presumed at the time of publication to be the only one thathad ever existed anywhere (which in practice meant the banishment of all previous andalternative versions) turned the invented canon—always rhetorically associated with thedeified leader—into a handy complement of the everyday managerial discourse. Anotherstrategy for transposing the concurrent transcendence and immanence of the veneratedchief executive into the discursive realm was the reflexive ring-fencing of the canon withinhis own discourse. Stalin’s used of illeisms—the third-person references to his writings—was not unfrequently combined with the remarks suggesting their perfection (for example:“Stalin’s formulations do not need clarifications”, see (Stalin [1927] 1949, p. 152)). Appar-ently, Stalin was quite pleased with his self-canonizing rhetoric: having forwarded his letterto Lenin’s sister, the well-known Bolshevik Maria Ulyanova, he also saw to its publication,with slight alterations, in his Collected Works (Postoutenko 2019, p. 371). The whole storyfits the pattern of autogenetic canonization in religious communication and also appears tomatch the general self-referential trends in deification observed in Section 2.

Perhaps the most problematic part of political canonization is the production of sensu-ally perceptible authenticity of the messages emanating absolute truths: the aforementionedmagic power of the ancient Torah scrolls—whose symbolic content was rather similar in allsubsequent versions—was easy to explain, but how could the original of the perpetuallyupdated canon be the foundation, or even a part, of its syncretic veneration? The availableexamples point at consistency between the periodical reinventions of canonic transcen-dence and immanence: since each proclamation of one and only absolute, binding, eternaland authentical truth was rendering all previous variants non-existent (or, better to say,never-existent), there were a few obstacles for fabricating ever new sensually perceptible“originals” of canonic messages. In this sense, the Eher publishing house found it fitting tocongratulate Adolf Hitler with his 47th birthday by producing in April 1936 the new 35 kg“luxurious” parchment edition of Mein Kampf with the text written by hand (Postoutenko2020, p. 191). Just a couple of years later, the Laboratory of Conservation and Restaura-tion of Documents in Saint-Petersburg began its work on the “eternal conservation” ofthe major canonic text of Stalinism—the Soviet Constitution of 1936. Fittingly, the actualmanuscript of the canonized message was deemed too fragile to last forever, and had tobe created anew (Na vechnye vremena 1937). At some point, the conservationists’ projectwas quietly abandoned, and Hitler’s perusal of his “own” manuscript before its display atthe “Führer-House” in Munich remained an isolated accident in the course of his tirelessself-promotion (Mein Kampf in Pergament 1936). Still, the efforts of both Soviet and Nazileaders to create canonic correlates to their political deifications were wiedely publicizedand well received: fittingly, both Mein Kampf and the ‘Stalin’ Constitution were buried inthe earth in order to furnish unspecified next generations with the tangible copies of theeverlasting truths (Postoutenko 2020, p. 193).

4. Management of Personality Cults: Random Signaling

Having observed the formation of personality cults in politics from the standpoints ofmessengers (Section 1) and messages (Section 2), it is natural to look at the interactionalprocedures upholding and servicing the cults on a daily basis. It has been shown above that,in personality cults, the rules regulating executive succession and behavior in office arecommonly flouted (Section 1), and the texts upholding such cults are manifestly detachedfrom the situations of their creation and reception (Section 2). Under such circumstances,the gap between the carriers of absolute truths and the rest of society should be evenbigger than the usual asymmetries of political and communicative privileges in orderlyhierarchical societies (Merton 1969, p. 2618; Bell 1991, pp. 70–71; Habermas 1984, p. 242),and the need for a reliable signaling system linking deified individuals to their subjectsmust be even more dire than in non-cultic environments.

Religions 2022, 13, 627 9 of 17

At a first glance, the universal mechanism of human interaction commonly known as‘turn-taking’ should provide for these needs (Schegloff 2006, pp. 70–71). All over the world,since time immemorial, people tend to talk more or less one at a time, routinely and regularlyexchanging communicative roles (speakers turn into listeners and vice versa), and strive tocooperate on sustaining conversations, sticking to chosen and jointly ratified topics/codes,avoiding protracted monologues and awkward silences (Dubin and Spray 1964, p. 104;Goffman 1972, p. 198; Sacks et al. 1974, pp. 696–735; Drew 1995, pp. 120–21; Linell 2001, p. 83;Zakharine 2005, p. 581; Levinson 2006, p. 46; Raymond and Heritage 2013, pp. 143–44, 148,156; Karafoti 2015, p. 88). The equality of communicative chances provided by turn-takingoverrides the extreme power disparities even in archaic societies: in Sophokles’ Oedipus Rex,the blind prophet (and shepherd’s son) Tiresias, threatened by the deranged protagonist,

invokes and uses his citizen’s right to make a counterstatement (

Religions 2022, 13, x FOR PEER REVIEW 9 of 18

even bigger than the usual asymmetries of political and communicative privileges in or-derly hierarchical societies (Merton 1969, p. 2618; A. Bell 1991, pp. 70–71; Habermas 1984, p. 242), and the need for a reliable signaling system linking deified individuals to their subjects must be even more dire than in non-cultic environments.sche

At a first glance, the universal mechanism of human interaction commonly known as ‘turn-taking’ should provide for these needs (Schegloff 2006, pp. 70–71). All over the world, since time immemorial, people tend to talk more or less one at a time, routinely and regularly exchanging communicative roles (speakers turn into listeners and vice versa), and strive to cooperate on sustaining conversations, sticking to chosen and jointly ratified topics/codes, avoiding protracted monologues and awkward silences (Dubin and Spray 1964, p. 104; Goffman 1972, p. 198; Sacks et al. 1974, pp. 696–735; Drew 1995, pp. 120–21; Linell 2001, p. 83; Zakharine 2005, p. 581; Levinson 2006, p. 46; Raymond and Her-itage 2013, pp. 143–44, 148, 156; Karafoti 2015, p. 88). The equality of communicative chances provided by turn-taking overrides the extreme power disparities even in archaic societies: in Sophokles’ Oedipus Rex, the blind prophet (and shepherd’s son) Tiresias, threatened by the deranged protagonist, invokes and uses his citizen’s right to make a counterstatement (

ἀ

ντιλέγω), and even claims to “control” this conversational equilibration (both Soph.

OT 408). However, what looks good on stage was not necessarily the fact of social life: in most socially stratified and medially differentiated societies, some more visible individu-als (shamans, chiefs, celebrities, teachers, doctors, judges and chairpersons) claimed for themselves, and sometimes obtained, exclusive communicative privileges, such as pro-longed speaking turns or the right to ignore questions (Foucault 1971, p. 65; Burton 1981, pp. 62, 64; Heath 1984, p. 247; Newmeyer 1990, pp. 244–45; Drew and Heritage 1992, pp. 5–6; Thornborrow 2002, p. 43; Philips 2006, pp. 479–80; Hanks 2006, p. 301; Heritage 2006, p. 18; Ladegaard 2009; Postoutenko 2010, p. 21; Junge 2011, p. 29; Raymond et al. 2019).

The extreme development of this disparity, noticeable in personality cults, resulted in the suppression of turn-taking in favour of random signaling—the mechanism of inter-action in which messages exchanged and duly processed by social and communicative systems are only loosely and partially related to the adjacent (preceding or following) in-teractional activity or current environment. Most commonly, the departure from turn-tak-ing is manifest in the replacement of the three-turn sequences message A—response B—feedback on relevance A~B with the single pairing stimulus A—reaction B (Goffman 1972, p. 175; Luhmann 1987, p. 212; Drew 1995, pp. 133, 137; Javeau 1996, p. 255; Thornborrow 2002, p. 55): such “genotypically determined signals” (Bateson 1972, p. 419) as spermato-zoa are sent to the ovary to elicit the same unidirectional interaction scenario (one sperm cell → one ovum, see Stent 1972, pp. 44–45). At the crossings of nature and society—for example, in various divination practices—such coupling would involve the transfor-mation of environmental changes (or “events”) in the eye of the beholder into coded mes-sages (Searle 1978, p. 16). Sometimes, a simple observation of environmental phenomena was sufficient for deciphering the message of a Higher Being (Bottéro 1974, p. 100). How-ever, in most cases, shamans, priests and agitators were called upon: for example, a Mam-bila diviner would take a yes–no question from his clientele, and then interpret the trajec-tory of a spider’s movement as either a positive or negative answer to it (Zeitlyn 1995, p. 198). In a similar vein, the ancient oracle of Delphi emitted a mixture of ethylene and ethane, prompting the priestess Pythia to engage in rambling monologues, which the third party attempted to read as the guidance for present and future events (Spiller et al. 2002). The presence of intermediaries inventively translating cues into symbols does not cause much surprise (Evans-Pritchard [1937] 1976, p. 120; Katz 1975; Assmann and Ass-mann 1987, p. 14; E. N. Goody 1995, p. 213; Flusser 1996, pp. 22–24, 275; Hahn 2000, p. 242;

ντιλεγω), and even claimsto “control” this conversational equilibration (both Soph. OT 408). However, what looksgood on stage was not necessarily the fact of social life: in most socially stratified andmedially differentiated societies, some more visible individuals (shamans, chiefs, celebrities,teachers, doctors, judges and chairpersons) claimed for themselves, and sometimes obtained,exclusive communicative privileges, such as prolonged speaking turns or the right to ignorequestions (Foucault 1971, p. 65; Burton 1981, pp. 62, 64; Heath 1984, p. 247; Newmeyer1990, pp. 244–45; Drew and Heritage 1992, pp. 5–6; Thornborrow 2002, p. 43; Philips 2006,pp. 479–80; Hanks 2006, p. 301; Heritage 2006, p. 18; Ladegaard 2009; Postoutenko 2010,p. 21; Junge 2011, p. 29; Raymond et al. 2019).

The extreme development of this disparity, noticeable in personality cults, resulted inthe suppression of turn-taking in favour of random signaling—the mechanism of interactionin which messages exchanged and duly processed by social and communicative systems areonly loosely and partially related to the adjacent (preceding or following) interactional ac-tivity or current environment. Most commonly, the departure from turn-taking is manifestin the replacement of the three-turn sequences message A—response B—feedback on relevanceA~B with the single pairing stimulus A—reaction B (Goffman 1972, p. 175; Luhmann 1987,p. 212; Drew 1995, pp. 133, 137; Javeau 1996, p. 255; Thornborrow 2002, p. 55): such“genotypically determined signals” (Bateson 1972, p. 419) as spermatozoa are sent to theovary to elicit the same unidirectional interaction scenario (one sperm cell → one ovum,see Stent 1972, pp. 44–45). At the crossings of nature and society—for example, in variousdivination practices—such coupling would involve the transformation of environmentalchanges (or “events”) in the eye of the beholder into coded messages (Searle 1978, p. 16).Sometimes, a simple observation of environmental phenomena was sufficient for deci-phering the message of a Higher Being (Bottéro 1974, p. 100). However, in most cases,shamans, priests and agitators were called upon: for example, a Mambila diviner wouldtake a yes–no question from his clientele, and then interpret the trajectory of a spider’smovement as either a positive or negative answer to it (Zeitlyn 1995, p. 198). In a similarvein, the ancient oracle of Delphi emitted a mixture of ethylene and ethane, promptingthe priestess Pythia to engage in rambling monologues, which the third party attemptedto read as the guidance for present and future events (Spiller et al. 2002). The presenceof intermediaries inventively translating cues into symbols does not cause much surprise(Evans-Pritchard [1937] 1976, p. 120; Katz 1975; Assmann and Assmann 1987, p. 14; Goody1995, p. 213; Flusser 1996, pp. 22–24, 275; Hahn 2000, p. 242; Kalivoda and Daxelmüller2011, pp. 768–69). In their absence, the worshippers would have resembled the protagonistof Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot who was trying—and failing—to tell the “wind thereeds” from a certain higher being, keeping everybody in trepidation from the beginningto the end of the play (Beckett [1965] 1987, p. 19). However, the objects of personalitycult were neither vents nor winds; rather than just making noise or drugging their adepts,they were normally literate and sometimes even eloquent. Why would such a decidedlyuncooperative practice, at variance with the basics of human sociality (Tomasello 2009;Skyrms 2010, p. 3), play such a considerable role in personality cults?

Religions 2022, 13, 627 10 of 17

The first, and most general, reason could be the relative irrelevance of communic-taive coordination for interactions involving canonic messages. Even in standard con-versations of equal partners the pair stimulus/reaction is more tearproof than the triadmessage/response/feedback on relevance (Drew 1995, pp. 114–15). However, if the texts associ-ated with deified individuals are supposedly valid under all cirumstances at all times, eventhe matching of envornmental stimuli and discoursive responses, or questions and answersis pointless. Hence, the bragging of Adolf Hitler’s acolytes about the “blind discipline” atearly NSDAP meetings—which included the total ban on questions to the Führer (let aloneany discussion of his speeches)—is less irrational that it may seem (Kracauer [1939] 2013,p. 86; Bosmajian 1966, p. 14). While Hitler’s personality cut was still in the making, theforced canonization of his speeches—to be perceived with silent awe rather than engagedattention—appeared important to its creators.

Another substantial prerequisite for random signaling in personality cults is theacute social and communicative disparity of the interaction partners, exacerbated bythe low throughput capacity of the available communication channels. The salvation ofthe worshippers at Delphi was as contingent upon Gods’ messages as the survival ofspermatozoa on their reception in the ovary—but not the other way around: for that reason,the responsibility for creating and sustaining hierarchical communication was mainlyresting with the disempowered (Weber [1919] 1972, p. 657; Otto [1931] 2014, p. 69; Merton1969, pp. 2614–15; Edelman 1988, pp. 37–38; Bechtold 2011, p. 19; Cohen 2013, p. 461).Under such circumstances, sending multiple messages in the hope of an answer has usuallybeen a more sensible strategy than observing standard interaction rules and waiting for arelevant response forever (Pomerantz 1984): the analog of some fifty million spermatozoasent to the ovary were recurrent divination queries, which, depending on circumstances,could accumulate in expectation of response (Zeitlyn 1995, p. 189).

Correspondingly, in personality cults, both frenetic messaging to the deified leader andattempts to reconstruct his response from the available environment were quite widespread.Nikolai Bukharin, one of the most reputable Old Bolsheviks, had addressed over a dozen ofhis letters to Joseph Stalin in 1936–1937, apparently without response, only to be executedthe year after (Medvedev 1990, p. 325). In their turn, Hitler’s dispirited correspondentsengaged in reflexive pseudointeractional practices, such as mock “conversations” withhim, “prayers” in front of his “adorned” portraits and even the delusionary hopes of replythrough mass media: in fact, a couple of the Führer’s correspondents thanked him in allearnesty for “answering” their private messages in radio speeches (Postoutenko 2020).Communicative asymmetries, inherent in hierarchical societies, were often aggravated inpersonality cults by the absence of power rotation (see Section 1 above) and—in the lasttwo centuries—the spread of non-interactive mass media controlled by deified individuals:from the middle of the nineteenth century, the personal messages from Queen Victoria couldrapidly reach the remotest corners of the British Empire (Plunkett 2020, p. 81). In their turn,print, photography and the film industry turned not only narcissistic populists (such asBenito Mussolini) but also undemocratic snobs (such as Wilhelm II) into household images(Sturani 1995; Falasca-Zamponi 1997; Giloi 2020). A century later, such non-interactivemass media as radio and television amplified these tendencies, giving cultic personalities(Ceaus, escu, Chavez and Erdogan) unlimited and uncontested time on air (Marin 2020;Joppien 2020). In all those and many other cases, the ostensively “global” reach of masscommunication capable of transmitting abundant messages from the top straight to thecult adepts created an immediately graspable, tangible simulacrum of transcendence,transmitting the deified leader’s universal wisdom straight to the followers in no timeand at little cost to them. At the same time, the discordance between subjects and objectsof deification in random signaling resulted in communication pathologies, which, beinguseful for the deified individuals in the short run, accelerated their demise whenever theornate edifice of the cult was crumbling.

Since glorified executives have been often saddled with unlimited responsibilitiesand blessed with the corresponding amount of attention, their immediate availability was

Religions 2022, 13, 627 11 of 17

restricted anyway, and was further curtailed by the (usually well-founded) followers’ fearsstemming from the non-institutional character of the cultic power (Myerson 2008). Similarto George Orwell’s Big Brother, the objects of personality cults were, for the majority ofadepts, personages of tales, or “voice[s] on the telescreen” (Orwell [1949] 1977, p. 249). Putoff by limited interactional cooperation and overall accessibility, the adepts of personal-ity cults operated in the increasingly self-referential communicative compartments onlyvaguely related to their projected addressees (Fromm [1936] 1993, pp. 121, 130). The auto-genetic growth of the followership in the pre-modern age was the negative function of thephysical proximity to the deified leader: while only the inhabitants of the four major citiesin seventeenth-century Mughal India had had a chance to gaze at the emperor Jahangirduring sunrise, the participation of the others in the ceremony was limited to acquiringsome knowledge about its daily occurrence (Tarde [1901] 1989, p. 42). Modernity witnessedthe same process reverberated by various print media: the individuals gathering next to thepress bulletins to read news about the health of Queen Victoria could become themselvesthe objects of summary photo portraiture and subsequent press coverage, encouragingmimetic behavior among newspaper readers (Plunkett 2020, p. 86). Whenever the cultswere in need of expansion, the relative interactional autonomy of followers was used forthe feedback forgery: Rafael Trujillo, the longtime dictator of the Dominican Republic,bombarded newspapers with fake letters of support on his own behalf (Márquez 2020,p. 259), and the real applause accompanying Hitler’s speeches was at some public gather-ings supplemented by the recorded ones (Atkinson 1984, pp. 13–14; Thamer 1988, p. 367;Zelnhefer 1992, p. 92; Birdsall 2012, p. 45). However, in less stable curcumstances, thisneglect of interactional coordination could spell the doom for the cult and its objects: atany rate, the crowds directed to the Romanian Communist Party headquarters for listeningto Ceaus, escu’s ill-advised public speech turned in a split second from supporters to thegravediggers of the cult (Marin 2011).

5. Conclusions

Aside from drawing attention to significant similarities of personality cults acrossepochs and socio-cultural systems (including politics, art and religion), the main task ofthis survey was pointing out at the regularity of the communicative processes creating,upholding and sustaining personality cults at different levels: deification, canonization andrandom signaling are all seen as procedures inverting transcendent (invariant in relationto individuals) rules in favour of the immanent (autopoetically produced) properties ofthe venerated individuals. The difficulties arising from this paralogical argumentationare outlined together with the methods aimed at mitigating their effects (duplication oftranscendental and immanent images, retroactive updates of canon, invented genealogies).Whereas the instability of personality cults undescores their socio-cultural and politicalmarginality, the spread and persistence of the three practices throughout centuries andcontinents reveals the considerable cult potential of human societies activated wheneverthe norms of human governance, long-term messaging and situational interaction appearedfrail or irrelevant.

Funding: This research was funded by the German Research Foundation (Special Research Area 1288‘Practices of Comparing’) and Waseda Institute for Advanced Studies (Tokyo, Japan).

Conflicts of Interest: The author declares no conflict of interest.

ReferencesAnooshahr, Ali. 2020. Making the cult of personality from bottom up: The case of seventeenth-century Mughal India. In Ruler

Personality Cults from Empires to Nation-States and Beyond: Symbolic Patterns and Interactional Dynamics. Edited by Kirill Postoutenkoand Darin Stephanov. London: Routledge, pp. 46–63.

Apor, Balázs. 2009. National Traditions and the Leader Cult in Communist Hungary in the Early Cold War Years. Twentieth CenturyCommunism 1: 50–71.

Apor, Balázs. 2017. The Invisible Shining. The Cult of Mátyás Rákosi in Stalinist Hungary, 1945–1956. Budapest: CEU Press.Argyle, Michael, Adrian Furnham, and Jean Ann Graham. 1981. Social Sutuations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Religions 2022, 13, 627 12 of 17

Assmann, Aleida, and Jan Assmann. 1987. Kanon und Zensur. In Kanon und Zensur: Beiträge zur Archäologie der literarischenKommunikation II. Edited by Aleida Assmann and Jan Assmann. München: Wilhelm Fink, pp. 7–27.

Assmann, Jan. 2001. Ma’at: Gerechtigkeit und Unsterblichkeit im alten Ägypten. München: Wilhelm Fink.Assmann, Jan, and Harald Strohm, eds. 2010. Herrscherkult und Heilserwartung. Munchen: Fink.Atkinson, Max. 1984. Our Master’s Voices: The Language and Body Language of Politics. London: Routledge.Atlan, Henri. 1984. Disorder, Complexity and Meaning. In Disorder and Order. Edited by Paisley Livingston. Saratoga: Anima Libri,

pp. 109–28.Auffarth, Christoph. 2003. Herrscherkult und Christuskult. In Die Praxis der Herrscherverehrung in Rom und seinen Provinzen. Edited by

Hubert Cancik and Konrad Hitzl. Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, pp. 283–317.Aurell i Cardona, Jaume. 2020. Medieval Self-Coronations. The History and Symbolism of a Ritual. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Balbuza, Katarzyna. 2014. The Idea of aeternitas of State, City and Emperor in Augustan Poetry. Klio 96: 49–66. [CrossRef]Barton, John. 2017. Canon and Content. In When Texts Are Canonized. Edited by Timothy H. Lim. Providence: Brown Judaic Studies,

pp. 82–94.Bateson, Gregory. 1972. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Bechtold, Christian. 2011. Gott und Gestirn als Präsenzformen des toten Kaisers. Gottingen: V & R unipress.Beckett, Samuel. 1987. Waiting for Godot. Stuttgart: Philipp Reklam. First published 1965.Bell, Allan. 1991. Audience Accommodation in Mass Media. In Contexts of Accommodation: Developments in Applied Sociolinguistics.

Edited by Howard Giles, Nikolas Coupland and Justine Coupland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 69–102.Bell, David V. J. 1975. Power, Influence and Authority. New York: Oxford University Press.Belsey, Andrtew, and Catherine Belsey. 1995. Icons of Divinity: Portraits of Elizabeth I. In Renaissance Bodies: The Human Figure in

English Culture, c. 1540–1660. Edited by Lucy Gent and Nigel Llewellyn. London: Reaktion Books, pp. 11–35.Birdsall, Carolyn. 2012. Nazi Soundscapes: Sound, Technology and Urban Space in Germany, 1933–1945. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University

Press.Blakemore, Steven. 1988. Burke and the Fall of Language: The French Revolution as Linguistic Event. Hanover: University Press of

New England.Bloch, Marc. 1983. Les Rois Thaumaturges. Paris: Gallimard. First published 1924.Blos, Wilhelm. 1919. Denkwürdigkeiten eines Sozialdemokraten. München: G.Birk, vol. 2.Boak, Arthur E. R. 1916. The Theoretical Basis of the Deification of Rulers in Antiquity. The Classical Journal 11: 293–97.Boisliveau, Anne-Sylvie. 2011. Canonisation du Coran . . . par le Coran? Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée 129: 153–68.

[CrossRef]Bosmajian, Haig A. 1966. The Magic Word in Nazi Persuasion. ETC.: A Review of General Semantics 23: 9–23.Bottéro, Jean. 1974. Symptômes, signes, écritures en Mésopotamie ancienne. In Divination et rationalité. Edited by Jean-Pierre Vernant.

Paris: Seuil, pp. 70–196.Boureau, Alain. 2006. How Christian Was the Sacralization of Monarchy in Western Europe (Twelfth-Fifteenth Centuries)? In Mystifying

the Monarch: Studies on Discourse, Power, and History. Edited by Jeroen Deploige and Gita Deneckere. Amsterdam: AmsterdamUniversity Press, pp. 25–34.

Boyce, Mary. 1975. History of Zoroastrianism I. Leiden: Brill.Brehier, Louis, and Pierre Batiffol. 1920. Les Survivances du culte impérial romain: A propos des rites shintoïstes. Paris: Auguste Picard.Burke, Peter. 1992. The Fabrication of Louis XIV. New Haven: Yale University Press.Burton, Deirdre. 1981. Analyzing Spoken Discourse. In Studies in Discourse Analysis. Edited by Malcolm Coulthard. London: Routledge

and Kegan Paul, pp. 61–81.Buschel, Huberthus. 2004. Untertanenliebe: Der Kult um deutsche Monarchen 1770–1830. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.Charlesworth, Martin P. 1936. Providentia and Aeternitas. Harvard Theological Review 29: 107–32. [CrossRef]Chernyavsky, Michael. 1969. Tsar and People: Studies in Russian Myths. New York: Random House.Churchill, Winston S. 1974. House of Commons Speech on the Battle for Crete. In His Complete Speeches 6. Edited by Winston S.

Churchill. New York: Chelsea House, pp. 6403–4. First published 1941.Cohen, Yves. 2013. Le Siècle des chefs: Une histoire transnationale du commandement et de l’autorité. 1890–1940. Paris: Amsterdam.Cohn, Norman. 1970. The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.Colingwood, Robin G. 1960. The Idea of Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. First published 1945.Colpe, Carsten. 1987. Sakralisierung von Texten und Filiationen von Kanons. In Kanon und Zensur: Beiträge zur Archäologie der

literarischen Kommunikation II. Edited by Aleida Assmann and Jan Assmann. München: Wilhelm Fink, pp. 80–92.Crüseman, Frank. 1987. Das ‘portative Vaterland’. Struktur und Genese des alttestamentischen kanons. In Kanon und Zensur: Beiträge

zur Archäologie der literar-ischen Kommunikation II. Edited by Aleida Assmann and Jan Assmann. München: Wilhelm Fink,pp. 63–79.

Dahrendorf, Ralf. 1971. Homo Sociologicus: Ein Versuch zur Geschichte, Bedeutung und Kritik der Kategorie der sozialen Rolle. Opladen:Westdeutscher Verlag.

Dovic, Marijan, and Jón Karl Helgason. 2016. National Poets, Cultural Saints: Can-onization and Commemorative Cults of Writers in Europe.Leiden: Brill.

Religions 2022, 13, 627 13 of 17

Drew, Paul. 1995. Interaction Sequences and Anticipatory Interactive Planning. In Social Intelligence and Interaction: Expressionsand Implications of the Social Bias in Human Intelligence. Edited by Esther N. Goody. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,pp. 111–38.

Drew, Paul, and John Heritage. 1992. Analyzing talk at work: An introduction. In Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings.Edited by Paul Drew and John Heritage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 3–65.

Dror, Olga. 2016. Establishing Hồ Chí Minh’s Cult: Vietnamese Traditions and Their Transformations. Journal of Asian Studies 75:433–66. [CrossRef]

Dubin, Robert, and S. Lee Spray. 1964. Executive Behavior and Interaction. Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society 3:99–108. [CrossRef]

Eatwell, Roger. 2006. The Concept and Theory of Charismatic Leadership. Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 7: 141–56.[CrossRef]

Edelman, Murray. 1988. Constructing the Political Spectacle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Ennker, Benno. 1987. Die Anfänge des Leninkultes. Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 35: 534–55.Étienne, Robert. 1986. Aeternitas Augusti-Aeternitas Imperii. Quelques aperçus. Collection de l’Institut des Sciences et Techniques de

l’Antiquité 329: 445–54.Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. 1976. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande. Oxford: Clarendon Press. First published 1937.Falasca-Zamponi, Simonetta. 1997. Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy. Berkeley: University of California Press.Flesseman-van Leer, Ellen. 1964. Prinzipien der Sammlung und Ausscheidung bei der Bildung des Kanons. Zeitschrift für Theologie und

Kirche 61: 404–20.Flusser, Vilém. 1996. Kommunikologie. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag.Foucault, Michel. 1971. L’ordre du discours. Paris: Gallimard.Frazer, James G. 1994. The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion. New York: Papermac. First published 1890.Friedman, Shamma. 1993. The Holy Scriptures Defile the Hands: The Transformation of a Biblical Concept in Rabbinic Theology. In

Minhah le-Nahum: Biblical and Other Studies. Presented to Nahum M. Sarna in Honour of his 70th Birthday. Edited by Marc Brettlerand Michael Fishbane. Sheffield: JSOT Press, pp. 117–32.

Fromm, Erich. 1993. Der autoritäre Charakter. In Die Gesellschaft als Gegenstand der Psychoanalyse. Edited by Erich Fromm. Frankfurt amMain: Suhrkamp, pp. 69–133. First published 1936.

Gabanyi, Anneli Ute. 2000. The Ceaus, escu Cult. Bucharest: The Romanian Cultural Foundation.Gagé, Jean. 1961. Pouvoir et religion. III. Psychologie du culte impérial romain. Diogène 34: 47–68.Gandhi, Madan. 1975. Charismatic Leadership and Mao Tse Tung. Indian Political Science Review 9: 38–49.Gilbert, Scott F., Jan Sapp, and Alfred I. Tauber. 2012. A Symbiotic View of Life: We Have Never Been Individuals. The Quarterly Review

of Biology 4: 325–41. [CrossRef] [PubMed]Gill, Graeme. 2021. The Stalin Cult as Political Religion. Religions 12: 1112. [CrossRef]Giloi, Eva. 2020. The magic mirror. Supplicant letters and the role of false equivalences in shaping ruler dominance. In Ruler Personality

Cults from Empires to Nation-States and Beyond: Symbolic Patterns and Interactional Dynamics. Edited by Kirill Postoutenko and DarinStephanov. London: Routledge, pp. 104–19.

Goffman, Erving. 1961. Encounters. Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.Goffman, Erving. 1972. Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.Goffman, Erving. 1981. Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Goldberg, Arnold. 1987. Die Zerstörung von Kontext als Voraussetzung für die Kanonisierung religiöser texte im rabbinischen

Judentum. In Kanon und Zensur: Beiträge zur Archäologie der literarischen Kommunikation II. Edited by Aleida Assmann and JanAssmann. München: Wilhelm Fink, pp. 190–200.

Goody, Esther N. 1995. Social Intelligence and Prayer as Dialogue. In Social Intelligence and Interaction: Expressions and Implications of theSocial Bias in Human Intelligenc. Edited by Esther N. Goody. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 206–20.

Goody, John. 1998. Canonization in Oral and Literate Cultures. In Canonization and Decanonization. Edited by Arie van der Kooij andKarel van der Toorn. Leiden: Brill, pp. 3–16.

Gordon, Richard. 2001. The Roman Imperial Cult and the Question of Power. In Raising the Eyebrow: John Onians and World Art Studies.Edited by Lauren Golden. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, pp. 107–22.

Guliyev, Farid. 2011. Personal Rule, Neopatrimonialism, and Regime Typologies: Integrating Dahlian and Weberian Approaches toRegime Studies. Democratization 18: 575–601. [CrossRef]

Habermas, Jürgen. 1984. Vorstudien und Ergänzungen zur Theorie des kommunika-tiven Handelns. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.Hahn, Alois. 2000. Konstruktionen des Selbst, der Welt und der Geschichte. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.Halder, Marc. 2013. Der Titokult: charismatische Herrschaft im sozialistischen Jugoslawien. Munchen: Oldenbourg.Hanks, William F. 2006. Joint Commitment and Common Ground in a Ritual Event. In Roots of Human Sociality. Edited by Nick J.

Enfield and Stephen C. Levinson. Oxford: Berg, pp. 299–328.Hasler, August B. 1980. Das Duce-Bild in der faschistischen Literatur. Quellen und Forschungen aus Italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken

60: 420–506.

Religions 2022, 13, 627 14 of 17

Heath, Christian. 1984. Talk and Recipiency: Sequential Organization in Speech and Body Movement. In Structures of Social Action:Studies in Conversation Analysis. Edited by J. Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,pp. 247–65.

Hegel, Georg W. F. 1996. Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (Werke 7). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. First published 1821.Heritage, John. 2006. Conversational Analysis and Institutional Talk: Analyzing Data. In Conversation Analysis IV. Institutional

Interactions. Edited by Paul Drew and John Heritage. London: Sage Publications, pp. 1–26.Herz, Peter. 2003. Neue Forschungen zum Festkalender der römischen Kaiserzeit. In Die Praxis der Herrscherverehrung in Rom und

seinen Provinzen. Edited by Hubert Cancik and Konrad Hitzl. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, pp. 47–67.Hughes, Michael J. 2012. Forging Napoleon’s Grande Armée—Motivation, Military Culture, and Masculinity in the French Army, 1800–1808.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.Innis, Howard. 2007. Empire and Communications. Toronto: Dundurn Press. First published 1950.Inose, Hiroshi. 1972. Communication Networks. Scientific American 227: 117–28. [CrossRef]Instinsky, Hans U. 1942. Kaiser und Ewigkeit. Hermes 77: 313–55.Jackson, Robert H., and Carl G. Rosberg. 1984. Personal Rule: Theory and Practice in Africa. Comparative Politics 16: 421–42. [CrossRef]Javeau, Claude. 1996. Parler pour ne rien dire. ‘Ça va? Ça va!’. Ethnologie Française XXVI 2: 255–63.Joppien, Charlotte. 2020. Embodied practices of leadership: The case of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In Ruler Personality Cults from Empires to

Nation-States and Beyond: Symbolic Patterns and Interactional Dynamics. Edited by Kirill Postoutenko and Darin Stephanov. London:Routledge, pp. 235–50.

Junge, Kay. 2011. Self-Concepts, Counter-Concepts, Asymmetrical Counter-Concepts: Some Aspects of a Multifaceted Agenda.In Asymmetrical Concepts after Reinhart Koselleck: Historical Semantics and Beyond. Edited by Kay Junge and Kirill Postoutenko.Bielefeld: Transcript, pp. 9–46.

Junge, Kay, and Kirill Postoutenko. 2021. Redundancy, Noisy Signaling, and Semantic inflation: Studying the Patterns of Self-Destruction in Complex Systems. Systems Research and Behavioral Science 38: 902–10. [CrossRef]

Jussen, Bernhard. 2009. The King’s Two Bodies Today. Representations 106: 102–17. [CrossRef]Kalivoda, Gregor, and Christoph Daxelmüller. 2011. Orakel. In Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik 10. Edited by Gert Ueding. Berlin:

de Gruyter, pp. 768–81.Kantorowicz, Ernst H. 1957. The King‘s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Kantorowicz, Ernst H. 1958. Laudes regiae: A Study in Liturgical Acclamations and Mediaeval Ruler Worship. Berkeley: University of

California Press.Karafoti, Eleni. 2015. Absent Second Pair Parts and their Relevance For (im)politeness. In Exploring (Im)Politeness in Specialized and

General Corpora: Converging Methodologies and Analytic Procedures. Edited by Yesim Aksan, Sükriye Ruhi and Thomas Schmidt.Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, pp. 82–105.

Katz, Elihu. 1975. The Two-Step Flow of Communication. In Mass Communications. Edited by Wilbur Schramm. Urbana-Champaign:University of Illinois Press, pp. 346–65.

Kaufman, Louis H., and Stuart A. Umpleby. 2018. A Brief History of (Second Order) Cybernertics. In New Horizons for Second-OrderCybernetics. Edited by Alexander Riegler, Karl H. Müller and Stuart A. Umpleby. Singapore: World Scientific, pp. 3–6.

Kieh, George K., Jr. 1988. Guru, Visionary and Superchief: An Analysis of the Impact of the Cult of the Presidency on the Developmentof Democracy in Liberia. Liberia-Forum 4: 8–19.

Kirchner, Alexander. 2011. Personenkult. In Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik 10, Nachträge A–Z. Edited by Gregor Kalivoda and GertUeding. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 872–86.

Kokkonen, Andrej, and Anders Sundell. 2014. Delivering Stability—Primogeniture and Autocratic Survival in European Monarchies.American Political Science Review 108: 438–53. [CrossRef]

Kohlrausch, Martin. 2009. Der Monarch im Skandal: Die Logik der Massenmedien und die Transformation der wilhelmnischen Monarchie.Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.

Kolb, Anne, and Marco Vitale, eds. 2016. Kaiserkult in den Provinzen des Römischen Reiches: Organisation, Kommunikation und Repräsentation.Berlin: De Gruyter.

Koselleck, Reinhart. 1989. Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.Kraaz, Astrid. 1993. Vergöttlichungstendenzen am Ende der römischen Republik am Beispiel Caesars und Oktavians. Berlin: TU Berlin.Kracauer, Siegfried. 2013. Totalitäre Propaganda. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. First published 1939.Krippendorff, Klaus. 1986. Dictionary of Cybernetics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.Kurrild-Klitgaard, Peter. 2000. The Constitutional Economics of Autocratic Succession. Public Choice 103: 63–84. [CrossRef]Ladegaard, Hans J. 2009. Pragmatic Cooperation Revisited: Resistance and Non-Cooperation as a Discursive Strategy in Asymmetrical

Discourses. Journal of Pragmatics 41: 649–66. [CrossRef]Leese, Daniel. 2011. Mao Cult: Rhetoric and Ritual in China’s Cultural Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Levinson, Stephen C. 2006. On the Human ‘Interaction Engine’. In Roots of Human Sociality. Edited by Nick J. Enfield and Stephen C.

Levinson. Oxford: Berg, pp. 39–69.Lim, Timothy H. 2010. The Defilement of the Hands as a Principle Determining the Holiness of Scripture. Journal of Theological Studies

(New Series) 61: 501–15. [CrossRef]Linell, Per. 2001. Approaching Dialogue. Talk, Interaction and Contexts in Dialogical Perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Religions 2022, 13, 627 15 of 17

Luckmann, Thomas. 1979. Persönliche Identität, soziale Rolle und Rollendistanz. In Identität (Poetik & Hermeneutik 8). Edited by OdoMarquard and Karlheinz Stierle. München: Wilhelm Fink, pp. 293–313.

Luhmann, Niklas. 1987. Soziale Systeme. Grundriß einer allgemeinen Theorie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.Luhmann, Niklas. 2000. Religion der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.Luhmann, Niklas. 2002. Politik der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.Luhmann, Niklas. 2003. Macht. Stuttgart: Lucuis & Lucius.Mair, Lucy. 1964. Primitive Government. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd.Mann, Heinrich. 2021. Der Untertan. Stuttgart: Reclam. First published 1914.Marin, Louis. 1983. Le Portrait du roi. Paris: Minuit.Marin, Manuela. 2020. ‘We thank you, our beloved leader!’ The origins and evolution of Nicolae Ceaus, escu’s cult of personality.

In Ruler Personality Cults from Empires to Nation-States and Beyond: Symbolic Patterns and Interactional Dynamics. Edited by KirillPostoutenko and Darin Stephanov. London: Routledge, pp. 218–34.

Marin, Noemi. 2011. History ante portas! Nicoale Ceausescu’s Speech in Response to the Timisoara Events and the Beginning of 1989Romania Revolution. Advances in the History of Rhetoric 11/12: 237–63. [CrossRef]

Márquez, Xavier. 2017. Non-Democratic Politics: Authoritarianism, Dictatorship and Democratization. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Márquez, Xavier. 2020. The mechanisms of cult production. An overview. In Ruler Personality Cults from Empires to Nation-States and

Beyond: Symbolic Patterns and Interactional Dynamics. Edited by Kirill Postoutenko and Darin Stephanov. London: Routledge,pp. 21–45.

McLuhan, Marshall. 1967. The Relation of Environment to Anti-Environment. In The Human Dialogue: Perspectives on Communication.Edited by Floyd W. Matson and Ashley Montagu. New York: Free Press, pp. 39–47.

Medvedev, Roi A. 1990. O Staline i stalinizme. [On Stalin and Stalinism]. Moskva: Progress.Mein Kampf in Pergament. 1936. Ehrengabe der Beamtenschaft dem Führer überreicht. Völkischer Beobachter 49: 1.Merton, Robert K. 1969. The Social Nature of Leadership. American Journal of Nursing 69: 2614–18. [PubMed]Michelet, Carl Ludwig. 1852. Die Zukunft der Menschheit und die Unsterblichkeit der Seele, oder die Lehre von den letzten Dingen. Berlin:

F. Schneider & Comp.Mieder, Wolfgang. 2004. Proverbs: A Handbook. Westport: Greenwood Press.Myerson, Roger B. 2008. The Autocrat’s Credibility Problem and Foundations of the Constitutional State. American Political Science

Review 102: 125–39. [CrossRef]Na vechnye vremena. 1937. Leningradskaia Pravda, January 10, 4.Nakamura, Hajime. 1992. A Comparative History of Ideas. Delhi: Kegan Paul International.Neumann, Franz. 1970. Behemoth: Struktur und Praxis des Nationalsozialismus 1933–1944. Frankfurt am Main: DTV. First published 1942.Newmeyer, Frederick. 1990. Speaker-Hearer Asymmetry as Factor of Language Evolution: A Functional Explanation for Formal

Principles of Grammar. In Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. Edited by Kira Hall.Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society, pp. 241–47.

Nilsson, Martin P. 1978. Die Bedeutung des Herrscherkultes. In Römischer Kaiserkult. Edited by Antonie Wlosok. Darmstadt:Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, pp. 291–300.

O’Toole, Thomas E. 1983. Jean-Bedel Bokassa: neo-Napoleon or traditional African ruler? In Cult of Power. Edited by Joseph Held.New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 95–106.

Odesskiı, Mikhail, and David Fel’dman. 2004. Poetika ‘ottepeli’ [Poetics of ‘Thaw’]. Voprosy literatury 5: 75–114.Orwell, George. 1977. Nineteen Eighty-Four. New York: Signet Classics. First published 1949.Otto, Rudolf. 2014. Das Heilige. Munchen: C. H. Beck. First published 1931.Padgett, John F., and Walter W. Powell. 2012. The Emergence of Organizations and Markets. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Perlmutter, Amos. 1981. Modern Authoritarianism: A Comparative Institutional Analysis. New Haven: Yale University Press.Philips, Susan U. 2006. Language and Social Inequality. In A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology. Edited by Alessandro Duranti.

Malden: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 474–95.Pittman, John R. 2017. Thoughts on the ‘Cult of Personality’ in Communist History. Science and Society 81: 533–48. [CrossRef]Plamper, Jan. 2004. Introduction: Modern Personality Cults. In Personality Cults in Stalinism. Edited by Klaus Heller and Jan Plamper.

Göttingen: V & R Unipress.Plamper, Jan. 2012. The Stalin Cult: A Study in the Alchemy of Power. New Haven: Yale University Press.Plunkett, John. 2020. Of death and dominion: Queen Victoria and the cult of colonial loyalty. In Ruler Personality Cults from Empires to

Nation-States and Beyond: Symbolic Patterns and Interactional Dynamics. Edited by Kirill Postoutenko and Darin Stephanov. London:Routledge, pp. 79–102.

Pomerantz, Anita. 1984. Pursuing a Response. In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis. Edited by J. MaxwellAtkinson and John Heritage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 152–63.

Postoutenko, Kirill. 2010. Prolegomena to the Study of Totalitarian Communication. In Totalitarian Communication: Hierarchies, Codesand Messages. Edited by Kirill Postoutenko. Bielefeld: Transcript, pp. 11–42.

Postoutenko, Kirill. 2013. Der Antichrist und seine Widersacher. In Kippfiguren. Ambivalenz in Bewegung. Edited by Kay Junge, WernerBinder, Marco Gerster and Kim-Claude Meyer. Weilerswist: Delbrück, pp. 143–53.

Religions 2022, 13, 627 16 of 17

Postoutenko, Kirill. 2016. Towards a conceptual history of canonization in totalitarian societies. Ariadna histórica. Lenguajes, Conceptos,Metáforas 5: 197–209.

Postoutenko, Kirill. 2019. Stalin’s Two Bodies? A Socio-Political Dimension. In Words, Bodies, Memory: A Festschrift in Honor ofIrina Sandomirskaja. Edited by Lars Kleberg, Tora Lane and Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback. Huddinge: Södertörns Högskola,pp. 379–98.

Postoutenko, Kirill. 2020. Deification, canonization and random signaling: Upholding and sustaining personality cults. In RulerPersonality Cults from Empires to Nation-States and Beyond: Symbolic Patterns and Interactional Dynamics. Edited by Kirill Postoutenkoand Darin Stephanov. London: Routledge, pp. 163–217.

Postoutenko, Kirill, and Darin Stephanov. 2020a. Symbolic patterns and interactional dynamics in ruler personality cults: State ofthe art and open questions. In Ruler Personality Cults from Empires to Nation-States and Beyond: Symbolic Patterns and InteractionalDynamics. Edited by Kirill Postoutenko and Darin Stephanov. London: Routledge, pp. 1–5.

Postoutenko, Kirill, and Darin Stephanov. 2020b. Symbolic patterns and interactional dynamics in ruler personality cults: Respondingto questions and formulating ideas for future research. In Ruler Personality Cults from Empires to Nation-States and Beyond: SymbolicPatterns and Interactional Dynamics. Edited by Kirill Postoutenko and Darin Stephanov. London: Routledge, pp. 251–71.

Pray, Leslie A. 2008. DNA Replication and Causes of Mutation. Nature Education 1: 214.Raymond, Chase W., Marissa Caldwell, Lisa Mikesell, Innhwa Park, and Nicholas Williams. 2019. Turntaking and the structural

legitimization of bias: The case of the Ford-Kavanaugh hearing by the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Languageand Communication 69: 97–114. [CrossRef]

Raymond, Geoffrey, and John Heritage. 2013. One question after another: Same-turn repair in the formation of yes/no type initiatingactions. In Conversational Repair and Human Understanding. Edited by Makoto Hayashi, Geoffrey Raymond and Jack Sidnell.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 135–71.

Riall, Lucy. 2007. Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero. New Haven: Yale University Press.Ritter, Adolf M. 1987. Die Entstehung des neutestamentlichen Kanons: Selbstdurchsetzung oder autoritative Entscheidung? In Kanon

und Zensur: Beiträge zur Archäologie der literarischen Kommunikation II. Edited by Aleida Assmann and Jan Assmann. München:Wilhelm Fink, pp. 93–109.

Rolf, Malte. 2006. Das Sowjetische Massenfest. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition.Roth, Guenther. 1968. Patrimonial Rulership, Patrimonialism and Empire-Building in the New States. World Politics 20: 194–206.

[CrossRef]Rougier, Louis. 1959. Le caractère sacré de la royautè en France. In La regalità sacra. Contributi al tema dell’VIII Congresso Internazionale di

Storia délie Religioni. Edited by Carl M. Edsman. Leiden: Brill, pp. 609–19.Sacks, Harvey, Emanuel A. Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson. 1974. A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for

Conversation. Language 50: 696–735. [CrossRef]Sargent, S. Stansfield, and Katharine P. Beardsley. 1960. Social Roles and Personality Traits. Journal of Social Psychiatry 6: 66–70.Schegloff, Emanuel A. 2006. Interaction: The Infrastructure, Social Institutions, the Natural Ecological Niche for the Language, and the

Arena in which Culture is Enacted. In Roots of Human Sociality. Edited by Nick J. Enfield and Stephen C. Levinson. Oxford: BergPublishers, pp. 70–98.

Schmitt, Karl. 1994. Die Diktatur. Berlin: Duncker und Humblot. First published 1921.Schrödinger, Erwin. 1968. Order, Disorder and Entropy. In Systems Research for Behavioral Science: A Sourcebook. Edited by Walter

Buckley. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, pp. 143–46.Schulz-Buschhaus, Ulrich. 1998. Einführung. In Kanon. Macht. Kultur. Edited by Renate von Heydebrand. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler,

pp. 151–55.Searle, John R. 1978. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Seltman, Charles. 1953. The Ruler-Cult: From Alexander of Macedon to Elisabeth I of England. History Today 3: 311–20.Shupak, Nili. 2001. ‘Canon’ and ‘Canonization’ in Ancient Egypt. Bibliotheca Orientalis 18: 535–47. [CrossRef]Skyrms, Brian. 2010. Signals: Evolution, Learning and Information. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Sozen, Yunus. 2019. Populist Peril to Democracy: The Sacralization and Singularization of Competitive Elections. Political Studies

Review 17: 267–83. [CrossRef]Sperling, Valerie. 2016. Putin’s Macho Personality Cult. Communist & Post-Communist Studies 49: 13–23.Spiller, Henry A., John R. Hale, and Jelle Z. De Boer. 2002. The Delphic oracle: A multidisciplinary defense of the gaseous vent theory.

Journal of Toxicology—Clinical Toxicology 40: 189–96. [CrossRef]Sretenovic, Stanislav, and Artan Puto. 2004. Leader Cults in the Western Balkans (1945–90): Josip Broz Tito. In The Leader Cult in

Communist Dictatorships: Stalin and the Eastern Bloc. Edited by Balázs Apor, Jan C. Behrends, Polly Jones and E. Arfon Rees.Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 208–23.

Stalin, Iosif V. 1949. Tovarishchu M.I. Ulianovoı: Otvet tovarishchu Mikhel’sonu [To the Comrade M. I. Ulianova: The Response to theComrade Mikhelson]. In Sochineniia 10. Moskva: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoı literatury, pp. 149–52. First published 1927.

Stent, Gunther. 1972. Communication Networks. Scientific American 227: 42–51. [CrossRef]Stephanov, Darin. 2020. A personality cult against one’s will? Traits and trajectories of popular veneration of Emperor Alexander I (r.

1801–1825). In Ruler Personality Cults from Empires to Nation-States and Beyond: Symbolic Patterns and Interactional Dynamics. Editedby Kirill Postoutenko and Darin Stephanov. London: Routledge, pp. 64–78.

Religions 2022, 13, 627 17 of 17

Stern, David. 2003. On Canonization in Rabbinic Judaism. In Homer, the Bible, and Beyond. Edited by Margalit Finkelberg and Guy G.Stroumsa. Leiden: Brill, pp. 227–52.

Stordalen, Terje. 2007. The Canonization of Ancient Hebrew and Confucian Literature. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 32: 3–22.[CrossRef]

Sturani, Enrico. 1995. Mussollini auf Postkarten—Symbol oder Dokument? In Führerbilder. Hitler, Mussolini, Roosevelt, Stalin in Fotografieund Film. Edited by Martin Loiperdinger, Rudolf Herz and Ulrich Pohlmann. München: Piper, pp. 101–33.

Swan, Alessandra Antola. 2016. The Iconic Body: Mussolini Unclothed. Modern Italy 21: 361–81. [CrossRef]Tannen, Deborah. 2007. Talking Voices. Repetition, Dialogue and Imagery in Conversational Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.Tarasova, Liubov’ V. 2009. Imperatorskiı kul’t v pravlenie dinastii Flaviev (69–96 gg.) [The Emperor Cult During the Reign of the Flavia

Dynasty (69–96 gg.)]. Nauchnye vedomosti Belgorodskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Ceriia: Istoriia. Politologiia 56: 21–25.Tarde, Gabriel. 1989. L’Opinion et la Foule. Paris: PUF. First published 1901.Taylor, Joan E. 2012. The Essenes, the Scrolls, and the Dead Sea. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Tertitskiy, Fyodor. 2015. The ascension of the ordinary man: How the personality cult of Kim Il-Sung was constructed (1945–1974).

Acta Koreana 18: 209–31. [CrossRef]Thamer, Hans Ulrich. 1988. Faszination und Manipulation: Die Nürnberger Reichsparteitage der NSDAP. In Der Fest: eine Kul-

turgeschichte von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Edited by Uwe Schulz. München: C.H. Beck, pp. 352–68.Thornborrow, Joanna. 2002. Language and Interaction in Institutional Discourse. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.Tikhomirov, Alexey. 2020. Father of the People, Face of the Nation: The Premodern and Modern Foundations of Ruler Personality

Cults. In Ruler Personality Cults from Empires to Nation-States and Beyond: Symbolic Patterns and Interactional Dynamics. Edited byKirill Postoutenko and Darin Stephanov. London: Routledge, pp. 120–42.

Tomasello, Michael. 2009. Why We Cooperate. Cambridge: The MIT Press.Tomasi di Lampedusa, Giuseppe. 2002. Il Gattopardo. Milano: Feltrinelli. First published 1957.Tucker, Robert C. 1971. The Soviet Political Mind. Stalinism and Post-Stalin Change. New York: Norton.Turner, Ralph H. 1978. The Role and the Person. American Journal of Sociology 84: 1–23. [CrossRef]Ursprung, Daniel. 2010. Personenkult im Bild: Stalin, Enver Hoxha und Nikolae Ceausescu im Vergleich. In Der Führer in Europa des 20.

Jahrhunderts. Edited by Benno Ennker and Heidi Hein-Kirchner. Marburg: Herder-Institut, pp. 50–73.Valensise, Marina. 1986. Le sacre du roi: stratégie symbolique et doctrine politique de la monarchie française. Annales. Économies,

Sociétés, Civilisations 41: 543–77. [CrossRef]van der Toorn, Karel. 1997. Worshipping stones: On the deification of cult symbols. Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages 23: 1–14.von Neumann, John. 1992. First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC. Stanford: Stanford University. First published 1945.Ward, Margaret M. 1933. The association of Augustus with Jupiter. Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni IX: 203–24.Watson, Francis. 2018. The Canon and the Codex: On the Material Form of the Christian Bible. In The Life of Texts: Evidence in Textual

Production, Transmission and Reception. Edited by Carlo Caruso. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 48–61.Weber, Max. 1972. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Tubingen: Mohr-Siebeck. First published 1919.Weissenborn, Johannes. 1904. Tierkult in Afrika: Eine ethnologisch-kulturhistorische Untersuchung. Leiden: Brill.Whitman, Walt. 2008. Election Day, November 1884. In Leaves of Grass 3. Edited by Walt Whitman. New York: New York University

Press, p. 709. First published 1884.Wieviorka, Annette. 2010. I festeggiamenti per i cinquant’anni di Maurice Thorez. Memoria e Ricerca: Rivista di Storia Contemporanea 34:

153–69. [CrossRef]Williams, Christine V. 2004. Jiddu Krishnamurti. World Philosopher (1895–1986): His Life and Thoughts. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.Wintrobe, Ronald. 1998. The Political Economy of Dictatorship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Wolfe, David B. 1969. Ideology in Power: Reflections on the Russian Revolution. New York: Stein and Day.Zakharine, Dmitri. 2005. Von Angesicht zu Angesicht: Der Wandel direkter Kommunikation in der ost- und westeuropäichen Neuzeit. Konstanz:

UVK.Zakharine, Dmitri. 2020. ‘Personality cults:’ the career of the contested notion. In Ruler Personality Cults from Empires to Nation-States

and Beyond: Symbolic Patterns and Interactional Dynamics. Edited by Kirill Postoutenko and Darin Stephanov. London: Routledge,pp. 6–20.

Zeitlyn, David. 1995. Divination as Dialogue: Negotiation of Meaning with Random Responses. In Social Intelligence and Interaction:Expressions and Implications of the Social Bias in Human Intelligence. Edited by Esther Goody. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, pp. 189–205.

Zelnhefer, Siegfried. 1992. Die Reichsparteitage der NSDAP. In Faszination und Gewalt: Zur politischen Ästhetik des Nationalsozialismus.Edited by Bernd Ogan and Wolfgang W. Weiß. Nürnberg: W. Tummels Verlag, pp. 79–94.

Ziethen, Gabriele. 1994. Heilung und römischer Kaiserkult. Sudhoffs Archiv 78: 171–91.Zobermann, Pierre. 2000. Eloquence and Ideology: Between Image and Propaganda. Rhetorica 18: 295–320. [CrossRef]Zymner, Rüdiger. 1998. Anspielung und Kanon. In Kanon. Macht. Kultur. Edited by Renate von Heydebrand. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler,

pp. 31–46.