The Rhetoric of Silence and the Collapse of the Soviet Empire.

When the Soviet Union was approaching collapse in Fall 1991, U.S. President George Bush made an intentional strategic choice to remain largely silent in response to those events. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, President Bush again made the choice to remain largely silent in response to a quickly changing political and economic situation in Russia. This article examines the concept of intentional strategic silence as the purposeful choice of an empowered actor and examines President Bush's response to the collapse of the Soviet Union in light of scholarly understanding of silence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]