Discourse of Communism and Socialist linguistic personality: Rhetorical perspective

Within the conception of the Sochi Linguistic & Rhetorical School the paper argues for the idea of discourse of Communism as a cover term for the "officialese" in the Soviet Union and former Socialist countries singling out four periods of its development: origin, formation, official existence, dismantling. The article pays special attention to the heterogeneity of the longest period of the discourse's official existence, which consists of the alternating stages: rise in the revolutionary and post-revolutionary years, during war and past-war time with the expansion of the discourse of Communism to other countries; and fall with the massive reprisals of 1930s and the "stagnation" epoch. During the period of its official existence three of its facets official, public and real - reflect contradictions between the Communist ideas imposed by the authorities and the state of the Socialist linguistic personality confronting the meanness of daily life. The paper reveals those contrasts drawing on the diaries of Olga Berggolts and Alexander Dovzhenko as well as the destinies of Mikhail Prishvin, Alexey Tolstoy and Alexander Fadeyev.