Linguistic rhetoric of Soviet discourse: official vs personal register
(J. Stalin – A. Dovzhenko)

Introduction

The rise of contemporary rhetorical approach in philology follows the revival of new rhetoric in the 1970-1990s, which influenced both literary and linguistic studies. New rhetoric claims to be a methodology of the humanities dealing with the problems of governing society, moral and ethical education, style formation, investigation into the psychology of speech production (Abbasi & Salahi, 2019; Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969; Aczél, 2016; Browse, 2018; Hastürk, 2019; Kakasoltani & Ardalani, 2019; Marinenko, Kattsina, Karabulatova & Mezit, 2019). The integration of approaches and methods within new rhetoric was brought about by the necessity to combine the classical theories which had been developing throughout a long time with new anthropocentric ideas about human beings as linguistic personalities which has also led to the emergence of Linguistic & Rhetorical (L&R) Paradigm of the Sochi School (Vorozhbitova, Karabulatova, Bzegezheva, Druzhinina & Pyankova, 2019).

The L&R Paradigm distinguishes two types of linguistic personality: Soviet, representing USSR citizens speaking a few languages, and Socialist, covering the population of the countries of the former Socialist bloc. This division correlates with distinction between two types of discourse: Soviet, pertaining to the former USSR, and Communist, characteristic of all the countries of the former Socialist bloc (Vorozhbitova, Potapenko, Berezovskaya, Lebedeva & Kushko, 2019). These two types of discourse constrain an individual’s mental world and impose a politically correct version of reality giving rise to two registers reflecting the diglossia of that type of discourse: official and personal.

Materials and methods

The opposition between official and personal registers in the context of an ideological conflict in the Soviet discourse is demonstrated by the comparison of two pieces: Joseph Stalin’s speech during the Politburo meeting of 31 January 1944 where Alexander Dovzhenko’s screenplay “Ukraine in Flames” was discussed and the writer’s diaries of that period.

The linguistic personality as a bearer of ideology, initiator and product of language encompasses three levels: verbal-semantic, or associative-verbal network connecting words, grammatical structures and textual discursive models; linguistic cognitive, or thesaurus, filled with notions, concepts, ideas, outlook foundations, ideological stereotypes, contributing to human comprehension of reality; motivational, or pragmatic, covering human needs, intentions of productive and receptive speech activities (Khachmafova, Karabulatova, Serebryakova, Zinkovskaya & Ermakova, 2017).

The persuasion means of ethos, logos, and pathos serving as the basis of ancient rhetoric are swiftly returning to modern philology (Burke, 2016; Galinskaya, 2013).

The L&R Method of the Sochi School draws on the ideas of cognitive linguistics about the role of human faculties of perception, categorization, memory, reasoning, communication (Potapenko, 2019) serving as the basis for the multilateral influence.

Specific research methods include descriptive, stylistic, quantitative analysis; extra-linguistic correlation; methods of observation, comparison, language and speech distribution.

Results

Stalin’s official discourse is characterized by a number of typical rhetorical patterns: repetition; scathing comments; direct contrast between mental spaces; negative characteristics of the alternative linguistic rhetorical worldview; appeal to the collective linguistic personality; translation of one subdiscourse into the other; biased retelling within the framework of the dominant discursive interpretation; appeal to facts lacking in the criticized discourse; ideological editing taking on the form of “teaching”.

Repetition of the verbs used to defend the linguistic rhetorical values of the official discourse within the framework of the alternative mental space is exemplified by the following examples with reiteration of the verb with the meaning of criticism:

• … Dovzhenko revises the policy and criticizes the party’s activity at routing the class enemies.
• In his screenplay Dovzhenko criticizes the Party’s policy in the sphere of developing collective farms.

The inadmissibility of that criticism is underscored by the addition of two verbs: dare, e.g. Moreover, Dovzhenko dares to criticize the activities of the Bolshevik party and Soviet government at preparing the Soviet people, the Red Army and our state for the war; prefer, e.g. Therefore he prefers to conceal this truth preferring to criticize the policy of our party and our state.

The second verb reiterated in Stalin’s text denotes smearing, e.g. In his screenplay Dovzhenko smears the Ukrainian people. Dovzhenko also smears our party and Soviet activists and Red Army commanders portraying them as selfseekers, bloodsuckers and dummies removed from the ordinary people.

The third frequent verb refers to slander, e.g. Dovzhenko dares to slander such terms sacred for every communist and genuine Soviet man as class struggle against exploiters and the purity of the party line.

In Stalin’s speech representing the official register the biggest impact is achieved by combining repeated words in one context:

• slander, criticize and smear, e.g. How could Dovzhenko fall down to such horrible slander at the Soviet people? Criticizing our party’s and government’s activity concerning the upbringing of the population, Dovzhenko dares to distort Ukraine’s history so as to smear the national policy of Soviet state.

Scathing comments on the lengthy quotations of the writer’s discourse manifest the system of values of the official mental space which is characterized by Stalin’s views on the following excerpt from Dovzhenko’s screenplay:

We were taught to be as calm and gentle as lambs… The main aim was cowardice. Don’t hit, don’t object! The only weapon was reporting on each other. Confound it! Neither fish, nor flesh … Things do change. And change has come. And judges are ahead.

Stalin comments on that passage in the following way:

Dovzhenko is brave and brazen to talk like this. He must take off his hat as a sign of respect to Leninism, the theory of our party, but as a defender of kulaks and an outright nationalist he dares to attack our worldview and revise it.
In the cited passage Stalin frowns on the opponent’s views through the prism of the official ideology. He characterizes the writer’s behavior as impudent, accuses him of disrespect to the Bolshevik worldview, labeling him as a kulak and nationalist.

Direct contrast of mental spaces or their fragments is rendered by adversative conjunctions:

• It is the genuine emancipation of the woman, but not a chatter about emancipation the bourgeois politician so thoroughly engage in.

Negative characteristics of the writer’s linguistic rhetorical worldview and its textual implementation from the standpoint of Soviet hierarchy of values are expressed by the units revise, gross errors, callous attack representing the writer’s views as absolutely inadmissible:

To say the least, this screenplay revizes Leninism, the policy of our party on the main, fundamental issues. Dovzhenko’s screenplay makes gross errors leveled against Leninism – it is a callous attack against the party’s politics.

Stalin’s axiological statements concerning the counterdiscourse evoke the semantic features of disapproval expressed by the constructions flagrant defamation; appalling slander on the Soviet people; the distortion of Ukraine’s history etc. Conversely, the evaluation of the phenomena officially supported is unequivocally positive.

The typical sacred constructs of the cognitive communicative type representing the Soviet linguistic rhetorical worldview are brought forth by a number of adjectives characterizing the components of the hierarchy: comprehensive triumph of Leninism under whose banner the Red Army successfully liberates Ukraine from the fascist invaders; in full agreement with Lenin’s immortal teaching; about our teacher, the great Lenin; sacred concepts of class struggle against bloodsuckers and the purity of the party’s line.

Sarcasm is leveled at both the foundations of the criticized mental space and the opponent’s personality:

• What is the source of these claims voiced by Dovzhenko? What are his gains to act like this?

Appeal to the collective linguistic personality of the Soviet people and to the humanity unquestionably and actively supporting the official viewpoint is expressed by quantifiers and collective nouns. The quantifiers include all, e.g. it is evident to all; every, e.g. for every Communist and genuine Soviet man; everybody, e.g. it is clear to everybody. The collective noun people combines with attributes Ukrainian, e.g. neither will we agree with him nor the Ukrainian people; Soviet, e.g. the intolerant and unacceptable for the Soviet people. In certain contexts emphasis is achieved by the combination of quantifiers with collective nouns, e.g. if we let the people read all the Soviet people would have turned away from him.

Translation of one subdiscourse into the other within the framework of a single Soviet macrodiscourse is reflected in Stalin’s role as the “hermeneutical ruler” who uses negation to offer the only correct interpretation of the alternative discourse from the official viewpoint. According to Stalin Dovzhenko invented the phrase “the armor is thin” and reiterated it in his screenplay to emphasize that the Soviet state hadn’t prepared for the war, and the Soviet people remained armless.

Biased retelling of the excerpts from discourse under criticism within the framework of the dominant interpretation of reality is introduced by the verbs judge, e.g. If one judges about the war drawing on Dovzhenko’s screenplay, it turns out that only Ukrainians participate in it while other nations don’t.

As a rule, Dovzhenko offers his own political and unique interpretation of the depicted fragment of reality turning a blind eye to other facts crucial for the official view which is pointed out by Stalin:

Dovzhenko of all people should know the facts of Petlura’s men and other Ukrainians teaming up with the German invaders against Ukrainians and Soviet people at large. <…> What does it mean that in his screenplay Dovzhenko didn’t denounce these despicable traitors of the Ukrainian people? No reference to them in the screenplay as if they didn’t exist. Dovzhenko failed to screw up courage, failed to find words to put them in the pillory.

No doubt, appeal to facts is the most impressive and powerful argument in general and in Stalin’s speech triggering a feeling of solidarity with him.
In case of the ideological editing the function of regulations underlying the totalitarian language moves to the level of personal discursive textual process imposing its direction on any linguistic personality. Text production within rigid patterns of official discourse, “sacred for every communist and Soviet citizen”, meets the demands of the game of Soviet society and ideocratic truth:

• If Dovzhenko had wanted to write the truth, he should also have written about it.
• If Dovzhenko had set an aim of writing a true story he should have stigmatized these traitors in his work.

Stalin’s discursive text-forming corrections are made in the sense that the war is waged to defend not only Ukraine but the whole Soviet Union, a global political entity of the Great Patriotic War period.

In Dovzhenko’s diary the personal reflexive discourse concerning the screenplay is also heterogeneous since it rests on two axiological hierarchies: national and Christian. He writes:

I am quite aware that I will be accused of nationalism, Christianism and lenience, criticized for my ignoring class struggle and revision of the process of upbringing youth who are now heroically fighting at all the ferocious historical fronts – but that is not the basis of the screenplay, that is not the problem. What I mean is regret: it is bad that we have surrendered our Ukraine to the damned Hitler and liberate its people slowly.(…)_
We are glorious warriors but we lack human kindness towards these people. In this screenplay I subconsciously and quite logically defended my people sustaining considerable losses in this war.

In this excerpt the type of discursive syntagmatics is that of self-criticism from the viewpoint of a supposed opponent when the writer’s mental space reveals the antithesis of discursive universe: between the Marxist-Leninist doctrine and the humanistic philosophy.

Discussion

Within the framework of Soviet discourse as a constraining mental world and a politically correct version of reality Dovzhenko’s screenplay “Ukraine in Flames” appears to be a broad interpretation of the Great Patriotic War by a linguistic personality with a worldview of a pathetic supporter of a totalitarian political episteme (Barabash, Kotelenets, Karabulatova, Lavrentyeva & Mitina, 2019).
Dovzhenko’s diaries indicate that as a writer and a film director he was sincerely Soviet and selflessly dedicated to the so-called Lenin’s cause, he was officially recognized, fondled by Stalin which accelerated his movement up the status ladder.

The screenplay “Ukraine in Flames” which tarnished Dovzhenko’s reputation was penned in the summer of 1943. The entry in the writer’s diary of 26 November 1943 runs:

Today I have got to know disappointing news: Stalin didn’t like my screenplay “Ukraine in Flames” and prohibited both its publication and filming.

The following entry of 28 November 1943 reads:

The ban of “Ukraine in Flames” has aggrieved me. I have been gloomy and restless all the time. The verdict has been passed. I am quite aware how the officials will alter their attitude to me. Moreover, it may bring me a lot of trouble. However, I believe that for all that, despite my “civil death” “Ukraine in Flames” has been read and it will save several hundred people in Ukraine. I have a strong conviction and nothing will dissuade me.

Taking into account Dovzhenko’s long-life service to the Soviet state expressed in his statement “I am neither bourgeois, nor nationalistic” (Barabash, Kotelenets, Karabulatova, Lavrentyeva & Mitina, 2019), the ideological opposition within the linguistic rhetorical conflict concerning his screenplay can be regarded as an opposition between official and personal registers rather than Soviet and anti-Soviet discourses. In other words, turning to the ethnic rhetorical roots of Stalin and Dovzhenko as speakers we have every right to distinguish Georgian, Ukrainian and Russian discourses of Bolsheviks.

The screenplay “Ukraine in Flames” deviates from the patterns of Soviet discourse since it focuses on Ukraine and its citizens, i.e. the writer’s intention subsumes to the national hierarchy of values rather than that of class struggle. Dovzhenko replaces the well-known Bolshevik slogan “morality is subordinated to the movement towards the victory of Communism” with the morality of struggle for Ukraine. This change in the ethos hierarchy of linguistic rhetorical values results in the self-organization of contrastive discursive universe triggering an alternative mental space. The axiological core of the linguistic rhetorical conflict is exemplified by the following two excerpts from the screenplay cited by Stalin. In this case, God as the supreme concept in the religious axiological hierarchy is replaced by two alternative discourse universals: class struggle and Fatherland:

1. “I am neither aware of any class struggle nor reluctant to know anything about it. What I am aware of is Fatherland. The nation is being exterminated. I am a slave of German workers and peasants!” – Zaporozhets shouted at the extreme of his voice. “My daughter is a slave, too. Shoot, classless entity! What are you waiting for?”

2. – God is gone! – shouted one of the deserters.

− It’s a lie! Fatherland is God almighty.
− Previously there was no talk about it. We were taught about class struggle.

The examples cited above demonstrate a conflict-triggering division of two mental worlds with two different conceptual values as sacral and system-forming in the linguistic rhetorical worldview. The linguistic personality’s choice of different supreme concepts in the axiological hierarchy of values, i.e. Fatherland and nation, instead of class struggle generates an opposite context.

Against Stalin’s parlance Dovzhenko’s style is associated with the personal register due to a bigger ratio of denotation, evidential argumentation rendered by the perceptual patterns “I saw” and “I heard” and owing to the hierarchy-forming idea of Ukraine as Mother and Fatherland. Stalin’s personal judgments embedded into the official register are mainly significative rendering the dominance of the Soviet totalitarian discourse which can be regarded as a linguistic rhetorical resignation from reasoning and an example of the genuine Marxist-Leninist ideology supported, if need be, by evidence and “facts” borrowed from the literary reality:

In his screenplay Dovzhenko slanders the Ukrainians. The pure, poetic and noble character of the Ukrainian girl has long been proved by Russian and Ukrainian literature.

Ukrainian girl Olesya by name addresses a tank driver whom she met in the street in the following way:

“Look here! Make love to me, – Olesya pleads. It is getting dark. Will you, please!

She left the bucket and approached the man.

Having cited the passage Stalin queries:

– Where has Dovzhenko come across such Ukrainian girls? No doubt it is a defamation of Ukrainian people and Ukrainian women.

This angry question of Stalin also concerns Dovzhenko’s story “The Unforgettable” which develops this episode into an overwhelming ballad about the spiritual rise of a Soviet soldier and a Ukrainian girl amidst the horrors of war. Its tonality is rendered by the words foregrounded in the initial phrases:

This story must by told in the most precious words…

The words cleansed in Ukrainian wells…

The words embroidered like flowers on cold towels…

Conversely we should be aware of the diary records referring to the cohabitation with fascists.

The analysis of Stalin’s question “Where has Dovzhenko seen such Ukrainian girls?” against the backdrop of the writer’s diary entries yields the following conclusion: the basis for the Soviet leader’s statements lies in the thesaurus subconcepts from the virtual contexts of literary works while Dovzhenko refers to the poignant reality. Moreover, the force of Stalin’s romantic illusions drawn from the literary world is so influential that he seems to be sincere thinking that he is aware of genuine reality accusing the opponent of the opposite.

Due to the ratio of the referential nominations by concrete words representing physical reality Dovzhenko’s personal discourse can be regarded as real while Stalin’s individual discourse should be treated as a genuinely ideological representation of the official register. This distinction is true as long as Dovzhenko sticks to the natural evidential proofs. However, his personal discourse becomes vulnerable to Stalin’s criticism when he reveals his perceptions and impressions through the national linguistic rhetorical worldview expressing subjective judgments and emphasizing one group of facts while leaving others behind.

Drawing on the differences between words, notions, concepts, ideas we can argue that the official register tends to construct discursive textual forming process at the ideal conceptual level while the personal register is associated with the ideal notional level.

Consequently, at the level of associative-verbal network both registers are elocutionary implemented by the lexical units differing according the general / concrete opposition.

Citing excerpts from the screenplay “Ukraine in Flames” as fragments of an alternative mental worldview, Stalin comments on its theme in the following way:
Here Dovzhenko opposes the ideas sacred for every communist and Soviet citizen: they are class struggle and the purity of the party line.

In the Soviet discourse the concepts of class struggle and the purity of the party line are regarded as fundamental, basic issues, i.e. cornerstone linguistic rhetorical values.
Stalin’s judgments rest on the postulates and dogmas of Marxist-Leninist doctrine serving as the foundation of the Soviet discourse. Analyzing the screenplay within this framework he states:

Dovzhenko revises and criticizes the party’s policies aimed at routing the foes of the Soviet people. However, it is well-known that this work of the party was carried out in the Leninist spirit in full correspondence with Lenin’s immortal teaching”.

It is noteworthy that in his turn Lenin refers to Marx’s authority in the quotation “Marx’s teaching is powerful because it is correct”.

The supreme leader of the Soviet state highlights this axiological hierarchy drawing on specific Soviet cultural concepts: Lenin, Leninism, Bolshevik Party, Soviet power, Soviet government, Soviet (socialist) state, Soviet people.

Consequently, the inventive-elocutionary component of Stalin’s individual discourse rests on the morphosyntactic constructions referring to four coordinates:

• Lenin, e.g. in the spirit of Leninism; Lenin’s behests; Lenin’s immortal teaching; the provisions of Leninist theory; our teacher great Lenin; Lenin as leader and teacher of our party as a sagacious representative of our people and connoisseur of the laws of society development and interaction of states; Lenin warned, prepared;
• party, e.g. theory of our Party; Party policy;
• Soviet people / state, e.g. routing the class enemies of Soviet people; power and integrity of our Soviet state; all Soviet people;
• class struggle, e.g. elimination of the kulaks as a class.

The use of the verb see and its synonyms in the negative form in Stalin’s heterogeneous discourse, comprising two mental spaces, illustrates the idea that the category of linguistic rhetorical worldview sets the specificity of how the collective linguistic personality perceives reality through the prism of a particular discourse universe:

• Dovzhenko fails to see and is reluctant to see the evident and simple truth that …
• Only a person perceiving the great creative progressive activity of our party and of our state from the prejudiced anti-Leninist position can oversee the noticeable increase in the unity, political activity, consciousness, and cultural level of the Soviet people due to our overall success.
• One must be able to see this difference and if one is honest it is not difficult to see it.
• The nationalistic blinds covered Dovzhenko’s consciousness and he stopped seeing the self-evident great educational work carried out by our party with the people concerning development of their political self-consciousness and their cultural level.

Conversely, in his diaries Dovzhenko noted down “I was honest when I wrote the screenplay: that is how I saw the life and suffering of my people”.

According to R. Bartes (1994) there are “two types of discursive (speech) weapon”: the first is transformation of speech into power demonstration with an application of techniques of rhetoric of struggle and victory; the second is a strategy of eliminating the weaker participant of the communicative situation or the whole layer of individuals from this dialogue of the strong.

The right to speech implies and incurs struggle for the right to possess the ultimate, exceptional, truth. The personal discourse of the advocates of Soviet totalitarianism enriched with discursive etymons, i.e. units which are true within a mental space, demonstrates the virtuoso use of this weapon (Karabulatova, Vildanov, Zinchenko, Vasilishina & Vassilenko, 2017). All differences of opinions are represented as a binary opposition of correct (our own) and wrong (other’s), truth and lies with no difference of opinions.

Stalin’s first opposition turns out to be a fight against German imperialists and elimination of exploitation:

Dovzhenko fails to understand this simple truth evident to all Soviet people: our people, our army, our state wouldn’t be so mighty, ready for defence and unified as we are in this difficult war against the German imperialists if we hadn’t done away with the exploitation in this country.

The second opposition Stalin draws on is the German imperialists and industrialization:

Dovzhenko is far from understanding this simple and evident truth that German imperialists aiming to capture other lands and enslave other nations were preparing their economy and army for the imperialist war transforming their industry several years before the war.

The third opposition appears to concern collectivization and the war:
Here Dovzhenko denies the simple and evident truth that collective farms have made the Soviet state stronger both economically and politically since without collective farms we wouldn’t be successful in this war.

The fourth opposition is between the party and army as vanguard, on the one hand, and the fascist invaders, on the other:

Dovzhenko fails and doesn’t want to see that evident and simple truth that our party, Soviet and army cadres are blood and soul of the Soviet people that they are in the vanguard of fighters against the fascist invaders, selflessly fight in the ranks of the Red Army and the guerilla groups.

In the passages above Stalin treats the truth as an object to capture and possess. The speech and its structure demonstrate that there is not and there cannot be anything obscure, complicated or variegated.

Within the framework of this one-dimensional and flat thinking generated by the Soviet linguistic rhetorical worldview the truth is quite obvious to all ordinary people. According to Stalin Dovzhenko turns out to be retarded which is underscored in the following utterances by the negative form of the verbs referring to comprehension:

• Dovzhenko fails to understand that this Patriotic War is also a war between classes since the most imperialists have attacked our socialist state to capture it, to eliminate the Soviets, to enslave and decimate our people.
• Dovzhenko fails to understand and does not want to understand that only the collective farms have made the Soviet woman free.
• Dovzhenko fails to understand this simple and evident truth that …
• But there is a lot of fish in the sea. Dovzhenko’s misunderstanding is compensated by the knowledge of Ukrainian worker. <…> They understand what Dovzhenko fails to comprehend: all the peoples of the Soviet Union fight for Ukraine.
• Dovzhenko is unaware of that simple truth evident to all Soviet people that …

The specificity of linguistic rhetorical conflict between Stalin and Dovzhenko consists in the fact that both sides use the concepts of truth as well as lie and deceit determining the boundaries between the alternative mental spaces, serving as markers of discursive syntagmatics.

In Stalin’s speech the positive members of the opposition are represented by the linguistic rhetorical values of the Soviet discourse while the negative members are the interpretations of reality constructed in the framework of a different system of linguistic rhetorical values forming a worldview differing from the one dominating in society.

The cornerstone cultural concept of truth and its derivatives go through Stalin’s discourse with a special rhetorical function performed by repetition:

• Had Dozvhenko wanted to write the truth, he should have written about it. However, the truth, unfortunately, is not a characteristic feature of Dovzhenko’s works.
• Had Dovzhenko planned to write a true story he should have stigmatized these traitors in his screenplay. However, Dovzhenko is unlikely to be on good terms with the truth.
• Dovzhenko is on bad terms with the truth and he has turned everything topsy-turvy.
• It means that Dovzhenko is on bad terms with the truth again.

During a face-to-face Politburo meeting Stalin accused Dovzhenko of lies citing sizable excerpts from his screenplay with his own interpretation of reality. In his diary entries following the Politburo meeting Dovzhenko lamented that nobody needed the truth implying that the official point of view expounded by Stalin is false:

I am distressed at the awareness that “Ukraine in Flames” is the truth. My concealed and innate truth about the people and their troubles.

The truth – lie opposition is illustrated by Dovzhenko’s notes about Khrushchev:
28 July 1943: Khrushchev enjoyed the screenplay “Ukraine in Flames” and put forward the idea that it should be published as a book. In Russian and Ukrainian languages. Let everybody read. Let everybody know that everything is very complicated.

The frequency of the concepts of truth and lie and their derivatives in Dovzhenko’s personal discourse reveals both it heterogeneity and high polemic nature requiring detailed opposition between the writer’s linguistic rhetorical worldview and the contrary discusivity.

Stalin’s speech is rampant with conjunctive and non-conjunctive “political connection”, one of the most destructive means of the solution to the linguistic rhetoric conflict within the framework of Soviet totalitarian discourse of the period:
It is the Soviet power and the Bolshevik party that solemnly guard; as a result of the party’s and government’s appropriate policy; the policy of our party and interests of the Ukrainian and all the Soviet people; party and state. ; to oppose the policy of the party.

The ideological clichés of this kind seem to have cemented the feeling of unity of the enormous social political conglomerate known as “Soviet people” powered by the party and the government. It played a progressive role in the period of struggle against a deadly foe impersonated by fascism and provided for the great Victory.

Conclusions

For all seemingly homogeneity of the Soviet discourse the analysis and discussion of Stalin’s speech and Dovzhenko’s diaries reveal its distinct diglossia represented by two main registers: official and personal. They are characterized by a few specific linguistic rhetorical features of cognitive and communicative type. The cognitive features of the official register and its argumentation exemplified by Stalin’s speech are mainly significative, drawing on the arguments from the virtual contexts of literary works as well as dogmas of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine forming the foundation of the Soviet discourse (Borev, 1990; Kharlamov, 2013). As a result, the official register tends to construct discourse mainly at the ideal conceptual level while the personal register is associated with the ideal notional level. The official register is characterized by repetition; scathing comments; direct contrast of mental spaces; negative characteristics of the criticized linguistic rhetorical worldview; appeal to the Soviet collective linguistic personality; translation of one subdiscourse into the other; biased retelling within the framework of the dominant discursive interpretation; appeal to facts lacking in the criticized discourse; ideological editing taking on the form of “teaching”. Dovzhenko’s personal discourse appears to be a broad interpretation of the Great Patriotic War by a linguistic personality with a worldview of a pathetic supporter of the totalitarian political episteme (Vorozhbitova, 2018). His discourse is characterized by evidential argumentation and a bigger ratio of denotation to the poignant reality within two axiological hierarchies: national and Christian.