“SHALL WE TAKE OFF THE CAPS?...”: YURI ANDROPOV AND KONSTANTIN CHERNENKO

Abstract

The article continues an authored series of psycho-political analysis of self-portraits of politicians of the Soviet epoch. The previous papers were devoted to the Soviet Communist Party leaders and statesmen - Lazar Kaganovich and Nikita Khruchev, Leonid Brezhnev and Mikhail Gorbachev. The given article looks at the analysis of self-portrait narrative of Yu. V. Andropov and K. U. Chernenko within the scientific paradigm of political linguistics. The aim of the study is to show the strategy of reading and comprehension of autobiography of a political leader as a communicative role act authorizing his self-consciousness and self-representation. The paper argues that the creation of a political narrative is determined by the main factor: the political leader is a diegetic narrator in the history of the country. The article analyzes intentional speech acts of the politician within the framework of the narrative strategy using intertext, collective narration and author’s text. The research is carried out within the paradigm of modern narratology which looks at the text from the point of view of its fictionality and factuality (reality) and the types of narrators (story-tellers) and the image of the author. The article notes that Yu. V. Andropov and K. U. Chernenko do not emphasize their role in the history as vehemently as, for instance, L. I. Brezhnev, which results in a change of the style of their discourse: it becomes more documentary, dry, narrative, less subjective and not given to the denouncing tradition of the 60s. The selected works of a political leader begin to include transcripts, which demonstrates adherence to the bureaucratic and not to the literary style. It is shown how mythological and documentary strategies combine in such texts.