The Soviet Leadership In Soviet, French, Italian Media Discourses In 1939-1945

Abstract

This article is an interim result of the study carried out by a team of scientists from SUSU under the grant of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research “The Ural Region in Media Discourse of the Great Patriotic War (Based on the Material of Digitized Archival Documents of Russia and Western Europe)”. One of the key issues considered in the study of media discourse of the Great Patriotic War is the Soviet leadership image. The article will consider peculiar features of representing the image of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and his closest associates in the digitized texts about the Urals published in periodicals of the USSR, France and Italy in 1939-1945. The inconsistency of the image of the Soviet leadership and the ambiguity in evaluating its actions of organizing battles at the front and work in the Ural rear represented in the domestic and foreign wartime press are primarily preconditioned by the political regime, the ideological situation and the role of the USSR, its ally France and pro-fascist Italy in the Great Patriotic War / World War II. The analysis of the material of the studied period is interdisciplinary in nature, since it is based on the use of the data of history and culturology. The paper uses the method of discourse analysis, comparative method and linguocultural analysis.