The desemanticization of the sacramental constructs "Lenin" and "Motherland" in Russia's political reality

The first part of the article reveals the framework nature of the models of totalitarian constructions of Russia's political reality. The authors assume that in the subsequent periods during the restructuring of the meaning matrix there was a desacralization of the supporting constructs "Lenin" and "Motherland". The article substantiates this hypothesis, and reveals how these symbols lost their political significance. This is the result of an "incomplete" deconstruction, when the initial meaning is "debunked", but no reinvention occurs. Due to the loss of meaning, political images lose their figurative representativeness and communicative relevance, these signs become "empty" forms. The second part contains the case study of the deconstruction of the myth about Lenin. Initially, the myth-structure "Lenin" lost its heroic semantic content and became senseless. The article highlights the historical "milestones" of the desemanticization of the symbol "Lenin": the official reconstruction of the basic heroic monomyth into a truncated construct of a transformed myth of Lenin; anecdotes about Lenin as a form of the deconstruction of the myth; the "fake" and "meme" deconstruction and the de-anthropologization of "Lenin". All this affected the figurative leadership representation of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, depriving it of its "ultimate" myth bases. The case of the "complete" deconstruction of the myth of Lenin is related to the attempt of his scientific rethinking. This contributed to the revision of not only the heroic and demiurgic role and "overturning" legitimizing semantic guidelines in relation to the heroic myth of the Soviet Russia, but also of the Revolution as the origin of the political reality. In the third part, the "case" of the dramatic destruction of the "Motherland" construct was analysed, which led to the de-sacralization of such a semantic political phenomenon as "patriotism". The source material for the authors' comparison was the totalitarian school materials, which prescribed semantic figurative constructions and frames of understanding of the Soviet patriotism. As a result, the modern political communication on the topic of patriotism has lost its significant definiteness, and its identity has become extremely negative.

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