PSYCHOLOGICAL AND LINGUISTIC MEANS OF FORMING “A SOVIET PERSON” IN THE JOURNAL PERIODICALS OF THE UKRAINIAN SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC

Abstract

The article deals with the psychological and linguistic methods of establishing a social life and the impact of the magazines on the public consciousness in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Press provided concealed manipulation programming of the citizens’ behaviour. The whole society was imposed with the regulated values, moral imperatives and ideals via indoctrination, pressure and attack. Mass zombing was considerably played by “the new language” which implemented the basic notions of the totalitarian ideology. Transforming of citizens’ consciousness was possible by manipulating with their interests and desires. In this way the run of social processes was regulated. Russification, denationalization and destroying of national memory took place. Having no alternative a person was transformed into a system cog. Thus the aim of the article is to specify the influence of the journal periodicals in 1950- 1980s by psycho-linguistic means on forming the necessary concept of “a Soviet person”. The following methods were used: concrete historical and sociological press analysis, systematic and comparative analysis as well as generalization of contents and subjects of the magazines, analysis of political impact factors on magazines transformation as the mean of forming public consciousness, content analysis for stating the level of ideological partiality in the magazines and the frequency of usage of the ideological words in magazine texts and peculiarity of their combinability. Content analysis indicators are received by calculation on the sectional observation material. The basis of the empirical research is four public-political magazines “Ukrayina” (“Ukraine”), “Vitchyzna” (“Motherland”), “Zhovten’” (“October”), “Radyans’ka Zhinka” (“Soviet Woman”) and two children’s magazines “Barvinok” (“Periwinkle”) and “Malyatko”2 (“Baby”) of the 1950-1980s.