TWO STAGES OF A LINGUISTIC AGGRESSION IN SOVIET POLITICAL DISCOURSE DURING THE STALINIST REGIME, ON THE BASIS OF THE PROPAGANDIST CAMPAIGN AGAINST JOSIP BROZ TITO

The paper focuses on the analysis of linguistic aggression in one of the most brutal propagandist campaigns of the Stalinist regime, namely the campaign against Josip Broz Tito in the years 1948-1953. The linguistic aggression is treated here as a two-stage process, whose first phase may be called that of indirect aggression, whereas the second - of direct aggression. The main criterion of this classification is the target of the assault: Yugoslavian politics during the stage of indirect attack and the government and its individual members during the direct attack. Text analysis allows fairly precise definition of the duration of these two stages and the boundary between them. Either stage is characterized by a different set of linguistic means used to disparage the opponent. The article deals with the primary and secondary linguistic means of expressing respective types of aggression. It is also an attempt to systematize the nominal units employed to discredit a political adversary on the basis of the presence or lack of an ideological factor.