The Russian idiom gori ono vsë sinim/âsnym plamenem ‘let it all burn with the blue/clear flame’: meaning, use, and variation

The paper analyses the Russian idiom gori ono vsë sinim/âsnym ognëm/plamenem ‘ex-pression of contempt towards sth disguised as indifference; refusal to participate in sth’ (liter-ally, ‘let it all burn with the blue/clear flame’). Due to discrepancies in the lexicographic de-piction of the idiom in existant phraseological dictionaries, the paper proposes a new lexico-graphic definition, concentrating on semantics, expressiveness, structural invariant, micro-diachronic changes, as well as idiom variation.