Khrushchev Thaw as a Metaphor: An Analysis of Linguistic Mechanisms for Constructing the Image of an Era

The paper analyzes metaphorical models that conceptualize the period of the Khrushchev Thaw as a sociocultural phenomenon. The linguistic material born from the era and the variations of its nomination in cultural discourse are considered as repositories of fundamental cultural values and mental characteristics of Soviet society in the late 1950s–1960s. It is acknowledged that the metaphors of the Thaw are directly linked to the changing worldview of the Soviet individual and their response to the relative liberalization of social and political life following the events of 1953–1956. Several stable metaphorical models are fixed in the understanding of the Thaw as a sociocultural phenomenon, with the most widespread being the metaphor "Thaw – a period of Soviet history." Its analysis allows us to assert that the sensitive representatives of Soviet society associated cultural changes with the concept of "thaw" and the metaphorics of the thawing cultural landscape. A key aspect for the identification of the era and the construction of its image in public consciousness is the internal contradictions of the period, manifested in its nomination. The methods used in the research include analysis of metaphorical models, contextual and discourse analysis, elements of a linguocognitive approach, and hermeneutic analysis. The tools of conceptual metaphor theory enabled the application of new approaches to the philosophical understanding of the linguistic material of the studied era. The findings of the publication indicate the relevance of analyzing linguistic expressions for establishing the mechanisms used by society and individuals in the process of comprehending reality and explaining the "nature" of sociocultural phenomena. Thus, the metaphors of the Thaw demonstrate the conceptualization of socio-political phenomena of the second half of the 1950s–1960s in terms related to natural processes of thawing, the onset of unstable warmth, and rising temperature values, thus suggesting more comfortable and safer conditions for human existence. In this context, metaphor serves as a means of reflection and, as a result, the verbalization of feelings of change in the socio-psychological climate of the post-Stalin period of Soviet history through concepts and images associated with the change of season in the temporal cycle.