Studia Slavica Hung. 59/1 (2014) 205–215 DOI: 10.1556/SSlav.59.2014.1.16 0039-3363/$ 20.00 © 2014 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest Searching for a New Language: The Image of the USSR in the Czecho-Slovak Discourse after the Fall of the Communist Regime NINA CINGEROVÁ, VERONIKA KNAPCOVÁ Katedra ruského jazyka a literatúry, Univerzita Komenského v Bratislave, Filozofická fakulta, Gondova 2, SK-814 99 Bratislava E-mail: cingerova@fphil.uniba.sk, vknapcova@gmail.com (Received: 8 December 2013; accepted: 17 March 2014) Abstract: The paper deals with the transformation processes Czecho-Slovakia was under- going at the very beginning of the 1990s and the way they were reflected in the language of the prominent nationwide newspapers, together with what their priority was given to. Attention is paid to how these changes were reflected and what processes and tendencies were involved in relation to the Soviet Union, the Soviet ideology, and the Soviet man. Keywords: image, Soviet Union, Slovakia, discourse, myth Czecho-Slovakia was undergoing a complicated development period, connected to many economic and social reforms during the first years after the “November (Tender /Velvet) Revolution” of 1989. At the same time, (de)formations caused by the Soviet regime and its politics were being removed. They were not only polit- ical, cultural, or moral (de)formations but also (and maybe we can say “above all”) language (de)formations, basing our concept on the postulate claiming that lan- guage is a tool by means of which we form the world around us and, as such, it establishes its own categories. Products of the language practice can then be per- ceived as constructs, our worlds as well as every story, person, or group could be “narrated” also in a different way (cf. GOODMAN 1996, RORTY 2006: 10–13, RORTY 1996: 6). Subtle processes of the language transformation and principles of its use or, in other words, the discursive practice – every articulatory practice which de- termines relations among elements so that their identities are defined, stable-based, or modified as a result of articulation (cf. LACLAU–MOUFFE 2001: 105), were in the former Czecho-Slovakia taking place against the background of serious economic, political, cultural, and institutional changes, forming the conditions of their exist- ence and, at the same time, the changes were formed by these conditions. In rela- tion to the dialectical relationship between society and language (WODAK–MEYER 2009: 21), we also take into account the three-dimensional discourse concept of N. Fairclough (cf. FAIRCLOUGH 1993: 73). It is essential to note that we consider problematic the empirical accomplishment of a border among two or more areas in a dialectical relationship. The difference between discursive and non-discursive practices is, in our case, based on an analytical distinction between the category of discursive practice (object of the analysis) and a wider social context, forming