«Сталинские соколы»: тоталитарная фразеология и «Советский фольклор»

The specific role of folklore in political and ideological discourses of Soviet culture in the 1930-1950s was often noted by students researching this period. Stalinist society's interest in 'folk poetry' resulted not only in the reproduction of ideologically inspired texts of 'Soviet folklore', but also in the wide use of genres, ideas, symbols and tropes related either to real or imagined 'folk traditions of the USSR'. This paper deals with the genesis of one of the stable idioms of the time, 'Stalin's falcons', which was often used in reference to 'the heroes of Soviet aviation'. The Soviet media began to use the simile in 1935, after the crash of the airplane Maxim Gorky and the bird's name was probably borrowed from the works of the writer whose name the airplane bore. Soviet newspapers and poetry compared aviators to falcons, eagles and other birds, but the only idiom that emerged was 'Stalin's falcons'. It seems that its genesis was determined by the Nazi phrase 'Goring Falke-Division', Gorky's 'Song of the Falcon' and the idea of the falcon in Russian folklore.