The image of a miner in verses of Solikamsk poets - potash workers

This article analyzes modern naive poems about potash miners written by Solikamsk poets and addressed to the general public. The focus is on the lexical-thematic space associated with the image of the lyrical hero. The paper provides linguistic description of the thematic groups common to all the authors, such as ‘status’, ‘portrait’, ‘activity’, ‘environment’, ‘social assessment’. By their characteristics, the texts of the poems appear to be conceptually close to Soviet industrial propaganda. The image of a miner in all the poems is presented as being separated from the masses. The portrait characteristics of the character are depicted in the traditions of socialist realism: a wrinkled face, proud posture, working hands. In the verses, labor heroism of the worker finds no parallels in everyday - peaceful - life, the poets only draw parallels between the miners and the military, as both demonstrating extreme selflessness. Working conditions are represented through spatial coordinates, most often located under the earth’s surface. The social assessment of the mining profession is expressed explicitly, in highly pathetic honoring and praising. A thematic comparison of Solikamsk miners’ lyrics with poems written by Kemerovo poets of the same period has revealed some conceptually significant discrepancies in the image of the hero. The Ural (Solikamsk) poems differ from the Siberian (Kemerovo) ones in their solemn mood, and they do not allow vocabulary that would degrade, discredit the image, make it appear ordinary. The Solikamsk poems do not raise the topics of death, accidents, low wages, workers being misappreciated by the country, as well as labor rituals contrary to public morality. These features encourage the idea that the poems under study reflect the subprofessional and local identity of their authors.