Abstract

This article probes the essence of such phenomena as concept and symbol, considers the dialectic of their stability and variability, and traces the development of content in some of them. Archetypes, stereotypes, and conceptual values are identified as the entities that are responsible for the universality of concepts and symbols, and that provide the stable ‘kernels’ of their content, which resist changes happening in them over time. Finally, the article expands on the main factors bringing about these changes — intertextuality and deconstruction, and offers a case study of the deconstruction of the Soviet ideological model during the ‘Perestroika’ of the 1990s.