This article attempts to analyze the evolution of the political identity of the Soviet Union in the context of the transformation of humanitarian discourse. This discourse can be defi ned as a set of ideas transmitted in a political language about the sociopolitical identity of a person, his rights and freedoms. Analyzing the development of the system of ideas about man, rights and freedoms in the offi cial Soviet discourse, the article demonstrates how such ideas formed the collective political identity of the Soviet state at various historical stages. The author concludes that Soviet ideology and offi cial political discourse throughout the entire period of existence of the Soviet state reproduced the concept of humanitarian universalism, which was an alternative to Western humanitarian discourse and constituted both the Soviet strategy of foreign policy and the international identity of the Soviet state overall.

This article is devoted to the study of the evolution of humanitarian discourse in the nations of the West after the Second World War. Analyzing the transformation of approaches to the interpretation of human rights, human security and development presented in the program documents and political practice of the European Union countries and the USA, the author addresses the relationship between the politicization of humanitarian discourse and the universalization of the Western political identity.