The article deals with the military oath in the Soviet army in the cognitive and communicative aspect. It highlights the parametric signs of the military oath, which get the communicative and semantic features in accordance with the system of values that develops in a certain historical and cultural period.

There is described the desecration tactic as a structural component of vindictive discourse. Indirect forms of the above mentioned tactic presentation, which make it possible for a speaker to cause moral damage to an addressee-aggressorformally keeping ethical (and in certain cases - legal) norms of communication, get enlightment.

There are described the psycho-social origins and primary forms of presentation of the speech act “oath”. There is covered its interrelation with the vindictive discourse and the first human rituals.