The article offers a socio-cognitive analysis of the subject component of the film construct, based on the original author’s theory of cognitive-pragmatic programs (CPP). The sociocognitive mechanism of recoding the basic concept of “duty” in the consciousness of a Soviet person is investigated. It is necessary to find a universal mediator component, because of the aggressively destructive nature of the totalitarian CPP, creating illusion of neutralizing the destructive orientation. The “order” of a program must be perceived by the carrier of the CPP as a requirement of its own conscience, as an internal “order” of a manipulatively transformed “duty”. As a result, four basic interrelated projections of the CPP are formed: 1) “duty-fear”; 2) “duty-manipulation”; 3) “duty- submission”; 4) “duty-self-sacrifice (self-destruction)”. Each carrier of a CPP passes through four of these basic stages of cognitive-ideological “adaptation”. Passing through them, the subject is in an illusory state of freedom, believing a) that he himself decides who he is (level of self-identification); b) sets a goal for himself (goal setting level); c) decides in what way he will achieve his goal (modeling level of instrumental-operational strategy). Each transformed form of “duty” – CPP/stage of cognitive “adaptation” of a carrier of a CPP has two interdependent modes of incarnation: a) program (stimulus-order); b) subject (automated standardized reaction). Each of the four strategic cognitive-pragmatic sets (CPS) (“duty-fear”, etc.), combining CPP and its carrier, has a complex structure (target stimulus, order, reaction; self-identification stimulus, order, reaction; instrumental stimulus, order, reaction). As a result, the subject’s consciousness is fully controlled by the viral-manipulative mechanism of the CPP, since their general purposeful activity, at any degree of its “programmatic” destructiveness, is perceived by the subject as the embodiment of his own will.