The paper is timed to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the birth of Valery M. Mokienko, Doctor of Letters, Professor of Slavic Philology, Philology Department, St Petersburg State University, Honorary Chairman of the Phraseological Commission of the International Committee of Slavists. The paper reviews focal areas of the scholars research, lists his academic interests, the main of those being phraseology and phraseography. V.M. Mokienko proposed to detect dynamic interactions of contradictory properties of the phraseological system, to reveal the mechanism of phrase formation involving broad genetic and typological parallels to determine the nature of a phraseological unit. The method of structural and semantic modeling based on a detailed comparison of dialectal, Slavic and non-Slavic European idiomacy is the basis of modern theoretical and practical studies of the scientists followers. The trilogy of dictionaries edited by V.M. Mokienko distinguishes precise certification of units, references to synonymous turns, which makes it easier for the reader to navigate in the huge source material, outlines the parameters of the phraseological space close to the certified expression, and makes it possible to show the wealth of images of folk speech conveying the same semantics.

This paper deals with the comparative analysis of Slavic similes that characterize sound sleep as a part of the linguistic image of the Slavic world. Through the analysis of the figurative structure of similes, the authors demonstrate a great variety of models describing sound sleep in Slavic similes as well as the distinctive and similar ways of expressing the main meanings of similes in different languages. They also demonstrate the semantic differentiation of similes created by the model used in the comparison. Finally, the authors describe several national or cultural specific features of similes in various Slavic languages.