The authors of this article describe the semiosis of the term «foreign agent», which in recent years has become firmly entrenched in the legal field of contemporary Russia. The article is based on studies of the term «foreign agent» in Russian articles of N.A. Kupina and N.N. Sokolyanskaya. The empirical material of the article is a sample of the «foreign agent» in the National Corpus of the Russian language, an oral corpus of data. The authors' key hypothesis is the assumption that the use of the term «foreign agent» is an example of discrediting political opponents. As a methodological basis, the article is based on the Laclau-Mouffe discursive theory of hegemony. R. Barthes' structuralist semiotic analysis is chosen as the method for the analysis of the term «foreign agent». The article proves that the semiotic construction of the term «foreign agent» in public information discourse is a myth which used in public political discourse as a technique for discrediting opposition organizations in Russia through the exploitation of the discursive hegemony of the Cold War, which forms its mythical essence in the public field of Russian politics today. Weaknesses of the «foreign agent» myth are also described as an empty signifier that embodies in its particularity an unattainable completeness.