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The article deals with an episode in the history of Soviet folkloristic, namely a prohibition of certain genres of folklore. In 1920s there occurs a boom of recording modern urban folklore, but in 1930s the recorded texts were destroyed or concealed in restricted folklore storage of large research institutions. Based on archival materials the article draws conclusions of the reasons for recording unfavorable (criminal, heroic, political) texts and the reasons for placing them into the restricted storage (“spetskhran”). The article is appended with published documents stored in Petersburg archives.
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This article discusses the priority directions of the Russian zemstvo’s activities during the fifty years of its existence. Among them are, first and foremost, health, education, development of peasant farming and local communications (roads and telephony). The author pays special attention to the appearance of new guidelines in local authorities’ work in the period under consideration.
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The article presents the main types of synonymous prepositions in the Russian literary language of the first half of the 19th century. The author provides the examples of each type based on literary texts of the period under consideration and in accordance with the existing scientific classifications. The paper reveals such trends in the development of prepositional synonymy as the flexibility of the rules of using morphological synonyms and the stylistic reassessment of the components of synonymic rows.
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The development of meanings similar to philosophical ideas is revealed in the first chapter of “Eugene Onegin”. A.S. Pushkin based them on the complex and contradictory relationship between the protagonist and the way of his life. Onegin’s dependence on the latter and attempts to assert his individuality in the whirlwind of everyday life give rise to a number of artistic problems, which are close to philosophical reflections on the meaning and purpose of human existence, happiness and its sources, true and false values, as well as their ability to fill life with genuine or illusory sense. The paper proves the thesis that such artistic and philosophical ideas organize the internal artistic unity of the first chapter, turning it into an exposition of “Eugene Onegin” as a philosophical novel.
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Representation of the Soviet past in modern Russian prose still demands comprehension. This paper is devoted to the analysis of the Soviet discourse in M.Yu. Elizarov’s novel “The Librarian” (2007), the 2008 “Russian Booker” winner. The study is performed using a complex method, which combines discourse, cultural-historical, structural-semantic, and conceptual types of analysis. The Soviet discourse is considered in relation to the national Russian one, which is also presented in the novel. It is demonstrated that Russian and Soviet concepts come into collision. The conflict is realized in a cryptological plot through the image of library, which is emblematic of postmodern literature. The national Russian discourse is embodied in such traditional feminine images as elemental force, proximity to the nature, destructive orientation, and provinces. The Soviet discourse is based on such traditional masculine images as aspiration for orderliness, orientation to logic, and capital. Female and male personifications stand in a symbolical relation with each other. M.Yu. Elizarov introduces the sacral image of the Protection of the Holy Virgin, which is urged to unite the Soviet discourse with the national Russian one. The conclusion is made that the Soviet utopia does not unite with the national Russian tradition despite the introduction of the Protection. The Divine Union declared in the novel remains unrealized.
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Review of: Efim Etkind: Russische Lyrik von der Oktoberrevolution bis zur Gegenwart. Versuch einer Darstellung. München 1984, Beck’sche Schwarze Reihe Band 283, 270 Seiten, öS 192.40/DM 24.- Jürgen Fuchs: Fassonschnitt. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1984, 384 Seiten Arthur Koestler: Als Zeuge der Zeit. Die Abenteuer meines Lebens. Scherz Verlag, Bern und München 1983, 448 Seiten Hendrik Bussiek: Die real existierende DDR. Neue Notizen aus der unbekannten deutschen Republik. Fischer 4246, Frankfurt 1984, 270 Seiten, öS 84.20/DM 10.80 V. Sima/V. Wakounig/P. Wieser (Hg.): Slowenische Jahrbücher 1985, Drava Verlag, Klagenfurt/Celovec 1984, 203 Seiten Lois Fisher-Ruge: Alltag in Moskau, Econ Verlag, Düsseldorf und Wien 1984, 239 Seiten Erich Loest: Der vierte Zensor. Vom Enstehen und Sterben eines Romans in der DDR. Edition Deutschland Archiv. Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, Köln 1984, 96 Seiten Melanie Tatur: Arbeitssituation und Arbeiterschaft in Polen 1970-1980, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt 1983, 121 Seiten, öS 218.40/DM 28.- Raissa Orlowa-Kopelew: Die Türen öffnen sich langsam. Mit einem Vorwort von Carola Stern. Albrecht Knaus Verlag, Hamburg 1984, 220 Seiten, öS 218.40/DM 28.- D. Riekert/I. Scherer/W. Schröter/I. Thunecke: Das KOR. Vom Komitee zur Verteidigung der Arbeiter zum Komitee zur sozialen Selbstverteidigung, Tübingen 1984, 105 Seiten, öS 78.-/DM 10.-
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The paper is concerned with the issue of textual visualisation of Caucasus in Russian travelogues performed in 1820-1830th – the decades of the Caucasus War escalation. Taken as example entries from the travelogues of I.T. Radojitsky and V.B. Bronevsky published in Russian Empire in early XIX c., the authors show deep connections of the outlook on the region and people inhabited it with the foundation of the Orientalism as an approach to describing native people of the Imperial frontier.The research underlines the importance of scrutinised study of travellers experience they endured on voyages by the Caucasus in deep connection with the political course on “pacifying” the region, proclaimed by the Imperial authorities. Racy images of the Cossacks, Russian settlers, native peoples and “unpacified” highlanders were performed in order to legislate the Imperial annexation of lands and their acquisition by Russian civilisation. Together with the motives of showing huge contrast between the pastoral life of Russian peasants and towns dwellers with the backwardness of the natives, matched the common ideas of European colonialism, the authors show public awareness of the “unpacified” highlanders expressed by the travellers in the image of “a Circassian”. We traced features of Russian literature Romanticism in the travellers depicture of a Highlander as a “noble savage” did for a living by robs and plunders. The authors came to the conclusions that images, elaborated by Russian travellers and righters were utter vivid and influenced on the perception of the region by Russian layman until the early XX c.The paper is concerned with the issue of textual visualisation of Caucasus in Russian travelogues performed in 1820-1830-th. – the decades of the Caucasus War escalation. Taken as example entries from the travelogues of I.T. Radojitsky and V.B. Bronevsky published in Russian Empire in early XIX c., the authors show deep connections of the outlook on the region and people inhabited it with the foundation of the Orientalism as an approach to describing native people of the Imperial frontier. The research underlines the importance of scrutinised study of travellers experience they endured on voyages by the Caucasus in deep connection with the political course on “pacifying” the region, proclaimed by the Imperial authorities. Racy images of the Cossacks, Russian settlers, native peoples and “unpacified” highlanders were performed in order to legislate the Imperial annexation of lands and their acquisition by Russian civilisation. Together with the motives of showing huge contrast between the pastoral life of Russian peasants and towns dwellers with the backwardness of the natives, matched the common ideas of European colonialism, the authors show public awareness of the “unpacified” highlanders expressed by the travellers in the image of “a Circassian”. We traced features of Russian literature Romanticism in the travellers depicture of a Highlander as a “noble savage” did for a living by robs and plunders. The authors came to the conclusions that images, elaborated by Russian travellers and righters were utter vivid and influenced on the perception of the region by Russian layman until the early XX c.
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Review of: Camelia Dinu (ed.), Simbolismul în literaturile slave, București, Pro Universitaria, 2020, 263p., ISBN 978-606-26-1233-7
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This unconventional dictionary, having over 100 entries, is the first attempt ever to list dogs that belonged to Russian turn-of-the-century and 20th-century writers (for example, Alexander Blok, Anton Chekhov, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Maximilian Voloshin, etc.).
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The article is an attempt to find, in Soviet poetry exemplified by poetry for children, reminiscences and allusions to classical or modernist poetry. Thus, Marshak’s typically Soviet propagandist poem “Nash gerb” (“Our Coat of Arms”) is traced back to Cherubina de Gabriac's poem of the same title. Children’s verse by Marshak, as well as some lyrical and satirical poetry, comprise the main material of the paper. Some examples of Marshak’s influence on posterior Russian poetry are analyzed.
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This article is an introduction to the close reading of Victor Pelevin’s novel Journey to Eleusis (2023) as a paradigmatical example of the Russian dystopian literature from the beginning of the 21th century. Journey to Eleusis is the final part of a trilogy whose previous installments include the collection of short novels Transhumanism Inc. (2021) that set the dystopian universe, and the sequel KGBT+ (2022) taking place already in the wartime sociopolitical reality. I argue that starting with Vladimir Sorokin’s Blue Lard (1999) the contemporary Russian dystopia intertwines idiosyncratically futurism and archaism into a retro-dystopian frame, which I discern in Pelevin’s trilogy. As I view it, this specific dystopian blend aims at the representation of a history of the present of the Putin era with its neo-totalitarian version of the Russian imperial concept of the “Third Rome” which is crucial to Journey to Eleusis.
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The article compares the range of ideas and feelings of the outstanding religious philosopher Hryhorii Skovoroda with the work of a number of Ukrainian and Russian classics (such as Taras Shevchenko, Pavlo Tychina, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Mikhail Lermontov, Anton Chekhov, Yuri Dombrovsky and Vasily Grossman). First of all, we are interested in contrasting the inner sense of the harmony of existence, the ability to feel the immutable joy of being, on the one hand, and ideologized consciousness, speculative, abstract thinking, on the other. The connection of these phenomena with the concepts of nihilism, theomachism, atheistic worldview in their historical development is considered. At the same time, the philosophical problems of faith and faithlessness, the tragedy of existence and attempts to overcome it, the life of the spirit and soul are touched upon. Conclusions are drawn about the commonality of the spiritual branches of Slavic culture.
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The article is devoted to the study of the figurative designations heart and soul. For analysis, the author uses metaphors, comparisons and nominal periphrases taken from the works of Russian poets of the 19th–20th centuries. The concept of a figurative field is substantiated, its composition is established, and its system relationships are described. The article considers stable images and ways of their reinterpretation in a number of idiostyles and traces the evolution of tropes. The continuity of some images (fire; water bodies; birds etc.), the weakening and fading of traditional semantic connections (for example, heart/soul — temple) and the emergence of new ones are noted. Semantic connections, only outlined in the poetry of the 19th century, become widespread in the 20th century (heart/soul — music; flora; human; animals, insects, fish). The 20th century sees the emergence of a figurative likening of the soul/heart to a dwelling, a home. The poetry of the 20th century is characterised by reduced associations and depoeticisation of traditionally lofty images.
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The article presents an overview of Russian-language literature in Latvia following the criteria for defining it as a minority literature. The author describes the autonomous mechanisms of legitimisation — Latvian publishing houses, periodicals, poetry festivals specialising in the popularisation of contemporary Russian literaturę — and identifies several strategies of self-identification of Russian-speaking writers in Latvia. She also concludes that in the new, “after 24 February 2022” context for Russian culture, the Russian-speaking Latvian literary community, just as after 1991, is experiencing serious tremors, leading to its greater polarisation. The author paid special attention to the artistic presentation of the new social reality — ‘emigration without emigration’ — with the leitmotifs of the new refugee and counter-memory, which have recently gained in importance.
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The subject of considerations is the role of artistic imagination and the causative power of aesthetic creation of the title character from the story by Goar Markosjan-Kasper. In the work, maintained in a postmodern style, the writer combines the problem of imagination with the category of memory/oblivion. He also uses the concept of an artists to show the duality of the imperfect material (real) world and the ideal world created by the causative power of the mind. Improving the world that takes place — pars pro toto — through changing the face of Tallinn has both a geographical and human dimension — communing with beauty triggers altruism and love in people.
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The study offers an analysis of the latest work of Ludmila Ulitskaya from the point of view of cognitive poetics, considering the conditions of the book’s publication, the situation of the recipients’ first encounter with the Шестью семь cycle and associations related to the author’s current activity. Ulitskaya is among the most recognizable authors of contemporary Russian literature, and her emigration from the country which started a war is perceived as a political and moral declaration. This has led to some new ways of reading her works published after leaving Russia. In this article, the symbols contained in the plots of short stories and the structure of the cycle form the basis for the interpretation of the apocalyptic sense implied in the work. The author of the study states that the specific narrative, resembling Olga Tokarczuk’s concept of “the tender narrator” and including some traits close to the Eastern tradition of wisdom literature, strengthens the positive message of the work. Thus, the apocalyptic vision presented in the last part of Ulitskaya’s work opens to the eternal perspective and assumes waiting for salvation.
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In the novel Untraceable Sergei Lebedev focuses his attention on analyzing the genealogy of contemporary evil, its specificity, and responsibility for it. In this case, the impetus for the story described was an attempt to poison Sergei and Julia Skripal. Once again, the author turns to a current theme, but one that has not been thoroughly explored (also in literature), of “the poisoners from the Kremlin.” Using the example of the main character — Kalitin — a chemist, and inventor of the perfect poison (the title “untraceable”), Lebedev warns us not to forget about evil just because it belongs to a theoretically bygone era. People (especially scientists) should take it into account, take responsibility for their decisions and actions, because if crimes continue to go unpunished, it will not be possible to oppose — “the terror of toxic fear.”
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The article discusses genre features of the “boring dystopia”, the novel Радио Мартын by Filipp Dzyadko. Among the most important features of the novel are the image of a pseudo-carnival, the situation of a “state of emergency”, intertextual quotation, the activity of a dystopian protagonist. The exchange of letters between the now deceased becomes a symbol of the rupture of the chronotope. The syntax of the novel is subordinated to the aim of the genre. The novel can thus be understood as a confession of an emigrant-writer to his readers.
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