The study focuses on one of the ways to express for eignness of ethnicities encountered by the inhabitants of Medieval Rus’, namely on constructing the origin of those ethnicities. The narrative about the origin of an ethnicity and its ancestors (origo gentis) is known from European medieval historiography in general. The oldest Russian chronicles, however, are distinguishable for not only recording the origin of their own nation, but noting the roots of completely different cultures, i.e. steppe tribes and northern peoples; later the origin of Mongols is refl ected in a similar way. The comparison of the Primary Chronicle and Latin Central European chronicles which were created almost at the same time period (Chronica Boemorum by Cosmas of Prague, Chronica et gesta ducum sive principum Polonorum by Gallus Anonymus and a slightly younger anonymous Gesta Hungarorum) demonstrates that the primary function of Latin origo gentis was to define the identity of the medieval gens, which was changing into natio of the High Medieval Period, and to legitimate its political structures. In these chronicles, origo gentis never became a separate theme in relation to other nations. On the contrary, the authors of the oldest Russian chronicles considered the identifi cation of the origins of the foreign nations to be the key for recognizing their functions not only in the present or in the past, but, first and foremost, in the future, in the end time.

In this article, the analysis has been subjected to discussing the autobiographical novel: The Prologue of Galina Kuznetsova- the representative of the Russian Emigration and the First Wave. This article presents the process of formation of the novel and identifies the impact of the personality and work of Ivan Bunin on its shape. Kuznetsovas novel was presented in a broader context of autobiographical novels of the Russian Emigration.

An aim of this article was to analyze and interpret multifaceted semantic of motives for lying in the novel Women’s Lies by Lyudmila Ulitskaya mainly on the basis of the text’s content as well as related to it preceded annotations, essayistic and journalistic utterances of an actress. We declare that the “laboratory analyze” of women’s lies in its various scenes makes a leading opinion and basic motive of the novel. At the beginning of the conclusion we are concentrating on the author`s definition of lie, so we can later refer to mythological-historical-literary roots. In the context of above mentioned facts, it is interesting that Ulitskaya divides lie on masculine and feminine. Ulitskaya, in her typical way, referring to cultural-religious archetypes and symbols, indicates the roots of masculine lie pertaining even to the Old Testament, as contrary to “pleasant feminine lie”. In this regard, the mythological characters of Odysseus and Penelope are also recognized as representatives. After all, in the content of the analyzed piece are only presented various examples of female lies, and, in our opinion, exposed as an element of the third plane, which unites natural sciences and literature.

The article studies such cultural phenomenon as madness in its romantic (Edgar Poe) and expressionistic (Ivan Shmelyov) interpretation. Refl ecting upon the philosophical concept introduced by Michel Foucault the author analyzes how visual-plastic and verbal experience of interpreting madness in terms of literature is realized. Verbal and literary peculiarities of creating an aesthetic image of madness within the romantic canon in Poe’s story is compared to the specific features of verbal and visual images created in the style of expressionism by Shmelyov. Techniques of literary image visualization, revealing the specific nature of interaction between different forms of literature, art, cinema peculiar to the first third of the twentieth century, are studied in the process of transition from the aesthetics of story to the aesthetics of presentation.

The article is dedicated to the determination of the types and functions of “someone else’s word”, i.e. intertextual relationships, present in political dramas of contemporary Russian writers. The author focuses on two types of intertexts such as quotes and allusions; determines their importance to the dramatic work as a whole, and distinguishes topic-related groups of texts to which dramatists refer. The conclusions of the study incline to place the phenomenon of political drama between what is “literary” and “social”, “eternal” and “up-to-date”.The analysis was carried out on the materials of dramas such as: Putin.doc by Victor Teterin, Sentry (Часовой) by Siergiej Reshetnikov, Meat by Olga Pogodina, and Beria by Dmitry Karapuzov.

Conceptual opposition of «vezhestvo» («decency»)/«ignorance» has long been an ethico-aesthetic basis for many works of Russian literature and folklore, thus defining their ideological thematic, and structural confi guration. In oral epos, «vezhestvo» appears as life-constructing value which is based upon a hero’s awareness of his own destiny and means of its implementation, such as particular behavioral style, experience, knowledge and skills on dealing with hostile forces, acceptance of an idea of the world’s hierarchy, reliance on help from divine powers, parents’ blessing for great doings, etc. «Ignorance» implies, respectively, incomprehension or rejection of these values. In literary epos, «vezhestvo» continues to function as a sign of traditional spirituality, thereby reproducing a national model of the world as a synthesis of many beginnings: courtesy, erudition, intellect, and exactingness of aesthetic taste of the Russian. In the context of literary search in the second half of the 18th century, a trend of jokey, ironic outplaying of typical situations, which a man had been encountered from the times of epic heroes, became stronger. The most representative examples of interpretation of a literary concept of «vezhestvo» of that period one can fi nd in bogatyr poems by N.A. L’vov and N.M. Karamzin.

Thaddeus Bulgarin (1789–1859) – a writer, critic and publishеr. During his activity hеtried to find his place in the history of both Polish and Russian literature and culture. However, neither Poles nor Russian considered him as their national author, despite the fact he was a very popular figure in the first half of the 19th century. Although Bulgarin’s heritage consists of numerous writings in the field of science-fiction literature, his name cannot be аlsо found among its creators. This article analyses the most significant visions of future by Bulgarin, in particular regarding the development of technology and its impact on human beings. Then it could be said that it was not Julius Verne, but Thaddeus Bulgarin, was the first one toprovide readers with travels to the centre of the Earth.

Julius Margolin (1900–1971), a Jewish author of Russian and Polish origins, wrote his famous Russian-language novel A Journey to the Land Zeka in pre-State Israel, one year after his release from a Soviet concentration camp (1946–1947). Having been one of the earliest testimonies about Stalin’s atrocities, this book was published in 1952 in its abridged version, whereas the unabridged version came out only in 2016. While the social and political significance of this book has been repeatedly discussed, its poetical and discursive strategies are understudied. This article makes a few steps in the direction of understanding of Margolin’s book seriocomic style, discourse of fairytale and fantasy, the Palestine-Zionist text, the sea motif and other themes. The analysis unveils the author’s ambitious literary project that hides behind the historical testimony and is intended to strengthen it.

Provence has been playing an important role in Russian literature for two hundred years. Numerous Russian artists have visited this French region or settled there for a longer time; enchanted by the beauty of south European nature and mild climate, they depicted it in their poems, stories or travel journals. The list includes, e.g. Semen Nadson, Alexandr Kuprin, Ivan Bunin, Sasha Chyorny, Vladimir Nabokov. Galina Kuznetsova (1900–1976), representative of the first wave of Russian emigration, spent several years in Provence. The poet lived in Grasse on and off from 1927 to 1942. Her stay on the south of France greatly influenced the journal she then wrote (Грасский дневник, 1967), and her only poetry collection published in her lifetime, entitled The Olive Garden (Оливковый сад, 1937). This article covers the Provence threads present in both texts. Kuznetsova depicts in these works the beauty of exotic nature, combining descriptions of landscape with her own emotional states, using solutions characteristic of impressionism.

The Old Believers appeared on the Polish territories in 18th century. They are a bilingual community. They use Russian dialect and Polish language, depending on communicative situation. Polish influence on the Old Believers’ dialect increased after two World Wars, when they became separated from their co-religionists in other countries and had more often contacts with Polish neighbours. In Old Believers’ Russian dialect more and more Polish elements are noticable, especially in lexis. In the technical terminology there are a lot of borrowings from Polish language caused above all by the civilization progress. The aim of this article is to analyze the lexis borrowed from Polish language in the field of technics in Russian dialect of the Old Believers of Suwałki-Augustów Region and furthermore confront it with the material gathered in “Słownik gwary staroobrzędowców mieszkających w Polsce” (1980 a.d.). The gathered material was analyzed paying special attention to assimilation to the Russian dialect.

This paper discusses the linguistic features of political propaganda in the Polish newspaper “Trybuna Radziecka”, which was published in Moscow in 1927–1938 and edited by Polish left-intelligentsia, living in USRR as political émigrés in the interwar period. “Trybuna Radziecka” as the other Polish newspapers published in Soviet Russia was a part of the Soviet press. It entirely depended on Soviet authorities. Its language reflected the Soviet Russian language and was an example of political jargon typical for all communist newspapers of the interwar period.