This article describes the results of the pilot stage of qualitative fi eld research on Russian social memory in the second half of the 1980s. The aim of the research was to reveal what is the image of perestroika preserved in today’s social memory of those Russians who remember the events of those years. The main objective of the pilot stage was the identifi cation of the lexicon of terms and the set of concepts used to verbalize the memories of the perestroika period, as well as the caesuras and temporal characteristics related to the memory of this time. The results are outlined in the main topics, terms and concepts that pop up in conversations with respondents.

The aim of the article is to assess the current image of Poland as a tourist destination from the point of view of the Russians. To achieve the assumed goals, surveys were carried out. Basic statistical indicators such as mean, standard deviation, Pearson similarity index and graphic methods were also used in the study. Russian citizens did not perceive fully Poland as a country attractive for tourists both for themselves and for other European tourists. Their opinion in this regard was more critical than representatives of other nations.

The article aims at the explanation of some distributional peculiarities of two high unrounded vowels [i] and [È] in Russian. More generally, it looks at some phonotactic constraints of Russian vowels which are directly related to a broader topic of palatalization and vowel reduction in this language. Although the discussion in this paper concerns only a tiny section of Russian phonology, which is the distribution of high unrounded vowels, it is necessary to introduce several facts from Russian phonology, such as palatalization, velarization, stress and vowel reduction. They, at first sight, may look pretty much irrelevant to the main topic of the paper but, as it will become evident, are closely related and actually indispensable to the understanding of vowel distribution including the two high unrounded vowels in Russian.

Although the Russian Orthodox Church participates in the activities of the ecumenical movement, it remains sceptical about the evolution of Western Christianity, mainly Protestantism. In particular, attempts to challenge traditional dogmatic and ethical formulations are unacceptable. The Russian Orthodox criticism goes even further when it reveals the sources of the rejection of church tradition in early Protestant theology. In this context, the article presents the main elements of the contemporary Russian Orthodox critique of the Reformation’s rejection of tradition as an authoritative source of Christian faith. The first part outlines the theological and ideological specificity of the Russian Orthodox discourse on the Reformation. The second part presents the Orthodox concept of the authority of tradition in the Church as a starting point for the criticism of the Reformation. The third part discusses the main elements of the criticism of the reformatory concept of sola Scriptura with particular emphasis on its socio-political reasons and consequences.

The article features an analysis of the ideas of Yurij Levada, an eminent Russian academic, sociologist dealing both with theory and with practice of sociology, a founder of a research institution inMoscow known as Levada-Centre. Levada gave a special place to culture within sociology and he himself called his project on theoretical sociology an “attempt at culturally justified sociology” (grounded in a perspective orientated to culture). The project was based on structurally complex, culturally conditioned and symbolically indirect social actions. In his opinion, such knowledge of culture required to be looked at retrospectively, which provides for tackling the issue of social system reproduction while enabling to understand contemporary culture at the same time. This way of thinking was a basis for Levada’s analyses of the surrounding social reality, e.g. his analyses of intelligence or the concept of “simple Soviet man”.

This article examines the connection between media use and social in/security from the perspective of Finnish Russian-speakers. Based on 25 interviews conducted in Finland in 2015–2016, it analyses the ways in which people in conflict situations mitigate social risks and attempt to produce security by governing their use of the media. Drawing from von Benda-Beckmann and von Benda-Beckmann’s work on social security, the article argues that security studies ought to include transnational media use in their scope and broaden the emphasis towards the social and societal aspects of threat and insecurity. Furthermore, it explains how, in times of conflict, transnational media may turn into a digitalised ‘war zone’ with alarming consequences on the identification and social security of their audiences.

This article explores the nature and impact of stigmatisation upon Russian and Russian-speaking migrants living in Scotland. It is based upon data gathered from 19 interviews with Russians and Russian-speakers living in the Aberdeen/Aberdeenshire and Central Belt regions of Scotland. Ongoing conflict in Syria and Ukraine has worsened relations between the UK and Russia, while EU enlargement and, latterly, the ‘refugee crisis’ have fuelled hostile attitudes towards migrants. Russians and Russian-speakers liv-ing in Scotland therefore face two potential sources of stigma, firstly because of a (perceived) associa-tion with the actions of the Russian state and, secondly, because they are often misidentified as Polish and are consequently regarded as threatening the availability of resources such as jobs, housing, ben-efits and school places (Pijpers 2006; Spigelman 2013). The article explores how people respond to such stigmatisation, emphasising the complexity of engaging with misdirected stigma. It is suggested that stigma – and the way in which people respond to it – is situational and context-specific in that it is significantly influenced by the identity, background and perspective of the stigmatised person. Also in-vestigated is the wider impact of stigma on Russian and Russian-speaking migrants’ lives, highlighting the emotional and social insecurities that can result from stigmatisation. Drawing on anthropological theories of social security (Caldwell 2007; von Benda-Beckmann and von Benda-Beckmann 2000), the article suggests that robust social support, particularly from people who are local to the host country, can mitigate the negative effects of stigmatisation.

The aim of this article is to answer the question, “How Philaret Drozdov understood God’s holiness and human holiness and how both the ideas were displayed in his writings?” The research material constitutes selected homilies and a catechism. In the first place, the author discusses the definition of holiness and its understanding by the Orthodox Church with regard to the issue of deification. Also, he familiarizes the reader with the concept of holiness in its various aspects. Subsequently, the homilies and the catechism of Philaret Drozdov are analysed. The article shows the Moscow Metropolitan’s beliefs about the essence of human holiness as well as about the eschatological dimension of temporality and the pneumatological aspect of holiness, the issue of grace and a human seen as a vessel of God’s energy. The author proves that the Moscow Metropolitan continued in his works the traditions of the Church Fathers and creatively developed the most important assumptions of Orthodox anthropology and soteriology and, hence enriching Russian spiritual thought.

The aim of the article is to analyze Russian words transcribed into the Polish alphabet extracted from the texts of a Polish conservative-liberal author, S. Michalkiewicz, from the years 2003−2015. The lists of both correctly and incorrectly transcribed units are presented and the mistranscribed words are examined. The categories of transcription errors are provided along with the examples of words in which they occur. The results of the analysis may serve as a point of reference in further studies concerning adherence to the transcription rules of Russian performed on a larger number of texts written by a greater variety of authors.

The purpose of the article is to analyze the concept of translation strategy, which is a relatively under discussed topic in translation theory studies. The idea of translator’s strategy use can be put forward mainly on the basis of the analysis of the translated work within a skopos-based research position, according to which a translator’s strategy is a part of conscious action organized by the translation’s purpose and conditioned by the situational context. The current study takes under scrutiny the Russian translation of a publication about Poland’s history after regaining independence. The analysis shows translators’ tendency to exoticise their translation while the textual data enable us to reconstruct translators’ motivations and ways of shaping translated units. At the same time, the study highlights the consequences of adopted strategies and presents limitations as well as drawbacks connected with exoticisation of translation.

The borrowed lexis from the Polish language contained in the Russian-Ukrainian dictionaries of the early twentieth century is analyzed in the article. Its state and prevalence in the modern Ukrainian language is being clarified. Polonisms that are now out of use or on the periphery of the Ukrainian literary language have been investigated. Examples of actualized words were considered.

The article is devoted to contemporary studies on the nineteenth century memoirs written by Russian women. In the nineteenth century women’s memoirs were underestimated and neglected by researchers. Recently, there has been a signifi cant increase in research interest in memoirs written by women. This subject has been taken up by literary scholars, historians, experts on cultural studies and anthropologists. A. Bielova, I. Savkina, W. Laszczak, K. Kosowska, N. Pushkariova, A. Fieduta, W. Ponomarieva, L. Khoroshilova, J. Prikazchikova, A. Stankewich, J. Samofalova, O. Mamaieva, S. Tatarkina are among those who are interested in it. Memoirs are a valuable source of information about the epoch, historical events, outstanding leaders, event-making fi gures, Russian intellectual elites, aristocracy as well as the everyday life of the Russian gentry. They also provide some insight into the way female memoirists expressed themselves in their writings, their views on femininity and the role of women in society.

This article analyses the history of researches on some aspects of the syntax of “small” numerals dva, tri, chetyre (two, three, four) undertaken in the 18th and 19th century Russian grammars. The main subject of the analysis is the views of the authors of these grammars regarding the syntactic structure of the combination of the above-named numerals with a noun. Particular attention is paid to the reasoning of the authors of the aforementioned grammars with reference to such combinations in which the numeral appears in the nominative/ accusative case. The nature of the relationship between the numeral in the nominative/ accusative and the noun was described by linguists in different ways. Furthermore, also the form of a noun in such a combination was interpreted in various ways. A widespread synchronous interpretation that the form of a noun which co-occurs with the numerals dva, tri, chetyre in the nominative or homonymous accusative is the singular genitive (dva stola – two tables), currently seen in both didactic and scientific modern linguistic studies, has been present in the literature since the 18th century. Nevertheless, in many works of the discussed period one can find completely different views on the problem (e.g. in the I. Ornatovsky’s or A. Vostokov’s grammars).

Scribes of the oldest part of the manuscript posted their names in two notes. In the fi rst note the final letter of the scribe’s name is seriously damaged. It is generally believed that his name was Mičьka (Мичька). The author proves that the scribe’s name is a derivative from the suffi x –ko (Mičьko). In the second note the name of the scribe is heavily damaged in the initial part, which results in a number of interpretations. According to the author’s studies the name of the scribe was Potamij (Потамий, gr. PÒtamoj).

The author presents the output of Eduard Makarian, a Russian cultural anthropologist, featuring his contribution to the problem of origin of culture. The development of Makarian’s scientific research has been presented from the understanding of systemic character of culture to the research on the origin of culture; from reflecting upon the first principles of culture development to the concept of system evolution as anthropogenesis, social evolution and cultural evolution, to the understanding of the origin of culture as a creative core of culture (cultural heritage, dynamics of cultural traditions, “tradition”–“change” dichotomy, hypothesis of “cultural genes”, etc.). The scientist moved from the issue of the origin of culture in the prehistoric times through the issues of permanent creation and dialectic self-revival of culture to the problems of culture in contemporary world. His research was of key importance for the establishment of philosophical and cultural approach in the research of the origin of culture in Russia.

This article looks at the mobility of highly skilled female migrants from the perspective of the post-socialist semi-peripheral countries in Eastern Europe. It analyses chosen aspects of the biographical experiences of highly skilled women from three post-USSR republics bordering the European Union – namely Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia – in Poland, a post-socialist country itself but also an EU member-state. The empirical analysis focuses on their lifestyle changes and choices, made through the experience of living in a new, though quite familiar Polish culture, which is both more emancipated (Western) while, at the same time, pertaining to some of the familiar (Eastern) patterns. Due to this liminal nature of the host country, the adaptation process of migrants is easier and comes at a lower biographical cost. In the analysis, I explore two notions: the gender roles renegotiation and the changes in the women’s approach towards the external manifestations of femininity, which I contrast with their reflections of the changes undergone. As for the gender role renegotiation, three main approaches were described varying by the degree to which the old, familiar patterns are maintained. In terms of the external notions of femininity, while taking care of one’s looks is still an observable element of the migrants’ identity, they do take advantage of the wider spectrum of options available in the host society, and try to blend in with the casual big-city crowd. The article was written on the basis of empirical material in the form of twenty in-depth, unstructured interviews, which were confronted with the selected subject literature.