The subject of the article are personal names of the Ukrainian population living in the former Chełm land, presented within the context of historical and cultural and religious conditions, as determinants of national identity. Language, in addition to tradition, a sense of religious, historical and territorial community and national consciousness, being one of its basic elements. Shown is the relationship between certain types of anthroponyms and their linguistic structure together with their ethnic and social origin and, to some extent, the system of values professed. Attention has also been paid to the phenomenon of the infiltration of Polish features present in the anthroponymy of the inhabitants of the area in question.

The Borshchiv district, along with the western part of Podolia, was joined to Poland in the 14th century, to which it was to belong, intermittently, until the end of World War II. The purpose of the article is a semantic and structural analysis of the place names in this area, on the basis of which a linguistic picture emerges of the Borszczów district. The most numerous group of physiographic names describes its natural properties – the richness of its rivers and lakes, the animals living there, forested places, numerous undulations and plateaus. Also, ethnic names indirectly refer to the nature of the land itself whereas cultural names – equally numerous – describe the district as a result of the properties acquired due to human activity. The most recent layer being the ideological names created during communism. Older cultural names inform of settlement forms, defensive places, their state after numerous invasions, places related to spiritual, secular culture and the economy. Renewed and diminutive names depend on new settlements being built in the district. Among the names of places derived from personal names, the most numerous are possessive names, which are based on eastern or neutral names, just like with patronymics. The meaning of the name Szuparka remains unclear.

The article analyzes the phonetic system of the Bulaeshty dialect of the Ukrainian language as used in the village of Bulaeshty in the Republic of Moldova. This had been established until the 15th century by the natives of Bukovyna in the Ukraine. A system of contemporary sound derivatives from a Proto-Slavic ancient phonetic system of consonants has been identified. The full or partial conservation of archaic phonetic forms has become fixed. The Bulaeshty dialect retains a number of relict forms, including phonetic archaisms which have long been lost in the Ukrainian literary language and are increasingly fixed in modern Ukrainian dialects. An record of consonant phonemes in the dialect has been compiled. There are 38 phonemes and according to the differential basis of the “place of creation” of the sound manifestations, traditionally they are classified into groups: 1) labials (/б/, /п/, /в/, /м/, /ф/); 2) front tongue (/д/, /д’/, /т/, /т’/, /з/, /з’/, /с/, /с’/, /ц/, /ц’/, /л/, /л’/, /н/, /н’/, /дз/, /дз’/, /р/, /р’/, /дж’/, /ɕ/, /ч/, /ч’/, /ж/, /ш/); 3) medium tongue (/й/); 4) back tongue /(ґ/, /ґ’/, /к/, /к’/, /х/, /х’/); 5) pharyngeal (/г/, /г’/). Тheir functional load and conditions of positional and combinatorial variation have been determined.

The article presents vocabulary, both indigenous Polish and borrowed, connected with human characteristics arising from man’s appearance, character and behaviour as used in the petty nobility village of Dorohań and the peasant village of Wójtowce in Ukraine on the east bank of the Zbruch river. 204 words were analyzed divided into three main thematic categories and smaller groups, i.e. behavioural traits, moral deeds, status characteristics, mental abilities; appearance traits, character features and physical and emotional state words. The analysis showed that the foreign – Ukrainian and Russian – influence on the Polish vocabulary of the peasant village of Wójtowce is stronger than on the vocabulary of the petty nobility village of Dorohań. At the same time, the residents of Wójtowce use indigenous and borrowed words that are more expressive, both positively and negatively, what can be explained by the more frequent use of Polish in their everyday life. Comparison with other Polish dialects in Ukraine has revealed a certain similarity but also diversity, what can serve as the basis for further linguistic as well as cultural, ethnographic or anthropological research.

The article is based on an old prints language analysis of Medicines for dormant male intent by Demyan Nalyvayko (Ostrih, 1607), Mirrors of Theology by Kyrylo Stavrovetsky (Pochaiv, 1618), Eucharist by Sofroniy Pochasky (Kyiv, 1637). Shown is how important the colloquial Polish component was for an old-Ukrainian scribe, whose aim was to write his works “in an understandable manner”. It is focused on the fact that, despite the significant percentage of spoken Ukrainian elements in the texts of educated Ruthenians of the day, efforts s to create a colloquial text were linguistically made not only by employing the locally spoken Ukrainian. Numerous glosses, lexical doublets, syntactic constructions indicate the noticeable presence of Polish as a language in order to present the material to the reader in an understandable form. In the works of D. Nalyvayko, K. Stavrovetsky, S. Pochasky and many others, educated Ruthenians tended to write in a vernacular language embodied by the formula: local spoken Ukrainian plus Polish. There are many examples of the inclusion of structural elements from one language within the other, as shown by the analyzed material.

To study language contact in the Polish-East Slavic borderland, we employ extensive subdialect records from atlases, dictionaries, monographic studies, and various file collections. Significantly, however, all of the above lack historical information about the words they contain. Such data can be obtained by using local names and by taking into account all pan-Slavic references. Such comparisons justify the conclusion that historically many of the presented names extended far further westward than is indicated by typically used materials, mainly from the 20th century, though much less frequently from the second half of the 19th century. This sheds new light on the problem of whether the names in question are loan words, naturally older than had previously been thought, or rather relics of former regional convergence, covering the broad Polish-Russian language borderland, and constituting the Mazovian-Russian community.

This article presents the results of research into Podlasie surnames motivated by common nouns (appellatives). Appellatives reconstructed on the basis of surnames used in this region are very often associated genetically with East Slavonic subdialects (mainly Belarusian and Ukrainian), which differ from Polish at the phonetic level, including full-voiced articulation, the lack of nasal vowel production, softening in combinations such as *tj, *dj and other features. The presence of subdialect vocabulary of East Slavonic origin shows the influence of the Belarusian and Ukrainian languages, and their regional varieties on the process of surname formation in Podlasie, reaching the area under discussion together with successive waves of incomers of Russian origin.

The author of the article focuses her attention on the Polish-language part of the Suprasl Lexicon published in 1722 by the Basilian convent publishing house in Suprasl. In terms of origin the regional vocabulary constitutes two groups. One group, with its parallels in Old Church Slavonic (OCS), exhibits a common Slavonic occurrence. In formal terms, the words register West Slavonic features such as the Polish suffix -ro- in skowroda (OCS сковрада, Ruthenian сковoрoда) or -ło- in tłokno (OCS тлакно, Ruthenian толокно). The provenance of the other group of regional vocabulary is more limited in rangeand we should search for references in the West Ruthenian languages developing within the Polish language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (e.g., brozna, bystrzynia, czerha, muraszczka, muraszcznik, niedonosek, powodyr, przekidczyk, radno). The majority of the analyzed words have been found in 19th-century sources (e.g., dialect dictionaries, Adam Mickiewicz’s literary texts). However, the analysis proves that their chronology begins as early as in the 17th-18th centuries.

The paper focuses on Osip Mandelstam's Tristia cycle of poems, who proceeded to express the condition of a wronged person in the form of a lament, regret. The key principle of a poetic lament consisted in a contrast, which is why the authors of elegies opted for adopting a linear order, placing the consolatio as the final sequence. Mandelstam puts this linearity into question as an advocate of Bergson's notion of discontinuity of time, allowing to perceive a diversity of phenomena in their systemic manifestations as totally discrete, and yet – also in their wholeness. The linkage between the poet’s output and the philosophy of death, as revealed in Tristia, does not eliminate the notion of consolation, which reflects well Mandelstam's project of creating the language of joy, his vision of the world as a cultural whole, or his pet project of “universal domestication”. This is meant to shift attention to the so-called “things”, that may offer comfort derived from within the very act of experiencing beauty in its sensual dimension. The notion of gentleness is also essential, as it may well offer consolation as an indispensable component of being.

The paper is devoted to the analysis of the image of a garnet bracelet in the story of the same name by Aleksandr Kuprin. The grant bracelet is considered as a complex, multidimensional image with intentionally contradictory semantics. This is a kind of amulet of Zheltkov, along with which he gives his life to Princess Vera. Red and yellow garnet stones symbolize the near death of the donor, and the power of his love, and eternal life. The giving of the bracelet at the same time symbolizes the conclusion of a mystical marriage between its owner and Vera Sheina. Complex symbolic meanings arise due to references to various texts and plots, especially the myth of Pluto and Persephone (the parallel is based on the homonymy of garnet-mineral and pomegranate-fruit in Russian). In the symbolis of Kuprin's story, a kinship with the poetics of Russian symbolism is traced.

The article is a case study of human behaviour against the background of political, economic and cultural changes in the 1990s in the countries of the former USSR based on the example of the life of insects depicted by Victor Pelevin. The writer in his book The Life of Insects reduces all human life to the world of insects, constantly trying to find themselves. Pelevin by means of grotesque and allegory, touches upon the issues of human life and the use of culture by the authorities to educate the Soviet people, depriving them of their personal consciousness and independence. The picture presented by the author makes the reader wonder whether people who are deprived of their own consciousness deserve to live?

The current of minor literatures – developed by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari on the basis of an analysis of Franz Kafka's works – is a kind of breakthrough in the modern and post-modern interpretation of literary texts. Its basic aspect is the minority, expressed in various ways, determined by the social exclusion of the artist, set within the framework of a dominant foreign culture, the emanation of which is primarily language. This immanent feature affects all levels of a literary work, leading to the creation of a specific apparatus. One of the most interesting representatives of this current is Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky – a Russian writer from a Polish noble family. The writer's work – focused mainly on criticism of the central category of logos – is based on a set of philosophical concepts that transfer reflections to a paradigm different from the modernist or socialist realist tradition. One of the key objects of analysis in such an approach is the question of sound and the reception of music itself. The author of the article presents the concept of sound philosophy present in Krzhizhanovsky’s works, which at the same time characterizes the whole current of minor literatures and – similarly to other sign systems – introduces a distinction between minor and dominant elements.

The article examines the relationship between Russians and Stalinism through the Polish lens. The analysis centers around the issues of remembrance and oblivion, two thought processes that are merely superficially contradictory. The author is interested in problems of “power over memory” and “erasing memory” characteristic of non-democratic orders. Within the scope of interest, there is also the cultivation of the heroic myth associated with World War II, including the attitude towards Stalin-the-Victor. Another point of focus is the Russian society’s remembrance/forgetfulness regarding Stalin’s Great Terror and the atrocity of Gulags, as well as its collective reluctance towards founding a national community on the remembrance of Stalinist repressions. The author refers to many authors, among which there are Jacek Hugo-Bader, Mariusz Wilk and Wacław Radziwinowicz.

The subject of the presented article is Bulgarian, Polish and Russian emotive verbs, treated in perspective of syntactic valence. The author examines the grammatical forms of propositional argument in the sentences with emotive verbs that represent pre- dicate-argument structure P (x, q). All forms are divided into several types: observance, compression and splitting. The author shows that in this area we have to deal with analog reflection of propositional structure, or more or less compression of proposition argument, or its dismemberment and doubling syntactic position. The author takes into account the regularity of the implementation of each grammatical form, quoting the relevant quantitative data.

The article addresses poetic monologues in the works of the Belarusian poet Anatoly Sys, one of the founders and creative leader of the legendary literary group “Tutejšyja” (‘Locals’) (1986-1989). The poet turned to poetic monologue at different periods of his work, being especially active in the second half of the 1980s, during Gorbachev’s perestroika and the new wave of Belarusian national revival. Exhibiting outstanding acting abilities, Anatolʹ Sys recited his poetic monologues at parties and illegal rallies, hiding national revival and anti-Communist ideas relevant for his time behind the guise of famous historical figures – Apanas Filipovič, Zmicier Žylunovič, Alesʹ Harun, Karusʹ Kahaniec and others. In addition to their journalistic sharpness, A. Sys’s best poetic monologues are of a high artistic quality with a universal philosophical content, which has allowed them to pass beyond time and become a part of the golden fund of 20th-century Belarusian poetry (Monologue of a “Local”, Monologue of Apanas Filipovič, Monologue of an Unfrocked Priest, Monologue of an Apostate, Monologue of Karusʹ Kahaniec).

The article analyzes the implementation of dialogicality in the artistic discourse referring to dialogue as a form of explication of dialogicity in text communication, as a special type of speech interaction which serves as the most relevant means of verbalizing the speaker’s communicative intentions and is represented by a question/answer complex of stimulus/reaction exchange. Based on the voluminous factual material, the explication of dialogic intentions is traced in two typological registers of communication: tolerant and a-tolerant; it is indicated that, on the one hand, the addressant/addressee continuum of speech interaction conveys a be-nevolent atmosphere and expresses the modality of interlocutors’ mutual understanding and tolerant attitude about themselves being realized through various modal-intentional utterances, primarily interrogative, and stimulating and optative constructions, the use of which contributes to the progress of the communicative process; on the other hand, there is a-tolerant register – a natural phenomenon that reflects the imbalance in relations between communicating parties, the principled incompatibility of views, a conflict in general, represented by counter-questions, echo-questions, evil wishes incentive imperatives, invectives, etc.

Ethnographic and ethnolinguistic atlases are one of the sources revealing the origins and transformations of traditional culture as a result of its spatial diversity. Atlas studies of folk culture have been conducted for many years in various European countries, often independently of each other. The main goal of the article is to present the state of atlas research in Poland and Russia devoted to folk demonology, in particular zmora and other mythological creatures with motifs in common. This topic has not been examined in detail within the context of comparative research possibilities; using the method of selected demonological motif mapping in both countries. Therefore, we constitute the first attempt to present the specifics and results of previous atlas research into the above-mentioned issue, as seen in the Polish Ethnographic Atlas and the Ethnolinguistic Atlas of the Polesie Region.

The article deals with the contemporary translation of Tadeusz Różewicz’s poems into Russian. Regardless of the fact that some of his poetry had already been translated and published, new times and new readers need new translations. The considerations presented in the article refer precisely to them. Taken into account were primarily the translations of a generation of contemporary translators for an international competition on the translation of Różewicz’s poems, announced in 2013 by the foundation ‘For your freedom and ours’. The translations of three poems by the Polish poet have been considered: Words, In the light of flickering lamps and Such is the master, works frequently chosen by the winners of the said competition. In particular the analysis regards the saturation of the poems with cultural realities and inter-textual elements. Therefore, comments and some translators’ notes accompanying the translations were taken into account, ones defining their approach to the translation and the translated text itself. The considerations confirmed the need to activate the cognitive function of translation in modern translations – the purpose of the mentioned comments – but also to pay attention to the problems of translating free verse into Russian.

Недотыкомка is a symbol-word in the Russian literature of the Silver Age, meaning ubiquitous evil, according to the modernist world view, constituting the nature of existence. In this paper we demonstrate how the translation of this untranslatable word has influenced the perception of a literary work. We focus mainly on the poem Недотыкомка серая… (1905), the title of which in Wiktor Woroszylski’s translation is Niepochwytnica szara… (1971), while in the translation by Włodzimierz Słobodnik – Niedoruszajka szara… (1971) and in the novel Мелкий бес (1905), where this fulfils an important function (in René Śliwowski’s translation of 1973 – the name of this creature is Niedotkniątko). We examine what role the character of niedotykomka has in the discussed novels and we analyze the impact translation strategies have on the image of a fictional universe as well as a lyrical situation (i.e., the change of the feminine grammatical form in the character’s name into a grammatically neuter one).

The text of the Sigismund III sentence in the disputes of Kiev burghers with castle craftsmen about refusing them to participate in «munitio a conditio» of the city, the castle burghers under threat of a fine (500 kopecks of the Lithuanian hryvnas) forced to perform fortification works and participation in raising funds in the public order for the defense of the city is published. The decree was issued on February 28, 1622 in Warsaw in Polish. It was included in the collection of letters confirming the Magdeburg Law of Kyiv (from 1544 to 1659) by Polish rulers. Collection of privileges copied at the beginning of the XVIII century for the own needs of Burmese Koz’ma Krychevetc. It was translated from Polish and Latin into Ukrainian by sotnyks A. Trotcyna and M.Yagelnytskyi. The monumental book is stored in the Central State Historical Archive of Kyiv. In the article the linguistic features of the monumental book on the graphic, phonetic and morphological levels are analyzed. Variants in writing that are caused by the written tradition of that time, the lack of normalization of old and new forms, the writers’ idiolect and the influence of Polish and, less often, the Church Slavonic language. The vocabulary has been characterized from the point of view of its origin, the presence of a large number of Polonisms, Latinisms and Germanisms has been noted. In the text translators often used words-doublets and synonyms for clarification of a number of concepts.

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.

In the summer of 1980, following the death of Vladimir Vysotsky, the Taganka Theatre in Moscow received more than 130 mourning telegrams. Their collection (although not all the items have survived) represents an invaluable source for the study of late Soviet culture. The descriptions of Vysotsky contained make it possible to reconstruct a certain collective portrait of the bard – this being one of the purposes of this article. The reasonableness of this task is justified by the fact that a number of the declarations sent testify to the articulation of emotions perceived by the authors as collective ones. The portrait we have created is a picture that perpetuates the personality, in which all the main features of the Russian cultural concept of “the Poet” are fully realized. It is also a portrait of a person who – according to the author of one of the telegrams – “lived ultimate states”, or – according to another – was permanently “standing on the edge.”