The study views figures of Russian anarchists in the writings of Aleksei N. Tolstoy. During WWI he was a permanent author of the liberal “Russkie vedomosti” and published a filo-Semitic story, but after the Revolution he used physical and linguistic anti-Semitic stereotypes for his images of revolutionaries (never giving his personages identifiable Jewish names or indicating their nationality). In emigration and right after it Tolstoy painted his contemporaries, Russian Jews, vividly and recognizably, abandoning all stereotypes. In Stalin’s era, however, the writer mobilized all old anti-Semitic cliches to draw Russian anarchists who were Bolshevik’s competitors and enemies, often sinning against historic fact.

The article reconsiders the problem of the character of I. Babel’s laughter and leads to the conclusion about its complex dynamic nature. Particularly, its belonging to the carnival culture is being questioned. On the basis of a few texts the transition is observed from the carnival consciousness to the historical tragic bewilderment and to the possibilistic thinking.

The figures of Ashkenazi Jews appear in works representing various cultural backgrounds. A very interesting light on the literary way of shaping their image is shed by the characters of works that are very culturally and thematically distant from each other: The First Polka by Horst Bienek and The Odessa Tales by Isaac Babel. Georg Montag and Benia Krik represent two different approaches to the question of the existence of the Jewish nation, its coexistence with representatives of the dominant culture and the preservation of identity. Thanks to the analysis, one can observe not only numerous assimilation crises, but also the characteristics of the described cultural and social norms.

Ludmila Ulicka’s book Daniel Stein, the Translator deals with issues in the field of philosophy, culture, theology, religious studies, sociology, psychology. It is a book about the Second World War, the Holocaust, pogroms of Jews, and the methods of fighting Soviet power against Jews. However, its main meaning boils down to the description of the life and activity of a Polish Jew-Christian who, through his ministry and teaching, in a way promoted a new model of Christianity — Judeo-Christian. The analysis of the Ulicka novel from the point of view of this issue is the main research goal of this article.

The second part of the article is the model of ten degrees-stages of the raising of the Russian tradition according to the magic fairy-tales (the motif of Ivan Tsarevich) and the model winning the superior power according to the common knowledge on the Moscow Russia and the Russian Empire. The three appointed models are compared and the features of each of the three are determined.

The article presents the writings of modern Russian aphorists, focused on Jewish motives. The aphorisms were divided into few groups: inspired by the Bible, by the history of the Jewish Nation, by politics or Jewish-related stereotypes. Because of an ambiguous nature of the aphorisms, presented writings can be understood in many different ways.

The selected stories by Sholem Aleichem in the series Kasrilovka and a short story by F.M. Reshetnikov Podlipovtsy have been the ground for the analysing the specificity and functions of food sustenance and the process of consuming in two different ethnic groups — the Jews and the Permyaks. This analysis shows the multi-faceted scope of food and (the act of) eating which is not only its purely physiological function of satiating appetite and supplying energy but also the social and psychological aspects which present the interpersonal relations (a shared meal, ability/disability/aversion to share the meal), the inner emotions and experiences, often in the cultural and religious determinant. Thus, it seems typical that the food and the bread itself have got the sensitive function as the source of the pleasure both of physical and spiritual character. The physical pleasure is felt via various senses (the taste, smell and sight).