Przegląd Rusycystyczny 2025 nr 1 całość

PR 2025 nr 4 tytuł

PR 2025 nr 1 strona redakcyjna

PR 2025 nr 1 spis treści

preface

When the Russian invasion of Ukraine, referred to by Ukrainians themselves as the Great War, began in the spring of 2014, Ukrainian artists’ interest in William Shakespeare’s works, especially Hamlet, grew significantly. The war tragically updated the Hamletian worldview, expressed in the desire to understand and overcome the events of “time out of balance.” Through the text of Shakespeare’s tragedy, the creators wanted to “reach out” to their contemporary experience, to the current anxiety and sensitivity of the present, and in the Hamletian characters themselves, especially in Hamlet and Ophelia, they found the characteristics of their generation. This aspiration left its mark in drama, theater, literature, and cinema. In the proposed text, I would like to discuss, first of all, the film The Hamlet Syndrome by Elvira Neviera and Piotr Rosolowski, as well as the drama Mobilni khvyli buttia abo Verbum caro factum est by Volodymyr Rafeenko, which can be considered representative artistic records of the war experience that Ukrainian society has encountered over the past ten years.

The presented article discusses the self-creation of President Vladimir Putin in Russia and the West through references to actual or imagined readings of Russian and foreign literature. Between 2000 and 2024, he publicly mentioned as his favourite and, as he claimed, read authors and thinkers such as Mikhail Lermontov, Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Taras Shevchenko, Adam Mickiewicz, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Vasily Klyuchevsky, Immanuel Kant, Omar Khayyam, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Patrick Süskind, Ernest Hemingway, Heinrich Heine, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Alexandre Dumas (père), Jules Verne, Ivan Ilyin, Ivan Turgenev, Mikhail Prishvin, Alexander Kuprin, and even Osip Mandelstam and Vladimir Nabokov. While at the beginning such “literary references” were mainly intended to craft his image in the West, including Poland, as a Russian president seeking cooperation with Europe and America, after 2011, Putin — quoting, for instance, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin or The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling — used them predominantly for argumentative purposes. Currently, after launching a criminal war against Ukraine in February 2024, his persistent references to literature have taken on an Orwellian character, distorting values and meanings, and serving solely to justify this unprecedented imperialist aggression.

The text analyzes Mikhail Epstein’s book Русский антимир. Политика на грани апокалипсиса (2023, Russian Anti-World: Politics on the Verge of Apocalypse) written in response to Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022. The book traces Russia’s negative identity, which Epstein categorizes into the following layers: anti-society, anti-value, anti-language, anti-space, anti-time, anti-life, and anti-being—all of which share a common foundation in death. The culmination of this self-destructive negativity is Russia’s “eschatological complex,” which drives it toward apocalyptic tendencies. Epstein’s work is interpreted through various theoretical frameworks, including the concept of the bioinformatic virus, Achille Mbembe’s idea of necropolitics, Alexander Etkind’s theory of internal colonization, Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction of an apocalypse, and Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis..

This paper analyzes Serhiy Zhadan's daily social media posts collected in his book W mieście wojna, published in 2024 (an expanded version of the German-language edition of his notes covering the first six months of the war, which was published in Germany in 2022 under the title Himmel über Kharkiv). Selected aspects of Zhadan's chronicle centered around the beloved Kharkiv and its inhabitants, their wartime condition and vision of the post-war period were discussed. A separate, extensive topic of the notes is Russia and the Russians and the dark colonial legacy of the past. The aim of the analysis is also to try to answer the question of the specificity of modern war diaries and the changing status of personal document literature as one of the more important research fields — both in relation to past and present conflicts.

The article explores the influence of geopolitical events on the perception of Russian literature following Russia’s fullscale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It delves into the evolving reception of Russian literature, highlighting the
phenomena of its “cancellation” and “self-cancellation” — dynamics rooted both in the Russian cultural landscape and
the self-reflection of Russian émigré writers. The author argues for characterizing Russian literature’s (self)image as a refracted image, shaped by feedback loops and recursive (self)perception. Additionally, the article examines the primary mechanisms for selecting representatives and texts of contemporary Russian literature, which hinge on their acceptability or unacceptability within specific contexts.

This article provides an overview of Russian writers’ statements on the Russian-Ukrainian war, the future of Russia and Ukraine, and the role of literature and its creators in this conflict. The opinions of both writers-critics of President Putin’s aggressive policies and their adversaries, who support the Kremlin’s policies in various ways are cited here. These statements were confronted with concepts that have been functioning in the Russian space for years — the idea of Moscow, third Rome, Holy Russia or Eurasian thoughts. The author of the article also suggests that the growth of revanchist and imperial sentiments, visible even in the area of Russian fantasy books, as well as hostility towards the West and Ukraine, was a harbinger of an armed conflict.

The present study is devoted to analysing women writers’ statements on the war in Ukraine. The research material consists of texts by Russian women writers of international renown (Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, Maria Stepanova, Lyudmila Ulitskaya), representing different generations and literary styles, and associated with various genres. The political views of these writers were not the subject of special discussion. The study aimed to identify and analyze the distinctive features of women’s narratives about war. The analysis began with the observation that, historically, women’s writing on war was not particularly distinctive, even though some women had direct experience of warfare. In contrast to the male perspective, which is predominantly represented in literature depicting the last century’s wars, women’s writing adopts a radically different approach. The theoretical framework for the study was underpinned by affective poetics and the concept of “tender narrative.” The analysis revealed that emotions play a pivotal role in the diverse types of texts and statements presented here, with the motifs of compassion and empathy assuming a dominant position. Furthermore, the subject of Russia’s responsibility for the war is openly discussed, with an increasing awareness of the influence of these views on societal discourse.

The article aims to analyze and interpret the attitudes of three Russian-speaking feminist poets: Daria Serenko, Lolita Agamalova and Galina Rymbu, towards Russian aggression in Ukraine. We consider both their creative strategies and their life trajectories, assuming that the intertwining of artistic passions and practical goals was characteristic of the poets of this movement. The theoretical basis is Rita Felski’s thought on the “usage” of literature as a specific configuration of social knowledge. We also draw on Judith Butler’s thought to show how the poets frame war through their artistic and social stances, whom they give voice to, and the specificity of their (post)feminist writing in the face of armed conflict and violence.

The article is devoted to the work of a young Ukrainian poet, a graduate of the Faculty of Journalism of the University of Lviv, and since 2022 a soldier of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Artur Dron. The analysis of selected works, taken from the latest volume of poetry Тут були ми, is based on a research hypothesis described as “primitive collage.” The basis of the presented research is the assumption of the presence, both at the formal and semantic level, of elements of the literary collage technique, which, to a greater or lesser extent, is a reference to the aesthetics of primitivism, understood here as a spontaneous reconstruction of brutal reality in a way that allows one to tame it. Primitive art understood in this way arises from the modernist belief in its regenerative potential, enabling the reconstruction of values perverted and degenerated in the essentially destructive civilization processes. In the context of contemporary war poetry, primitivism combined with elements of collage becomes one of the ways to tame brutal reality and preserve humanity.

outstanding literary gift. In 2015 she published a poem entitled War of the Beasts and the Animals, her poetic response to the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation (2014). The complicated poetics and convoluted imagery of this work describe an age-long history of conflicts between two nations (Russians and Ukrainians) being, as a matter of fact, a “civil war” (quote from the poem War of the Beasts…). In the paper, the author discusses how the innovative poetic language (metaphors) of Maria Stepanova processes the cruel images of war and tries to find the answer: whether it can become “a new voice in the war” spoken in Russian.

After the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine began, many artists condemned this act of aggression. One significant example of anti-war art is a song that stands out for its rapid response to current events and its deeply personal tone, conveying emotions a broad audience can identify. This article aims to define the thematic scope and expressive tools characteristic of Russian-language anti-war song lyrics, created across various genres by poets and musicians who openly oppose Putinism and Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine. The author focuses on the diverse “masks” of the artists, representing the traumatic experiences of Russians who disagree with state policy, among others. Repeating motifs such as toxic relationships with the homeland, the never-ending February, and nuclear threat will also be particularly important. The material for analysis consists of over 50 lyrics from the public playlist Year of War 22/23, which reflect the pacifist views of these creators.

Political gesture in the Russian theatre of the 21st century was essentially a marginal phenomenon. A key role in shaping the political and social agenda was played by the legendary independent Russian Theatre.doc, focusing on current events in political and social life, addressing painful, traumatic issues and topics considered taboo; and the Lubimovka Festival, an independent project aimed at promoting young playwrights.
In July 2022, the Festival officially reiterated its anti-war stance with the call for texts entitled Dramaturgy Against War. At the same time, it became clear that the safe organization of the Festival on Russian territory was not possible. Thus, the project Echo of Lubimovka was born — an émigré touring festival that became an unprecedented phenomenon in the history of theatre, enabling the public presentation of oppositional anti-war texts. The Echo of Lubimovka allowed Russian-speaking artists in exile in various corners of the world to openly express their anti-war stance, to capture the voice of the present beyond the imposed propaganda narrative.
The aim of this article is to analyze dramaturgical strategies employed in the plays presented as part of the 2022−2023 Echo of Lubimovka Festival (including The War Has Not Yet Begun by Mikhail Dornenkov [2015], Crime by Asia Voloshina [2022], Vanya Is Alive by Natalia Lizorkina [2023], Discreditation by Anastasia Patlay and Nana Grinstein [2023]). These works are examined as tools for constructing the anti-war discourse and attempting to confront the tragedy of war.

The paper elaborates on the problem of foregrounding strategies in lyrical discourse. One of them consists in that first some linguistic canon (which may be syntactic, lexical, or pragmatic, and which may be both general, genre-specific or even text-specific) is notoriously violated, but at some later point of the text it still becomes operative; the fragment where such a ‘restitution’ occurs tends to be construed as the foreground. It is argued that this general tendency shows up in the building of information structure of relevant sentences: sometimes the backgrounded parts of the poem contain non-prototypical themes or rhemes, while prototypical ones become articulators of the foreground. Some thought is given to the notion of prototypicality of themes and rhemes; the most salient properties of ‘model’ theme are assumed to be its discourse givenness, explicitness, semantic specificity, high morphosyntactic rank, reference to the first or second person, and the ‘model’ rheme is assumed to display discourse-newness and shortness. Four case studies are offered; those are analyzes of the poems by Georgiy Ivanov. In conclusion, reasons are adduced supporting the claim that the above described ‘rheme redressment’ lies at the core of the whole discourse-building strategy in question, while other relevant devices could be viewed

This article is an experimental analysis of the journalism book Координата Z (Coordinate Z) written by the controversial Russian writer Zakhar Prilepin and published in 2023. Here, the author, who is also a participant in the Russian invasion of Ukraine presents his understanding of the current reality. The analysis conducted pays particular attention to Prilepin’s perception of modern Ukraine and Ukrainian language, the reasons for the outbreak of full-scale war, as well as the opposition “Self–Other” promoted in the book, the Russia’s military goals, and the writer’s ideas about the post-war future of both countries. The above analysis allows us to understand the worldview, aspirations and goals of one of the leading proponents of the invasive “special military operation” announced by President Putin on February 24, 2022

The literary club “BostonLit” (“Бостонские чтения”) has been operating since 2013 in Boston, and was initiated by Anna Agnich (Anna Katz). The club features authors from cities in the US, Canada, Israel, Russia, Ukraine. Since 2020, the meetings have been held online. The organizers of “BostonLit” emphasize that the meetings are purely literary and do not aim to discuss political problems, but the actions of the Russian Federation against Ukraine have been a concern to the organizers and many of the club’s guests for years. The writers invited to the meetings are never suggested by the organizers the subject of the speech, and yet after the Russian military incursion into Ukraine a clear change can be seen. Most of the guest writers, regardless of their ethnic identification and country of origin, presented works on these very events. At the club’s meetings, guests including Tatjana Voltskaya (twice), Iryna Yevsa (twice), Aleksandr Kabanov, Vitaly Kovalchuk presented their anti-war poems. Several poets associated with the club also protested against the war in Ukraine.

The essay presents the problem of self-decoloniality, faced by Russian society and particularly by writers, as a result of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, when a world public opinion postulated the cancellation of Russian culture.
I am asking whether Russian writers are reflecting on this issue and whether they are ready to reevaluate their image of the world. I identify three different approaches to this topic: the May 1988 meeting of writers and critics from Central and Western Europe in Lisbon, Mikhail Shishkin’s journalism and Katya Margolis’ statements in social media, emphasising the need to change the current way of thinking. The methodological underpinnings are works of Madina Tlostanova.

PR 2025 nr 1 noty o autorach