Przegląd Rusycystyczny 2025 nr 3

Przegląd Rusycystyczny 2025 nr 3 okładka

Przegląd Rusycystyczny 2025 nr 3 strona redakcyjna

Przegląd Rusycystyczny 2025 nr 3 spis treści

This article aims to collect and organize knowledge about film adaptations of Fyodor Dostoevsky's prose works created in the Russian Empire during the reign of the last tsar, Nicholas II. Where possible, the author provides a critical reception of each work, most often referencing popular pre-revolutionary periodicals or, when feasible, incorporating findings from contemporary scholarship. The analysis reveals that the number of films based on Dostoevsky's novels and novellas produced within the specified timeframe is most likely nine. Additionally, published materials mention unverified claims about the existence of three other cinematic adaptations of this "classic of the golden age" of Russian literature.

The article is devoted to the analysis of F.M. Dostoevsky's story ‘The Double’ (1845–1846) and explores the (psycho)pathology of the personality – schizophrenic state of the main protagonist Mr Golyadkin, with the reference to the aesthetic-anthropological concept of art and literature (Andrei Chervenyak). The focus is on the image of the hero's psyche, his symptoms and genesis of the disorder while his doppelganger is playing an important role in the formation of the image as a specific trigger for the development of the disorder. Based on data from the field of psychology, using psychological terminology (catatonia, proxemics, incongruence, etc.), the symptoms of different types of schizophrenia, manifested on several levels of the character's human existence, are examined.

Representatives of the cultural renaissance were the first to recognize in Dostoevsky not only a realistic writer addressing important social issues, as Belinsky did, and not only a "cruel talent," as Dostoevsky was described by Mikhailovsky (a phrase so striking that it stuck with the writer for decades), but also a religious artist, one who seemed to encompass with almost divine intent every page of his creative reality. To "correctly" interpret Dostoevsky's work, for them, meant linking it closely to Christianity, and it was this connection that they demonstrated and affirmed in various ways in their writings. The aim of this text is not, as it might seem at first glance, to undermine or reject the religious interpretation of Dostoevsky, but to show that there is another Dostoevsky, one that cannot be seen within the confessional interpretation generated in the Russian cultural renaissance, which causes the pluralistic and philosophical heterogeneity of his text to suffer. I will attempt to do this by problematizing, based on the text of the novels, several concepts and ideas that stand out particularly in the world of Dostoevsky's works and are also the most inspiring for the representatives of the Russian cultural revival.

The article examines the phenomenon of creating retrospective patterns in the literature about the war of 1812. Both during and after the military campaign, an extremely heterogeneous literary and informational background was formed in genres, simultaneously performing the functions of propaganda, historical truth and comprehension, and subsequent interpretation. It was during this period that patriotic literature emerged, giving impetus to the subsequent formation of conservative patriots and Slavophiles. However, in this discord of journalism, memoirs, eyewitness accounts and high literature, there are common motifs formed on the basis of retrospective knowledge (or the phenomenon hindsight bias, wisdom of hindsight). Various combinations of retrospective motifs form patterns — large images that predetermine the interpretation of events. One of such patterns is the victory pattern, formed in retrospect long before the Napoleonic Wars. This pattern creates the idea of ​​the invincibility of the Russian army and considers obvious (Austerlitz 1805, Friedland 1807) and non-obvious (Borodino 1812) defeats or battles that did not achieve results in the aspect of victory and glory, and losses in the aspect of sacred sacrifice. Due to the dominance of the victory pattern, the coverage of the Patriotic War of 1812 diverges from the real state of affairs, when the existence of the Russian state was threatened

The article analyzes two literary works of the 1920s – the novel “We” by Yevgeny Zamyatin and the drama “They” by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz. Both works are seen as images of totalitarian regimes from an anti-utopian perspective. The focus is on the relationship between the individual and the authorities from the point of view of the problem of personality, resistance, and art. The primary method is comparative analysis. The conclusions drawn from the analysis show differences and similarities in the representation of the dangers arising from the development of the dystopian system. Witkewicz's work shows the beginning of the formation of a totalitarian regime, while Zamyatin's work depicts the society as already having a fully formed dystopia.

In this article, I undertake an analysis of a volume of small prose, Silence on War, published by the independent Freedom Letters publishing house. This collection contains the reactions of Russian writers to the war in Ukraine and is therefore an important document of the era. In this text I focus on the concept of Russkiy mir, which in my view unites all the very different works included in this volume. I show how this construct is realized in the individual stories, what aspects and negative consequences are exposed by the authors, as well as what artistic means they reach for this purpose. I try to show that the works in question confirm the thesis of Donetsk historian Larisa Yakubova, who considers the Russkiy mir to be a space of total falsehood, making it impossible to function in the normal world.

The main subject of analysis in this article is Roman Gul’s autobiography Конь рыжий (Red Horse), with his memoir The Ice March serving as a point of reference. The aim of the analysis is to answer the question of how the writer reconstructs and interprets his wartime past at different stages of his life. The research tools employed in the article include theories on autobiography, memory studies, and concepts of narrative identity. The analysis leads to the conclusion that in his autobiography, the writer takes stock of his own past. He works through difficult moments of his life, explaining and interpreting them within a coherent narrative to resolve the ambiguity of his stance during the war and justify his choices to both his contemporaries and future generations. He significantly expands the background of his story, supplementing it with additional information and commentary, while omitting others, selecting episodes that maintain the coherence of the narrative and the image of the autobiographical protagonist.

The main purpose of this article is to present and analyze the features of the image of the so-called West in the official Russian narrative, specifically in the public statements of the highest-ranking representatives of the Russian government during the full-scale war in Ukraine. The starting point for such an analisys is the opposition ‘We – They’. The existence of this opposition determines the necessity to characterize one’s own camp positively and to describe the opponent negatively. The author also takes a closer look at the rhetorical tricks used in various persuasive discourses (including ideological ones) that are also observed in the texts under study and can be manifestations of manipulation, as long as they meet the extra-linguistic conditions for being manipulative. The analysis confirmed that a clear anti-Western, specifically anti-American, anti-EU and anti-NATO rhetoric is present in the official Russian narrative regarding the war in Ukraine and, more broadly, the situation in the international arena. According to many specialists, this narrative bears the hallmarks of propaganda and disinformation. The present discussion also confirms that language as a tool of communication or, more broadly, communication in general and especially communication through mass media is, or at least can be, an effective means of creating reality, as well as shaping human attitudes or beliefs.

The article examines phraseological units containing the lexemes powietrze and воздух (Eng. Air) in Polish and Russian languages, reconstructing a fragment of the linguistic picture of air. The study encompassed 51 units and was conducted based on lexicographic analysis, supplemented by a survey and corpus analysis. The concept of phraseological parallels was employed for comparative analysis. Common features of the phraseology in both languages include the perception of air as an essential element for life, its connection to open space, the possibility of pollution, and its role as a synonym for emptiness or a harbinger of change. Polish phraseology additionally emphasizes the freshness, invisibility, and potential harmfulness of air, while Russian phraseology highlights its association with closeness. The analysis reveals, on the one hand, universal elements of the picture of air in both languages, and on the other, their cultural specificity.

The article considers Russian and Polish phrases, which include nominations of speech genres and other indicators of communicative phenomena, as well as related verba dicendi and adjectives. Special attention is paid to the specifics of their functioning in Polish and Russian cultural space, including through the prism of genre consciousness of Poles and Russians. Reproducible word associations and precedent texts with genre-communicative names are analysed taking into account their correlations with different types of speech activity and discourse types. Moreover, their stylistic and pragmolinguistic determinants are indicated, as well as the metatextual character of some units containing genre references.

The article attempts to prove the potential for disinformation in encyclopedia texts. The motivation for this exploration arose from the launch of the Russian online encyclopedia Ruwiki in early 2024. Ruwiki was created by replicating the Russian-language edition of Wikipedia, which it criticized for spreading inaccurate information. In this context, the article delves into the phenomenon of disinformation and the connection between information and truth.  The research material consists of articles about the Ukrainian president and the Russian-Ukrainian war from Wikipedia and Ruwiki. By comparing the content of these entries, the article highlights significant differences in how the messages are linguistically presented. It also discusses various techniques of disinformation, including content selection and manipulation, the use of explicit and implicit evaluations, and eristic arguments. The findings indicate that the modern digital encyclopedia serves not only as a source of knowledge but also as a medium through which truth, as a social construct, can be shaped and distorted for disinformation purposes.

The text analyzes the means by which the devastating criticism of Vladimir Putin and his immediate environment is expressed, which is carried out in a selected segment of the discourse of contemporary Russian ultra-Orthodox nationalists. Taking this criticism outside the pragmatic field (in the sense of political pragmatics) and bringing it into the territory of Manichean ideology determines its uncompromisingness, which in many aspects resembles the uncompromisingness of attacks carried out in totalitarian discourses.

The overwhelming majority of the analyzed linguistic means of constructing an image of Putin and his entourage are based on value oppositions that are not ideological oppositions. The universal axiology is evident in such generalized conceptual categories as the criminal nature of power, its harmfulness, deceitfulness, impurity of intent and deceitfulness, illegality, etc. The totalitarian nature of this discourse lies in the fact that negative valorization on the basis of universal oppositions is possible only if it coincides with the negative valorization made on the basis of the scale of ideological values, as well as on its Manichaeism and the extremity of its expressed assessments, which find expression in quite striking in their expression linguistic means.

The article presents two approaches to the evaluation of translation dictionaries: quantitative and qualitative. The study shows that the evaluation of dictionaries should be multidimensional, and the analyses should be carried out complementarily. Taking into account various aspects, related to macro- or micro-structure objectifies and nuances the evaluation of dictionaries, as presented by the confrontation of the two approaches.

Review article devoted to Tatiana Goricheva’s book "Prawosławie a postmodernizm"

Przegląd Rusycystyczny 2025 nr 3 NOTY