This article attempts to reinterpret Fazil Iskander’s novel Rabbits and Boa Constrictors through the prism of decolonial theories and the principles of the ethical turn. Drawing on Emmanuel Levinas’s philosophy of dialogue, the author analyzes the ethical manifesto embedded in the text of the Abkhazian writer, identifying it as a tool for the deconstruction of the imperial culture paradigm. In the spirit of Ewa Domańska’s “rescue history,” the article proposes a new perspective on the work of Iskander and other Russophone writers, based on the conceptual framework ­of Madina Tlostanova, Walter Mignolo, and Catherine Walsh. The objective of this study is to create a new, pluriversal space for literary analysis within the Russo­phone cultural sphere – one that is free from the dominance of the center and open to the transcultural experience of the periphery.

This article offers a comparative analysis of two paradigmatic works of Russian dystopia: Andrei Platonov’s The Foundation Pit and Dmitry Glukhovsky’s Metro 2033. The study aims to demonstrate that the unconditional subordination of the individual to technocratic systems inevitably leads to alienation and spiritual annihilation. The author examines the decomposition of utopian structures into oppressive control mechanisms across differing historical contexts – from Stalinist collectivization to post-apocalyptic fight for survival. Key themes include the dehumanizing role of “Newspeak,” the “religion of the machine,” and the reification of human beings reduced to “proletarian substance” or mere biological components. The conclusion highlights the cyclical nature of history and the permanence of power dynamics that, despite technological progress, consistently threaten individual freedom and subjectivity.

The author discusses the circumstances surrounding the unlawful arrest and subsequent incarceration of Nikolay Zabolotsky. The research area covers the period from 19 March 1938 to the first weeks of February 1939, or the time of the writer’s stay in preventive custody until his arrival as an inmate at a Vostlag camp in Komsomolsk-on-Amur. The analysis addresses both the moment of his arrest by NKVD and the stages of investigation leading up to the issue of a conviction in which Zabolotsky was sentenced to five years of correctional labour at Soviet labour camps in the Far East. The source material is drawn from the writer’s memoirs written before 1958 and after his release, entitled The story of my incarceration (История моегo заключения). They form a reliable recollection of the brutality of the totalitarian system which stripped people not only of their dignity, but often also of their lives, on the basis of imaginary crimes and evidence fabricated by the secret police. Accounts of murderous interrogations, harrowing events in prison and the hellish train journey to the Vostlag provide the main accents of the criminal reality brutally faced and traumatically experienced by the author of The triumph of agriculture (Триумф земледелия) before he ended up in the camp.