The problem of Russian-language Literature of the far-abroad countries has been little studied by home literary critics and the concept itself has been developed only in application to the literature of Russian peoples and the near abroad. Creative associations and periodicals play an important role in the formation of a new type of Russian literature. Germany turned out to be the European center of Russian-language literature, just like a hundred years ago. The Russian-language literature is published by differently oriented periodicals among which are magazines adherent to the idea of two Russian literatures; magazines supporting the unity of the Russian literature and those tending to reveal the peculiarities of émigré Russian literature through the comparison it with the metropolitan one. The Russian-language literary prosses take place in a variety of periodicals and has signs of one of the national micro-cultures in the European space.

The article considers the anthropological content of the documentary and artistic books by Svetlana Alexievich “Zinc boys” (1989) and “Chernobyl prayer” (1986–2005). “Zinc boys” and “Chernobyl man” are presented in the work as symptomatic socio-psychological phenomena of our time, spread far beyond the historical circumstances risen by them.

The article tells about the activities of the Slovenian literary-critical magazine “Nova Revia” (1982–2010), which united representatives of the democratic intelligentsia – writers, critics, philosophers, sociologists – and became “the intellectual center of the ‘Slovenian spring’” (N. Grafenauer). In the late 1980s on its pages were discussed not only topical problems of culture, literature and art, but were conducted polemics on internal political and national issues, was openly sounded criticism of socialist ideology and ethics. The magazine published the first national political program of the opposition, in which were expressed the demands for the state independence of the Republic of Slovenia. Its authors played an important role in the formation of a multi-party system in the republic and in the political life of the young state after the proclamation of sovereignty.

The article deals with the lexical means expressing the biological sex semantics in Russian. Nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs may carry information on the denotatum of the semantically related noun. According to the National corpus of Russian language a set of such relevant lexemes and the statistical probability of their male and female markedness is established. Also the statistical probability of their male and female markedness in accordance with the modern Russian lexical minimum is determined.

The study was carried out by the method of semantic communicative analysis, which is used this case to the kinesics. The article proposes an invariant semantic parameter of the Russian communicative gesture ‘to nod’. On the movies dialogue material a number of possible implementations of this parameter is shown in various purports. The analysis presented in the work clarifies the place of kinesic means (posture, mimic, gesture) in the system of communicative level of the Russian language. The results of the study can serve as a basis for creating a fundamentally new dictionary description of “the nod” for the future Dictionary of Russian communicative gestures.

The paper examines fragments of Theophylact of Bulgaria’s commentaries on the Gospel, which are part of the Synoptic Nomocanon of Metropolitan Daniel, compiled in the 1530s. It is established that the commentaries on the Gospel of Matthew are borrowed from the second, South Slavic in origin, translation of the Commentaries on the Gospel. Fragments of the commentaries on the Gospels of Luke and John are identified with the later versions of the oldest translation of the Commentaries on the Gospel.

The article discusses materials on the Russian language and those transmitted to each other by users of social networks and mobile messengers. It is noted that these expressions (minitexts) are usually playful, humorous. Such varieties of them as linguistic anecdotes and short statements characterizing some amazing features of the Russian language are considered. The creative approach of an ordinary native speaker of the Russian language to his speech and the speech of others, his ability to see the unusual in the language, his ability to admire this unusual are noted. It is concluded that the indifference of modern Russian speakers to their own speech indicates positive trends in the development of language and speech. It is obvious that it is premature to talk about the impoverishment of the language, its lack of expression and pollution.

Ethical totalitarism in the sphere of culture – a feature of the present time – is more dangerous than ethical indifferentism. One of the possibilities for realizing the principle of ethical independenсe is focusing on aesthetic issues. The history of Russian literature shows that the less ethics bounds there is in creativity, the more successful is the creativity itself, and it is less dangerous to exist within the framework of some generally accepted moral codes than in situation of self-limiting by ethics rules. It turns out that, on the one hand, the rights of individuality are expanding in the modern world, on the other, the behavior of an individual is strictly regulated by the rules that are put forward by representatives of certain social groups. In the realm of aesthetic experimentation, the author seems to have more rights than responsibilities; in the sphere of ethics author is limited by the dominated norms of social institutions.

The article analyzes the part of the Nicholas’ I artistic program in Rome that was previously insufficiently studied (acquisitions in Italy of works of modern painting, orders for copies from Italian and other masterpieces of classical painting, etc.). Based on documents stored in domestic and foreign archives, the author characterizes the artistic preferences of the Russian emperor, his contribution to the formation of the museum fund of St. Petersburg and Russia; establishes the relationship between the visit of the emperor to Rome and the creation of the artistic and architectural appearance of St. Petersburg and its main temple – St. Isaac’s Cathedral, as well as the revival of the mosaic case in Russia.