The article presents a contrastive description of the ways of expressing the indefinite-personal agent in Swedish and Russian. Expressing the passive voice with an implicit agent in Swedish and Russian exhibits a systemic-typological similarity as both languages have forms with reflexive markers (-ся/-s) and analytic constructions with passive participles, although in functional-semantic terms there are significant discrepancies between them. The main focus of the article is therefore the ways of expressing an unspe­cified agent in the active mood, which are conditioned by the principle differences between the grammatical systems of these two languages. In Swedish the main means for that is the indefinite-personal pronoun man in the syntactic function of grammatical subject, and in Russian – special functions of verbal agreement categories in the predicates of mononuclear sentences with 3rd person plural and 2nd person singular forms. The contrastive analysis is carried out on the basis of literary fiction texts in the original language and their translations both from Swedish to Russian and from Russian to Swedish. It includes taking into account functional-pragmatic differences not only between Swedish and Russian, but also between mononuclear indefinite-personal and generalised-personal utterances with diffe­rently encoded grammatical predicates in Russian. A contextual analysis of lexical-syntactic and stylistic aspects of choosing translation equivalents exposes still other, more peripheral ways of expressing indefinite-personal agents while preserving the main structural-syntactic differences between the languages. This is manifest in the binuclearity of Swedish sentences with various pronouns in the function of indefinite-personal grammatical subject (någon ‘somebody’; vi ‘we’; de ‘they’; flera ‘several / some people’) and the variation in mononuclear sentences with indefinite-personal predicates of various structure in Russian.

The article deals with two stages of the terminological nomination: the spontaneous natural of term creation and the systematic term creation. Here are given analysis of essence of the terminological nomination based on the informative nature of term from the perspective of onomasiology and also propositive character of the semantics of the term based on the definition, that is predication of the term.

Comic takes a central place in Dostoevsky’s prose, with laugh and laugh-related words being in regular use. The article seeks to show semantic and syntactic properties of the lexeme and its occurrences in Dostoevsky’s stories and novels. This is done with the help of the Dictionary of Dostoevsky’s Language which introduces key words in the writer’s oeuvre. It is claimed that laugh serves to make up for something a character lacks, or it may withhold someone’s immorality. Special emphasis is laid on irregular uses of laugh and the attributive function of the word. Research pinpoints so-called unhealthy laugh, encountered in Crime and Punishment, The Gambler, and the Brothers Karamazov, most popular and most-cited Dostoevsky’s novels, which helps to understand why researchers highlighted it. Laughing for joy is no less frequent, however. The article concludes that Dostoevsky’s prime image is Homo Ridens, a person who laughs.

The article discusses Russian hyphenation patterns today and throughout history of the language. It is claimed that hyphenation rules have been formed not on the basis of the word’s syllable division, but in connection with its morpheme division and graphic principles. It is also shown that the word’s hyphenation is deemed “correct” largely due to the ways of how people have been taught to read and write.

The article juxtaposes P. Kogan’s “A Tiger at the Zoo” and Niu Khan’s “The Huanan Tiger”, seeking features of lyrical poetry in them. The poems are analyzed in terms of special / temporal localization, the subject’s structure, and coherence of and adherence to poetic elements in the lyrical verse making process – with the intent to select out commonalities and differences. The method of confronting thematically bound verses and poems has proved to be viable and can be safely applied in research.

French surrealism begot “nadrealism” in Serbian literature at the turn of the 1920s–1930s. Its birth was marked by flashy manifestos and new printing houses. Its authors did not remain “pure surrealists” long and got absorbed by the leftist “social literature”. But the national literature was interested in surrealism poetics for several decades (M. Ristić, A. Vučo, O. Davičo). Serbian surrealism played an important role in the literature of the 1950s–1970s. primarily as an artistic practice, which highly motivated the development of conditional metaphor poetry. Postwar Serbian “nadrealism”, in contrast to French surrealism, was more interested in the national source of poetry, which is Serbian folklore with elements of paganism and magical rituals. Lyrics of famous national poets like V. Popa, combined with folklore tradition, demonstrated the success of such synthesis and contributed to the development of expressive capacity of national poetry and its poetic techniques.

The article studies D. Merezhkovsky’s literary and public activities in Warsaw in 1920. The author discusses forms of the writer’s involvement in the literary and cultural life of the Polish capital, his relations with emigrants and the Polish public. The article seeks to analyze how Merezhkovsky contributed to local periodicals. Of special interest are the recenzes that appeared in the Polish press in response to publications of Merezhkovsky’s works and stagings of his plays.

In the Portuguese linguistics of the 16–17th c. lexical issues were discussed not only in dictionaries but also in grammars, treatises and dialogues on language.
Pre-Port-Royal Portuguese linguistic writings help to trace the evolution of some ideas in modern lexicology. 1. Their authors views the word as a language unit, discuss its divisibility into meaningful parts, write about its boundaries, analytical word, about the root, flexional and derivational morphemes, which led to the creation of derivational dictionaries. 2. In writings codifying the language norm Portuguese authors discuss the origins of target lexemes and note lexical variation in the social dimension. By fixing orthography, they pave way to creating orthographic dictionaries. 3. Portuguese linguists write about the origins of lexis, semantics and historical changes, leading to the modern understanding of etymology and creating a prototype of modern dictionary with correct etymologies. 4. In grammars designed for teaching foreign languages one can find the description of discourse particles and their functions in communication.
The development of lexical subjects in the non-lexicological writings led not only to creating dictionaries of various types but also structuring scientific thought, to the growth of lexicology and rise of new disciplines.

West European studies in russian literature after the recession in late 1990-is changed in quality and quantity during the following twenty years. The estimation of russian literature became less tendentious, the interest to the young writers, holders of national literary prizes, appeared. Russian avant-garde is regarded now in the context of the European literary process.

It is impossible to produce an adequate interpretation of William Shakespeare’s texts without the knowledge of his biography and the general context of his epoch. But even those striving for objectivity very often encounter nearly unsurmountable difficulties connected either with lack of biographical information or lack of knowledge of the formerly suppressed, though now generally available, facts of English history. All this brings forth enormous problems which many scholars fail to overcome, thus arriving at the historically and aesthetically wrong interpretations of Shakespeare’s life and works. The present article is devoted to the discussion of this unfortunate situation and suggests ways of overcoming it by turning to the last 500 years of English history.

The article delves into idiosyncrasies of E. Evtushenko’s style, laying emphasis on the poet’s works over the last years. It is argued that discussing social ills, Evtushenko’s poetry stays current, his form is innovative, and his language and style largely contribute to the genre.

The article discusses the report by L. Stilman, a Russian émigré of the first wave, at the Forth International Slavic Congress in 1958. Stilman is the author of college courses, teaching aids and books on A. Pushkin, L. Tolstoy, N. Karamzin, I. Goncharov, and N. Gogol. In 1958, he came to the Soviet Union to take part in the Slavic Congress with a talk on Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, provoking a heated discussion on realism in the novel.

The poetry in 1900‒1920 forged the ideas of the shedding of blood as the order of things, cleansing through blood, salvation of civilization by blood, justification of sacrifice in a revolution. The idea of the right sacrifice was repeatedly discussed by Plato, Aristotle, de Mester, it formed a basis of the texts by Hegel, Nietzsche, and Marinetti. War was understood as a permanent condition of humankind: it stimulates the development of art, science, frees the society from the evils it caused. This time signaled widespread interpretations of sacrificial blood in the Old Testament and the New Testament. This was manifested in the article of Calvary Christians, in Sventsitsky prose. The poetic description of blood came in the works of proletariat poets, Klyuev, Karpov, Block, and Mayakovsky.

The article discusses how ROCOR and Moscow Patriarchate perceived canonizations of Nicolas II in 1981 and 2001 and delves into the main steps in the process of canonization in the modern orthodox tradition and the history of glorification of the tsarist family by ROCOR and Moscow Patriarchate. Canonization criteria and modern cultural phenomena associated with the acceptance of Nicolas II’s sanctity are considered in detail.

This article discusses how the conceptual poet Vs.N. Nekrasov talked about Kozma Prutkov as a literary persona, A.K. Tolstoy as the most prominent of Kozma’s creators, and “prutkovskian” traits in contemporary literature and A.K. Tolstoy’s prose. For Vs. Nekrasov the making of Prutkov was a fruitful attempt to “neutralize” some potentially dangerous consequences of so-called “literature-centrism”. Some of the texts under analysis were taken from Vs. Nekrasov’ personal archives (transcripts of speeches, reports for the Russian Theatre Society, drafts, etc.) and are now published for the first time.

Ethical words are usually secondary lexemes, formed on the basis of other meanings: spatial, food, anatomical, color, etc. One of the language codes of folk ethics is social. The paper describes which social groups are ethically interpreted in Serbian and how ethical concepts are conceptualized on the basis of social names. There are three such social groups: the villager (‘prostak’), the provincial townsman (‘malogradjanin’) and the aristocrat (‘gospodin’). The names of the villager develop the meaning of rudeness, the names of the provincial townsman – self-interest and lack of spirituality, the names of the aristocrat – arrogance. Unlike Russian, Serbian social names did’t develop positive ethical meanings (cf. positive concept ‘интеллигентность’ in Russian).

By example of teaching aids from 1900–1917, the article discusses how Lermontov’s most frequent and peripheral works were introduced in the teaching aids at that period. The geographical spread of publications is analyzed

The article discusses how compositional and stylistic devices create expressiveness and imagery in Nikolay Gogol’s Taras Bulba. A study into the sentence structure and speech rhythm at semantic, compositional, syntactic, morphological and phonetic levels made it possible to show how the rhythmic organization of prose influenced the reader’s perception.

This article seeks to analyze the concept FEAR in discourses of the contemporary migration crisis in Germany. Research has typified fear and showed ways of conceptualizing each type. Special emphasis is laid on the concept ‘Angst’ (‘fear’) as a phenomenon of German language culture.

Nikolai Gogol’s historical novella Taras Bulba was screened in seven countries: Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, the USA, Czechoslovakia and, lastly, Russia. This article discusses screen versions, giving priority to V. Bortko’s interpretation.

Perestroyka years brought about intensive research into literary heritage of Russian emigration. However, Oleg Mikhailov began to return names and heritage of émigré writers much earlier, in the 1950’s. Oleg Mikhailov’s letters as a formal unity of documents were never published or systematized professionally. Fragments of these materials were parts of his works, including prefaces, articles, monographs, notes, and, most fully, memoirs, e.g. “The Prophetic Melody of Destiny” in 2008, the book conveying the idea of how rich and unique are the author’s archives. His correspondence contains first-hand materials, which make it an essential source of documents for scholars of Russian literature in exile.

The article discusses epic traits in Ivo Andić’s historical novels “The Bridge on the Drina” and “Bosnian Chronicle”, as well as the writer’s singular view on the world and the human being. The article seeks to discover Andić’s world view in his story “The Damned Yard”. The writer’s tragic attitude to life is somewhat balanced by his belief in art and certain hopes for the future of human history.