No 4 (2025)

The article examines the history of V.V. Kapnist’s project of the creation of mercenary Cossack regiments. The author reconstructs in detail the context of the discussion of the project in the governmental public sphere in 1788–1789 and similar initiatives at the end of the reign of Catherine II. It is shown that in government circles, initiatives such as the Kapnist’s project received support from influential Great Russian officials and nobles. It is explained that the key factor blocking such initiatives was Vice-Chancellor A.A. Bezborodko, and not the policy of the Russian government. Unlike the Great Russians, Bezborodko saw any Cossack projects as a direct threat to the interests of the empire. This threat consisted in the possible return of the disorders associated with the institution of the hetmanate, which was liquidated in 1764. The Great Russians' support for initiatives like the Kapnist’s project is explained by the idealization of the Little Russian Cossacks as a kind of «wonder weapon». In the appendix to the article, Kapnist’s project and Bezborodko’s answers to G.A. Potemkin's opinion about the project are published for the first time.

The article deals with the question of the origin of phonetic Russisms in the modern New Church Slavonic Menaion. The study of the corresponding material of old printed Moscow editions of the 17th – first half of the 18th century shows that in some points of the text there were Russisms from the beginning (they are attested in the first printed menaion of 1607–1610 and in the menaion of 1619–1630), in other points Russisms are used starting from certain editions. In the latter case, the appearance of Russisms may correlate with the new (patriarch Ioakim’s) edition of the text, but this correlation is not obligatory: Russisms may also appear in editions containing the text of the old edition. In some cases Russisms are found only in editions of the first half of the 18th century. In addition, in a number of points of the text Russisms are absent throughout the period under consideration, which implies that the text of the Menaion could be subjected to a certain russification from the second half of the 18th  to the end of the 19th century. The paper suggests that different factors or their combinations contributed to the appearance and consolidation of certain phonetic Russisms in the Menaion, in particular: the influence on the Church Slavonic text of the language of editors; uncritical copying of certain texts from previous editions due to their authority and use; lexicalization.

The article is devoted to semantic and pragmatic parameters of solitude articulation (as an element of the opposition «loneliness-unity») and related ideas and feelings in different kinds and genres of Belarusian folklore. Loneliness is considered in interpersonal, socio-cultural and metaphysical dimensions. The given material demonstrates that folklore texts describing these dimensions of loneliness differ in genre, thematically, by the set of plots and the scale of the described events (from everyday incidents, more serious family misfortunes and traditionally prescribed rituals of «transition» of one of the collective members to emergency situations of local character and even cataclysms of ecumenical scale). But all of them, painting the possible experience of loneliness in certain tones and modeling it as an unnatural, forced modus of human existence under certain conditions or in the course of events that arose independently of the will of the person (destiny), in one way or another serve not only as an interpretative prism, but also as a «moral regulator» and a way to objectify the value attitude, codify, present and argue for moral and ethical norms that are significant for the stability of the rural (basically patriarchal) community and its culture. In this we see the main functional and pragmatic modus of the texts under consideration.

The article is devoted to the autobiographical prose of Michał Głowiński, a major Polish literary scholar and one of the representatives of the «late» Holocaust survivers’ testimonies (1998–2016). For the first time, Głowiński decided to tell about his experience of life in the Warsaw ghetto and on the «aryan side» only after half a century of silence. The reasons that prevented the systematic, consistent verbalization of the trauma (necessary to overcome it) during the socialist period are examined (lack of a safe environment); the peculiarities of Głowiński's narrative and their artistic and psychological prerequisites and tasks are analyzed (including the distinctive differences between texts marking different stages of trauma work). The fragmentary nature of the narration and its connection with the specificity of traumatized childhood memory, separated from the moment of articulation by a temporal distance, are investigated. The mosaicism of the narrative is shown to be evidence of the limited expressiveness of the Holocaust and the continuity it disrupted al well. The autopsychotherapeutic significance of reconstructing not only facts but also emotions is emphasized. The tasks of introducing metatext as an instrument of dialogue with the self-child, unifying biography, and gaining power over its meanings are analyzed. Głowiński's autobiographical narrative (reconstructing and conceptualizing events of the past) is ultimately aimed at integrating fragments of the text of life into a single text of fate. Processing trauma through autobiographical narrative also allows (therapeutically) transforming the meaning of tragedy.

The article explores the motif of home in contemporary Bosnian refugee literature. The study focuses on the short story collections «Sarajevo, Exodus of a City» by Dž. Karahasan, «Sarajevo Marlboro» by M. Jergović, and the novels «Tri samoće ili mjesto nedovršenih stvari» by V. Kapor and «Catch the Rabbit» by L. Bastašić. For Karahasan and Jergović, home becomes a space of destruction, both literally and metaphorically. For Kapor, it is a space of memory, that symbolizes something lost but necessary for the wholeness of the self. In contrast, in Bastašić's novel, the lost home is not idealized at all; it is sharply contrasted with a civilized home. In besieged literature, home loses its protective function, as it is understood as a specific building or as a city under siege, thus becoming a source of danger itself. The home ceases to be a site of action or refuge; it is transposed into the realm of memory, becoming ghostly, illusory, and unattainable. Most characters in refugee literature (unsuccessfully) strive to (re)create a home or retrieve what has been lost. The trauma from losing a home often proves to be insurmountable (with the exception of the novel «Tri samoće»).

The article examines some aspects of sexual life of Russian soldiers and officers in occupied Galicia during WWI. There is no special research devoted to this issue. The research is based on wide circle of memoirs, diaries and correspondence of both military men and Galician witnesses of the occupation. It is shown that, in contrast with many memoirists and historians’ statements, sexual contacts between local women and military men, in many cases, were voluntary. Prostitution and, therefore, venereal diseases had spread in cities far from the front line. The most significant scale of the last ones was observed in L’viv as the biggest city of Galicia. The specific feature of L’viv, in comparison with cities in Russian rear, was that many prostitutes imitated respectable women, misleading Russian military men by this way.

The article is devoted to current Hungarian research in historical sociopragmatics, developing in line with the tradition worked out on Western European, primarily English-language material. The article terminologically distinguishes between the concepts of «pragmatics», «sociopragmatics» and «historical (socio)pragmatics», and also traces how in recent decades Hungarian science has moved from a traditional approach to a functional-pragmatic one, paying more attention to context. The specificity of Hungarian studies is determined by the material: thus, on the basis of medical prescriptions, medical manuals, and manuals of letter writing, the historical syntax and grammaticalization of discursive markers are studied, and on the basis of private letters of nobles and protocols of witch trials illustrating the speech of different strata of the population, sociopragmatic aspects are studied, in particular, the category of politeness and forms of address. That is, it is shown how the choice of one or another form is influenced by personal, social and cultural context, as well as which forms of address are considered polite in a particular era. In general, the tradition of studying historical sociopragmatics in Hungary is relatively young, but promising given the publication of a large corpus of historical texts and the parallel growth in the number of studies in other European countries.

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