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Franc Grivec (1878–1963), a long-time professor at the Faculty of Theology in Ljubljana, is considered a pioneer in systematic research of Eastern Christianity among Slovenian authors. A significant part of Grivec’s published work is dedicated to the ideational analysis of the October Revolution of 1917, which presented a topical public issue of his time, conditioned by socio-economic change and the seeking of new collective identities. This is most thoroughly addressed in the monograph for a wider audience (National Consciousness and Bolshevism) originally written by Grivec based on his lectures to the primary- and high-school teachers of Ljubljana in 1944. According to Grivec, the extremism of the Bolsheviks represents a part of the wider mechanism of Russian cultural history, in which the concept of a messianic mission, starting with the idea of Moscow as the “Third Rome,” appeared several times. The mentioned author calls on Catholic intellectuals to assert Christian principles in public and foster a reflected national consciousness as opposed to the internationalist socialism, in order to prevent the success of the revolution on Slovenian soil. His views are organically complemented by France Dolinar (1915–1983), a representative of the younger generation of Catholic scholars of the time, who decided to live in emigration due to the political pressures in his homeland. Dolinar draws close to Grivec with the emphasis on the engagement for the common national cause against the “political partisan mindset”; on the other hand, Dolinar surpasses Grivec with his idea for the independent Slovenian state, which would be a real opposite to the socialist theory on the extinction of nations.

Russian religious character, brought up by Orthodoxy, is vividly expressed in the article on the basis of various cultural material, an important visual aspect of Russian culture is considered. In the modern era of secularization, it is largely preserved and continues to determine the worldview. The article deals with the opinions of Metropolitan Anthony of Surozh about the differences between Orthodox and Western perceptions of death and the deceased. A special Russian experience of death and burial rites is shown in the examples of I. Bunin’s stories “Transfiguration” and G. Gazdanov’s “Panikhida”. Here death is understood as a beginning of resurrection – a new birth of a person into eternity, and not just the end of earthly life, which is more typical for Western consciousness. The Transfiguration of the hero’s soul, which occurs during the reading of the Psalter over the dead mother, turns into a cosmogonic process of transformation of all life and all being – a manifest prototype of the transformation that will take place after the end of this world. And it can be experienced as a real fact of a person’s spiritual life only in this situation of close proximity to the deceased. The memorial service as a “short-term invasion of eternity” is the “formula” of the Russian understanding of death. The rejection of the dead, the fear and loathing towards the dead are characteristics of the Western mentality, which led to the emergence of the vampire image as the personification of the dead. If the ultimate symbol of the deceased person in Orthodoxy is imperishable relics, then for the Western culture such an ultimate symbol was vampire. In addition, decorating the dead to make them look “like they are alive” is very typical for a Western person, because he does not want to see death, but only wants to preserve the memory of the person in this world. However, at the height of poetic inspiration and the deepest spiritual sorrow, the Western people awaken the experience of death, which is very close to the Orthodox experience-death as the Paschal sacrament of entering into eternal life and the expectation of a future bodily resurrection, professed in the “Symbol of Faith”. The understanding of death, which is embedded in the “code” of Russian culture, is also manifested when the author is far from certain national mentality and Orthodox faith – since this “code” is so strong that it subordinates the author through the language of the cultural tradition itself. В статье на разнообразном культурном материале рассматривается важный визуальный аспект русской культуры, в котором ярко выразился русский религиозный характер, воспитанный Православием. В современную эпоху секуляризации он во многом сохраняется и продолжает определять мироощущение людей. Рассмотрены суждения митрополита Антония Сурожского об отличиях православного и западного восприятия смерти и умерших людей. Особое русское переживание смерти и обряда погребения показано на примерах рассказов И. Бунина «Преображение» и Г. Газданова «Панихида». Смерть здесь понимается как начало воскресения – как новое рождение человека в вечность, а не как всего лишь конец земной жизни, что более характерно для западного сознания. Преображение души героя, случившееся при чтении Псалтыри над умершей матерью, превращается в космогонический процесс преображения всей жизни и всего бытия – явленный прообраз того преображения, которое будет после конца мира сего. Оно может переживаться как реальный факт душевной и духовной жизни человека только в этой ситуации непосредственной близости с умершим человеком. Панихида как «кратковременное вторжение вечности» – это «формула» русского понимания смерти. Отторжение мёртвых, страх и отвращение перед ними, характерные для западной ментальности, привели к появлению в культуре образа вампира – олицетворения мёртвого человека как такового. Если предельным символом умершего человека в Православии являются нетленные мощи, то для западной культуры таким предельным символом стал вампир. Кроме того, приукрашивание умерших, чтобы они выглядели «как живые», очень характерно для западного человека, поскольку он не хочет видеть смерть, а хочет лишь сохранить память о человеке в этом мире. Однако на высоте поэтического вдохновения и глубочайшей душевной скорби в западном человеке пробуждается переживание смерти, очень близкое человеку православному, – смерти как пасхального таинства вступления в вечную жизнь и чаяния будущего телесного воскресения, исповедуемого в «Символе веры». Понимание смерти, заложенное в «коде» русской культуры, проявляется и тогда, когда автор далёк и от национального менталитета, и от православной веры, – поскольку этот «код» столь силён, что подчиняет себе автора через язык самой культурной традиции.

In some stories by Tatyana Tolstaya, published between 2004 and 2015, of Soviet and post-Soviet setting, the doorbell, in the representation of living contexts, seems to take on a non-secondary significance. Sometimes, it is its aesthetic value to be highlighted; while, in other moments, it is its function to be emphasised. This article aims to investigate the meaning the doorbell acquires in Tolstaya’s narratives, the way it relates, each single time, to the surrounding system of objects, as well as with the main characters of the stories. Although its being a product of modern technology, the doorbell, located on the front door, connects to the threshold, a place steeped in stratified mythical and ancestral values.

In this paper, we advance a set of correspondences of Russian realia words (i.e. culture-specific items) in Romanian. These historical words will be part of a dictionary, together with about 200 realia units, arranged by categories: ethnographic realia, sociopolitical and administrative realia, geographical realia, and onomastic realia, addressed to young translators from Russian to Romanian, as well as to those interested in Russian culture.

This article sets out an analysis of the issue of the interrelationship between ethics and ideology in Russian culture in the 18th and 19th centuries, using historical materials to explore the fate of theoretical ethics in Russia, the diversity of the theoretical forms of the study of ethics in the culture of this period, the formation of an objective originality in ethical thinking, and the principal issues defining the distinctive pattern of moral introspection in Russian culture.

The paper analyses humour about scientists and humour produced by scientists in Russia. The aim of the study is to track back the evolution of scholarly humour and analyse social factors that stand behind professional humour in the academia. The analysis centres around three categories of humour: “intellectual” humour, which requires knowledge in a specific branch of science, “professor vs. student” humour, which is based on our understanding of social relations between two social groups involved in academic communication. Finally, there is profession-specific humour based entirely on professional experience and is best understood by those involved in research. While “intellectual” and “professor vs. student” jokes are not unique to the Russian culture, profession-specific in-group humour reflects social problems characteristic of science in Russia. This category of scholarly humour has grown from the ongoing debates about criteria of academic excellence and the discussions about importance of science for society in general. Profession-specific humour mirrors social tension caused by the attempts to introduce quantitative measures of academic excellence and to reform science in Russia (the recent attempts at turning around the Russian Academy of Sciences being a good example of such a reform).