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In this review of "Diffuziia evropeiskikh innovatsii v Rossiiskoi imperii: Materialy vserossiiskoi nauchnoi konferentsii, Ekaterinburg, 10-11 noiabria 2009g." (The diffusion of European innovation in the Russian Empire: Papers from the All-Russian Research Conference in Ekaterinburg, November 10-11, 2009. Ed. E.V. Alekseev), Aleksandr Kamenskii explains that the term "diffusionism," originating with the German ethnologist Fritz Graebner, is used by the different authors in the collection to refer to various manifestations of influence from one culture to another. As Kamenskii points out, the presenters at the Ekaterinburg conference used a variety of approaches to the question of how Western culture has informed socio-cultural developments in Russia, and the result is a lack of coherence, an overly broad scope of analysis, inconsistent use of terminology, and even fundamental disagreements on methodology and essential questions from one essay to the next. Kamenskii also takes issue with a number of facts and assertions appearing in several of the essays. [ABSTRACT FROM CONTRIBUTOR]

This paper focuses on the concept of boredom in the creative work of one of the significant figures of Soviet underground culture - Elena Shvarts. All the creative heritage - both poetic and prosaic - is treated like a semiotic unity, so that it is possible to see the evolution in understanding such a notion during more than five decades of the poet's life. While analyzing the five-volume collection by Shvarts, statistical calculation has revealed only 28 cases of using the concept. Even though for Shvarts's lyrical subjects, who are usually passionate and ecstatically active, boredom is not specific at all, the author sometimes puts this concept in the meaningful center of her creative universe. It could be done both explicably and implacably through the description of "boring" landscapes and events. After close reading of the texts from the five-volume collection, it is claimed that boredom in Shvarts's oeuvre is strictly associated to the physical (and\or physiological) world, with its routines, wishes and activities. To the contrast, the transcendental world and everything connected to the sacrum, according to Elena Shvarts, cannot be boring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper considers two complementary memoirs by Ivan Nikolaevich Loboyko (1786-1861), professor of the Russian language and Russian literature at Vilnius University in 1822-1832: "My Memories" and "My Notes" (NLO, Moskva 2013). The author's memoirs are treated from the point of view of Russian-Polish literary and scientific contacts in the first half of the nineteenth century and from the perspective of the categories "I" - "they" and "native" - "foreign" (e.g. I -professor, they - students; I - Russian, they - Poles; native, mother tongue - Russian, foreign, non-native - Russian). The methodological basis is constituted by Latvian philologist Fyodors Fyodorovs' article "Memoirs as a Problem" (2010). The paper begins with an introduction containing a discussion of the state of editorial and research work on Loboyko's memoirs. This work began in the 1950s and 1960s (publications by Samuel Fiszman, the Polish scholar of Russia). The most important researcher is Russian scholar Abram Rejtblat. Other researchers are Reda Griskaite and Maria Prussak. The introduction sheds light on the history of Loboyko's memoirs (two stages: St. Petersburg 1843 and Odessa 1856; the memoirs are unfinished, the information provided by the author is often inaccurate). The significance of Loboyko's memoirs lies in the fact that they reflect the situation of Polish science and higher education during the Partitions (e.g. the process of student organizations in Vilnius). The main part of the article discusses Loboyko's contacts with Polish students and scholars (classical philologist G. E. Groddeck, linguist and librarian S. B. Linde and others) and the modes of teaching the Russian language and Russian literature at Vilnius University (translation of Polish literature into Russian, essays in Russian about the lives of students, analysis of poems by Russian poets, etc.). Loboyko assessed his relations with scientists and students positively, however, he pointed out that they do not know Russian and are unfriendly towards Russians. He considered Poles' lack of knowledge of Russian to be the main obstacle in achieving an understanding between Poles and Russians. Loboyko encouraged students to learn Russian, which is essential for a career in Russia. He was informed about the Polish nation's aversion to Russians by Poles living permanently in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Loboyko aimed at fighting against stereotypes and national prejudices, but at the same time he pursued a Russification policy towards Poles. Loboyko also appears as a master of self-promotion; in his memoirs he presented himself in a better light than others. For this reason, he is a controversial figure, viewed as not entirely credible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a review of "The History and Culture of Russian and East European Jewry: New Sources, New Approaches," a collection of conference papers abot location and variety of primary sources, and questions of searches for self-identity. Aspects of sourcing include difficulties finding documents in archives, systematizing information, and dividing Jewish history into eras. Self-identification questions cover such topics as responding to censuses, literary representations of Jews, and the Russian Jewish diaspora. Gennadii Kostyrchenko addresses an under-researched topic: the Jewish Autonomous Republic in Crimea, its ties to the United States, and the "Crimean letter" signed by Solomon Mikhoels. This volume contains many useful materials on Jewish history, literature, and anthropology. [ABSTRACT FROM CONTRIBUTOR]

This article presents a review of "Visual Anthropology: New Views on Social Reality," a collection of 26 papers that explore Russian and Baltic academic visual research in relation to various disciplines, including history. The book is divided into four sections, examining such varied topics as methods for viewing the Soviet past, analysis of photographs of newlyweds in urban settings, and how people describe family photographs. Also included are pieces on sociological analysis of film, pornographic imagery in post-Soviet society, Soviet journals' visual standards, and masculinity in Aleksei Balabanov's film "Brat" ("Brother"). The book poses numerous questions about historiography and visual anthropology, a growing trend, but it is likely to have a niche appeal because of its focus on photographic and film documents. [ABSTRACT FROM CONTRIBUTOR]

The collection "Women’s Oral History: Gender Research" edited by Andrea Peto, is the second volume of papers produced within the Open Society Institute’s International Women’s Program, which collects and analyzes oral histories by women in the former Soviet Union for educational and research purposes. This volume addresses women of ethnic minorities, women in conflict and post-conflict situations, women and Islamic practice, and the impact of post-Soviet transition on women. The reviewer, Anika Walke, points out that this volume has some real shortcomings. The introduction, written not by the collection’s editor, but by the American director of the program, fails to explain the selection of texts or outline the academic, ideological, and historical parameters of the publication. Nevertheless, individual contributions to the collection make it a valuable source of cultural information on the lives of women at this time of political and cultural transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM CONTRIBUTOR]

By tapping into the iconography of a category of seventeenth-century still-life paintings, Poe has given us a "vanitas trilogy"--King Pest," "Amontillado," and "The Masque of the Red Death," this latter being the most notable literary version of that visual arts genre. An examination of the iconography in three classic paintings demonstrates that "Masque" has much in common with the vanitas genre" for example, a profusion of pleasurable items appealing to the voluptuary, the jarring collocation of death imagery amid these pleasurable objects, images of clocks representing the passing of time, the motif of music symbolizing the transient, the use of somber colors (the black room of Prospero's imperial suite) to suggest the apocalyptic, the notion of the wealthy and powerful being brought low by death, the theme of weaponry incapable of fending off this leveler, the concept of extinguished flames connoting the ease with which life expires, and biblical language and imagery echoing the moralistic Latin messages sometimes featured in the paintings. When the "Masque" narrator refers to the "assembly of phantasms such as I have painted," Poe gives us a further clue that he was thinking about the vanitas productions of the Dutch Golden Age. As a prose-painter of a vanitas trilogy and a critic who despised the blatantly moralistic in art, however, Poe should be related to the less obviously didactic vanitas artists who preferred their didacticism wrapped up in disguised symbolism, hidden allegories--which method correlates precisely with Poe's own literary techniques and critical prescriptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with Russian author Leo Tolstoy’s short story “Master and Man.” The author focuses specifically upon the symbolic functions of the names and patronymics of Tolstoy’s characters in the context of their Greek etymology. Using the example of the names “Vasiliy Andreich” and “Nikita,” he makes various associations between their literal and symbolic meanings. He also underscores that such mythopoetical principles are not only evident in this short story, but also in the novels "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina."