The article examines the process of preparing the screenplay for S. D. Vasiliev’s film “Heroes of Shipka”. The author addresses the issue of representing historical facts in ar- tistic works during the Soviet period. Focusing on the screenplay preparation, the author explores how the director tackled the challenge of balancing artistic and historical ele- ments, using the film about the events of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 as a case study. For many years Vasiliev had been developing a plan to shoot the film about the events of the Eastern Crisis of 1875–1878. “Heroes of Shipka” became the first film for the director after the death of G. N. Vasiliev, with whom he had collaborated for many years in a creative partnership. The screenplay prepared by A. A. Perventsev required numerous revisions, particularly regarding the depiction of historical events. The film’s screenplay underwent a discussion process at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of USSR, during which domestic Slavists provided their feedback. Some of these comments were not taken into account during the film’s production. As a director, S. D. Vasiliev operated on the principles of artistic authenticity, believing that dramatic truth in an artistic work takes precedence over historical accuracy. The author notes that this approach was particularly evident during the filming process, when the director sacrificed scenes from the Constantinople Conference of 1876–1877 in favor of scenes that revealed the relationships between the film’s key characters. Despite this, the author highlights that the film’s director, S. D. Vasiliev, undertook significant work in preparing the historical material and made an effort to maintain a balance between the artistic and historical aspects of the film.

The article focuses on the perception of the territory by representatives of the local ethnic community of Greeks of Chernopolye village (Crimea) in the context of their ethnic identity. As a result of their departure from Thrace in 1830 after the Treaty of Adrianople, the community lost contact with their homeland. The need to address the initially alien landscape expressed itself in symbolic developments once the commu- nity began to degenerate without connection “with its land”. The article examines two stages of sacralization of landscape caused by the forced migrations, loss of connection with native land and the resulting problems with identity. The first stage is represented by the search for “one’s own” land, where the mediators were the spiritual patrons of the community, st. Constantine and Helena, who “chose” a certain water source. The symbolic boundaries of the area were designated by four sources, the degree of significance of which corresponds to the symbolism of the cardinal directions. After this, a chapel (konak) was erected in the symbolic center of the village, later the Church of st. Constantine and Helena. The vertical model of the world was realized in connec- tion with the pre-Christian ritual practices of the community: the bottom of the World Axis corresponds to the sacrificial pit in the church yard. The second stage of develop- ment of the village of Chernopolye occurred after the return of part of the community from deportation in the second half of the 20th century, when the microcosm gradually acquired three Centers, and beyond its borders the idea of “foreign” space, the other world (“devil’s bridge”) was actualized. The article establishes the current existence of an internal “center” for community members (against the background of the village’s multi-ethnicity), conditioned by the location of ancient icons: formed once as a result of the closure of the church, this center not only did not cease to exist over time, but under the influence of collective memory became integrative for the community. The folklore picture of the world is considered, which reflects multiple identities inherited from the times of the Byzantine Empire: on the one hand, local, on the other hand ― Roman identity with the center in Constantinople; it is revealed that in the folk songs of the Chernopolye residents, the spatial model of the world is especially clearly manifested in liminal symbolism.

The article presents the latest field materials of the Toponymic expedition of the Ural University to the Kologrivsky district of the Kostroma region, collected in July-August 2024 and concerning the practices of using small stones or mineraloids such as belemnites and fulgurites (qualified by folk tradition as stones) for magical and folk medical purposes. In addition to the Toponymic Expedition’s card index, the material was also extracted from lexicographic and ethnographic sources describing Kostroma or other Russian traditional practices. The examined stones, which have a remarkable appearance (bizarre shapes, noticeable patterns, through holes, etc.), are called in this area urochlivye or urochnye kamni, “jinx stones”. The article offers a semantic analysis of this name, gives its linguistic and geographical characteristics, presents parallel names of similar stones existing in the same territory (these are uryadik, shulets-palets, urodlivyi kamen', chortov palets, names for stones with a through hole – glaz, kurinyi glaz, kurinyi kamen', kurii bog). The functions in which they are used are described: as a magical remedy for the treatment of severe crying in infants, as a talisman against the evil eye in older children and adults, as a remedy for diseases, as a talisman for poultry, which was hung in a chicken coop (“kurinyi bog”), finally, as an attribute of children’s games. The article touches upon the issues of the symbolism of these stones, their functioning in the local and all-Russian cultural context of the use or veneration of various kinds of stones, the natural reasons for the activity of this tradition in the Kostroma region.

This year, young scholars from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Kaliningrad, Verona (Italy), Regensburg (Germany) took part in the work of the Linguistics section. Presentations on current issues of Slavic linguistics were divided into six thematic blocks. The first block was devoted to the study of the language of Slavic literature; the presentations touched upon issues of lexicology (in particular, lexical borrowings) and translation studies. The second session was devoted to the problems of grammar of modern Slavic languages. In the presentations, an attempt was made to compare the single mode of verbal action in Croatian and Russian, the issue of using the target infinitive in a simple sentence in modern Serbian was raised, the eventual possibility of counting indefinite pronouns was assessed, and the verbs of visual perception in the Serbian and Russian languages were compared. The third subsection addressed issues of Slavic dialectology and linguopragmatics: it was about full and short forms of personal pronouns in Slovenian dialects, contextual realizations of Czech and Slovak proverbs on the Internet, difficulties in translating varieties of the Russian language into other languages, and an overview of one Ukrainian dialect of the Voronezh region was presented. The fourth session was devoted to the problems of Slavic phraseology and onomastics. And the fifth thematic block included presentations on verbal and non-verbal communication. The conference was concluded with a subsection dedicated to the interaction of Slavic languages and cultures. The presentations covered the problems of socio- and ethnolinguistics. Discussion of the reports took place during the work of the sections and during breaks. The conference is impressive both in the large number of young scholars who take part in it every year and in the constantly growing number of new researchers not only from our country but also from abroad. All this testifies to the importance and significance of holding this scientific event.

Although in most Slavic languages gum is denoted by the descendants of a single Proto-Slavic word, the details of the reconstruction of this word remain a matter of debate, and a number of contradictory hypotheses can be found in the scientific literature. For the Proto-Slavic language those hypothesized forms are of both feminine and neuter genders with suffixes *-sna, *-sn, *-sno, *-sla, *-slo, with initial sounds *d- and *j-. A careful study of the material shows that the original form *dęsna (f.) should probably be recognised. The dissimilated variant *dęsla / *dęslo is probably comparatively ancient. The forms potentially derived from *dęsno and *dęsnь are most likely secondary and should not be considered Proto-Slavic. The first of them arose as a result of the reinterpretation of *dęsna as plurale tantum, probably under the influence of the semantically close word *usta 'mouth', which fits very well into the logic of the change of gender attested in some other designations of body parts in Slavic languages. The less widespread variant *dęsnь is explained by the influence of words with phonetically close auslaut (*basnь, *pěsnь, *plěsnь, *wasnь). The vocalism of the Russian form desna is preferably explained by the reflection of yekanye in writing. In several cases we also encounter folk etymology. The most common are designations with initial j-, apparently influenced by *ęzyk 'language'. As less favoured, the paper considers the hypothesis of phonetic origin of initial j-. Slovenian forms like dlẹ̑sen, dlésna and dlésno are most likely to be explained by contamination with the verb dlẹ́sniti 'to click'.

This article presents a detailed account of the folk-mythological representations of the deceased in the traditional culture of the Pontic Greeks. It is primarily based on field data collected during expeditions conducted between 2022 and 2024 in the areas where the Pontic Greeks have traditionally lived in concentrated settlements. The data was collected from the Krasnodar and Stavropol regions, the Republics of Karachay-Cherkessia, North Ossetia-Alania and Dagestan, Kazakhstan, Georgia and Armenia, as well as from written sources on the traditional culture of the Pontic Greeks and dialect dictionaries. The characteristics of the Pontic mythological character "hortlach" ("walking dead," zombie) are considered according to the scheme developed by the team of authors of the Moscow ethnolinguistic school. This includes a description of the character's names and titles, its hypostases, characteristics of its appearance, genesis, loci, time of activation, properties, characteristic occupations, functions and predicates, objects of influence, characteristic motifs, and other relevant information. A distinctive quality of the Pontic "hortlach" is its capacity to alter its physical form. During the daytime, it assumes the appearance of a deceased individual interred in a grave, at night, it emerges from the cemetery and departs from the burial ground. Another distinctive attribute of the Pontic "hortlach" is its capacity to transform into a werewolf. During the daytime, it lies in the grave in the form of a deceased individual, while at night it emerges from the cemetery and traverses the village in the guise of a massive black canine. The concepts associated with the "Chortlakh" are more enduring among Turkic-speaking Urum Greeks, who are native to Greek villages in Georgia. This observation correlates with the overall more robust preservation of folk-mythological beliefs and traditional culture within this subgroup. Narratives about "chortlakh" are ubiquitous across all surveyed regions, and the lexeme itself is fixed in a multitude of phraseological expressions, including "to wander like a chortlakh," "to walk at night like a chortlakh," and as a swear word. Extended texts with descriptions of mythological characters or full texts of classical stories are very rarely recorded in the surveyed territories, and mythological vocabulary is gradually fading into oblivion.

This congratulatory message refers to the lead researcher of the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Philology Anna A. Plotnikova, a specialist in Serbian language, Balkanistics, ethnolinguistics, linguistic geography, Slavic dialectology, lexicology, lexicography. The researcher’s path is connected with the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, with which she began to cooperate while studying at the Lomonosov Moscow State University in the 1980s. After defending her PhD thesis “Ethnolinguistic dictionary as a linguistic, ethnographic and folklore source (based on the material of Slavic languages and traditions)” (1990), she began to work at the Institute of Slavic Studies as a junior researcher and worked her way up to the lead researcher of the Department of Ethnolinguistics and Folklore. Anna Plotnikova is actively developing areal ethnolinguistics. In 2005, she defended her doctoral thesis “Ethnolinguistic geography of South Slavia”. To date, she has authored 6 books and more than 500 research papers. She is a member of the author’s team of the ethnolinguistic dictionaries “Slavic antiquities” and “Slavic mythology”, a member of the editorial boards of some scholarly journals, editor of serial publications and some monographs of her colleagues. Since 2007, Anna Plotnikova has led the collective work in the Department of Ethnolinguistics and Folklore, which was aimed at creating an electronic database of the Archive of Polesie expeditions (were conducted in 1962–1985); at various times she managed or participated in a number of grants supported by Russian scientific foundations. She is a member of the Russian National Committee of Slavists, participates in the work of several commissions under the International Committee of Slavists: on Balkan linguistics, on ethnolinguistics, on the study of Russian Old Believers. She cooperates with university education, directs the work of graduate students, including foreign ones, and engages young researchers in research activities.

This paper examines tombstones and tombstone inscriptions among the Greeks of Russia, descendants of immigrants from the Ottoman Empire. Based on field research of 2022–2024, the article analyzes data collected in the regions of compact residence of Greeks in the North Caucasus. Tombstones are divided into three periods: pre-Soviet, Soviet, and post-Soviet. Pre-soviet gravestones are of three types: regular gravestones, flat gravestones and church-shaped stones. All these types of monuments were also common among the Greeks in Asia Minor. Inscriptions in pre-Soviet times were made mainly in Greek; the article describes the main features of the epitaphs of this period. In the socialist era, the Greek language disappears from tombstones, which may be associated with both the repressions of 1937 and the general trend towards Sovietization of cemeteries. The article describes a unique type of Soviet Greek tombstone, made in the style of traditional monuments. Despite the ideological control over burial sites, Greek graves in the North Caucasus retained Orthodox symbolism throughout the Soviet era. The post-Soviet period is characterized by a visible uniformity of monuments: they are all made in the same workshops, from the same material. But the visual information on the monuments, primarily the Greek language, shows the ethnicity of the deceased. Other characteristic features of Greek burials in modern Russia are also noted: “houses” for candles from Greece, decorative elements in antique style, images of churches.

The efforts undertaken in 1895 to organize a permanent mission of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Rome culminated in the establishment in 1903 of the position of scientific correspondent, to which Professor of Russian History at Yuryev University E. F. Schmourlo (1854–1934) was elected. His task was to identify as fully as possible the materials of Roman, Italian and European archives and libraries on Russian history. The collected documents were supposed to be published in a series of thematic collections and collection of materials. In the first series, an incomplete collection of documents for 1578–1581 was published, and in the second, four volumes of thematic publications (three of them in two issues). The scientific correspondent formed a large special library, which was intended to serve his needs and the needs of those Russian researchers who would come to conduct their research in Rome. To facilitate future archival work, he was also entrusted with the compilation of a paleographic collection. Thanks to persistence and some additional efforts, the scientific correspondent received permission to work in the Archives of the Congregation for the Propaganda of the Faith, closed to a wide circle of researchers, and collected many new materials there. Unfortunately, the broadly conceived scientific undertaking could not be fully realized. A Russian institute like those national scientific institutions that appeared there at the end of the 19th century after the opening of the Vatican Archives to researchers was not created in Rome. E. F. Schmourlo proposed a project for such an Institute to the Academy of Sciences in 1917. In connection with the outbreak of World War I, the activities of the scientific correspondent changed significantly – in 1915–1916 he was assigned to oversee the protection of “historical monuments and scientific collections in the area of military operations”. Then in 1918–1919, after the “October Revolution” in Russia, he actively joined the work of the anti-Bolshevik organization “Union for the Revival of Russia in Unity with the Allies” for some time. Having found himself a forced emigrant and having practically lost contact with the Academy of Sciences, he continued to fulfill his duties and conduct scientific research as much as possible. At the end of 1924, it became clear that this work was already difficult to do in Rome, especially since in December 1924 the Academy of Sciences decided to abolish the position of scientific correspondent. Having received its consent to transfer the library of the scientific correspondent in Rome to the Institute of Eastern Europe (Istituto per l’Europa Orientale) for temporary use for 10 years, having sold his personal library and received a pension from the Czechoslovak government, E. F. Schmourlo moved to Prague at the end of 1924, where he headed the Russian Historical Society, which he had organized in 1925. In 1935, his archive was transferred to the RZIA in Prague, from where it was transported to Moscow in 1945 (currently – GARF).

Among the large number of clergymen from the Great Russian provinces sent to the Belarusian lands after the liquidation of the Brest Church Union in 1839 and the mass conversion of the local Belarusian Uniate population to Orthodoxy, Archimandrite Nikolai (Dalmatov) of Suprasl Monastery (1835–1906) stands out for his special services not only to the church, but also to Belarusian culture as a whole. In the late XIX – early XX centuries he laid the practical and scientific foundations for the current revival of the ancient Suprasl Monastery of the Annunciation, Suprasl Lavra, which is currently the largest Orthodox center not only in Poland, but also in the countries of the European Union. The son of a deacon from the Oryol hinterland, a graduate of the Oryol seminary, Archimandrite Nikolai served for more than forty years, since 1860, in the Belarusian Orthodox environment, in Slutsk, Pinsk, Minsk and, finally, in the Suprasl, where since 1881 he becomes the rector of the Annunciation Monastery and “dean of the monasteries of the Lithuanian diocese”. His multifaceted quarter-century activity in the Suprasl to restore monastic life as well as his preaching work among the local population, the creation of the successfully operating Suprasl Annunciation Brotherhood earned Archimandrite Nicholas well-deserved recognition and even love not only, as he himself wrote, of his “good Belarusians”, but also of Roman Catholics, and especially Jews. He defended these “our neighbors, our fellow citizens” in his fiery sermons against the “Jewish pogroms” in every possible way as a Christian and an Orthodox pastor. A thoughtful researcher of the history of Belarusian monasteries, temples and monuments of writing, Archimandrite Nikolai also left a rich body of published scholarly works, the main component of which was his voluminous monograph “Supraslsky Annunciation Monastery: Historical and Statistical description” (St. Petersburg, 1892), which remains to this day the key work on the subject and has not lost its significance.