Contemporary Russia Research Articles

Protection of linguistic rights in constitutional law

Relevance. This article explores the key elements of legal regulation concerning citizens' linguistic rights in contemporary Russia. It focuses on analyzing current laws designed to safeguard these rights, including those outlined in the Constitution of the Russian Federation. This study investigates the practical norms implemented to regulate language rights in the Republic of Bashkortostan. The significance of safeguarding human rights and preserving social stability in a multicultural society is highlighted.Purpose. The purpose of this article is to analyze legal documents and study the linguistic rights of the peoples of Russia, with special attention to constitutional guarantees, federal and regional legislation, as well as the practical implementation of these rights in a multinational environment.Objectives: to analyze the Constitutions of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Bashkortostan, federal and regional laws that regulate linguistic rights, and also to analyze existing problems in the field of protecting linguistic rights.Methodology. The study used a combination of methods, such as: the general scientific method of studying legal phenomena and processes, formal-legal and formal-logical methods.Results. The study examined the main aspects of the protection of linguistic rights in constitutional law by analyzing existing regulatory documents.Conclusion. Language is the foundation of social interactions and cultural heritage, playing a key role in maintaining statehood and political institutions. It promotes social unity and the development of social ties, which necessitates constitutional protection of linguistic relations to ensure their stability and progress.

Wildberries: Features of Assimilation of a Pseudo-Borrowed Ergonym in Russian

This article addresses the assimilation of the proper name ‘Wildberries’ within contemporary Russian. Special attention is given to the status of this name. The authors conclude that ‘Wildberries’ represents a pseudo-borrowed ergonym, as this lexeme is formed as a brand name from English roots, although such a composite does not exist in the English. The relevance of this study is underscored by the rapid pace of borrowing foreign vocabulary, particularly in the context of naming in the Internet domain. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that, for the first time, the phonetic-orthographic, morphological, and communicative-pragmatic features of the assimilation of the ergonym ‘Wildberries’ have been established through a survey of ordinary speakers of Russian. At the phonetic-orthographic level, the study examines the peculiarities of word form representation and identifies instances of hypercorrection when conveying specific aspects of English pronunciation. At the grammatical level, the authors specify the filling of morphological categories of the noun and conclude that these categories have not yet fully stabilized. As for the features of communicative-pragmatic assimilation, the authors highlight linguistic creativity in reinterpreting the name, the use of emotional-evaluative expressions and irony, as well as instances of meta-linguistic reflection among ordinary speakers.

Medievalisms from top to bottom: Alexander Nevsky in Russian public contemporary discourse in the case of Vyborg (2018–2022)

ABSTRACT This article investigates the multi-levelled representations of medievalism in contemporary Russia, focusing on the figure of Alexander Nevsky (d. 1263) and its local appropriations in the city of Vyborg. Building on Manuel DeLanda’s hierarchic assemblage theory applied to state-induced and local narratives surrounding Nevsky, the paper highlights complexities of how medievalism is mobilized by various actors, including state and Church officials, regional authorities, cultural organizations, and grassroots movements. We demonstrate that governmental actors celebrated the medieval prince as an epitome of the Russian state and its exceptional civilizational development. They also rhetorically merged Nevsky within modern narratives to reinforce state legitimacy and presentist political agenda. By further examining the depoliticized interactions with medievalism and almost complete absence of Nevsky from Vyborg’s public discourse, we argue that medievalism in Russia is not merely a static and hierarchic phenomenon but rather a dynamic discourse that reflects ongoing tensions between state narratives and local interpretations. Thus, we demonstrate the diversity of historical culture in modern Russia and the possibilities for further analysis of its local, regional, and national features in their variability, as well as the forms of politicization and depoliticization of images of the past.

Rendering a teenager’s language portrait as a translation problem

This article explores a linguistic repertoire that shapes the language portrait of a teenager in contemporary English fiction, particularly in the context of its translation into Russian. Through the analysis of Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s novel “Julia and the Shark,” featuring a teenager as the main character, key linguistic markers of a fictionalized teenager’s speech were identified and studied as reflecting their linguistic worldview: conversational and expressive tone, linguistic creativity, metaphorical inner speech, and detailed descriptions of the surroundings. The original text was compared with its Russian translation by N. Kaloshina, revealing that the latter, being targeted at an older audience, additionally emphasizes the specifics of the main character’s language. Therefore, in order to render the speech of a teenager aged 12 years and above, it is important to have a proper understanding of the psycholinguistic features of this age group. While determining the extent to which the language portrait of a teenage character should be adapted, the Russian translator is guided by the image of a teenager in the contemporary Russian linguocultural environment.

Official memory politics, the ‘genocide of the soviet people,’ and the distortion of the Holocaust in modern Russia

ABSTRACT This article is devoted to the political use of Holocaust memory in contemporary Russia. Under Putin, the Russian state has adopted an utilitarian approach. Initially, Holocaust was a tool for positioning Russia on the international stage (the Red Army as the savior of the Jews), and later as a means of exerting moral pressure on political elites in Eastern European countries that promoted the memory of communist crimes. In the context of the full-scale war against Ukraine, the newly articulated concept of the ‘genocide of the Soviet people’ serves both symbolic border with the West and tool to victimize Russians.

Структурно-семантические и функциональные особенности субжанра «юмористическая дефиниция» (на примере дефинирования имен)

This article is dedicated to the description of the humorous definition as a distinct subgenre functioning within congratulatory discourse. The linguistic material used comprises inscriptions applied to gift mugs. The objective of this study is to justify the legitimacy of isolating this subgenre based on an analysis of the semantic, structural, and functional characteristics of these textual neologisms. The scientific novelty of this work lies in the identification of the basic textological characteristics of the humorous definition as a subgenre generated by the mass consciousness of contemporary Russian speakers. The results demonstrate that the humorous definition constitutes a two-phase text, containing a humorous nomination of the addressee and its creative interpretation. The nomination is created through the word-formation process of blending, combining a proper name (usually in a short form) with a common noun according to the principle of phonetic similarity of components. The humorous definition possesses a number of specific structural-semantic features, performs a congratulatory, humorous function, as well as a function of "communicative seduction" through the use of non-standard combinations of linguistic means that generate linguocreativity. Linguistic creativity is also formed at the level of combining lexical elements of different styles in both parts of the text. The emergence and widespread distribution of the humorous definition as a subgenre of congratulatory discourse is associated with the increased role of mass linguistic creativity, as well as a fashion for "textualized" objects.

Проблема модернизации миграционной политики: социологические и политико-правовые аспекты

The article delves into substantiating the author’s position on the issue of modernizing migration policy in con-temporary Russia. It identifies and examines the sociological and political-legal aspects that constitute the theo-retical and methodological framework of this problem. The social context of migration policy is elucidated, and conflict-generating factors that limit the scope of opportunities for its constructive implementation are identified. The main contradiction of migration policy is formulated, consisting of the incompatibility between its objectives and the mechanisms of implementation that lag behind the country’s needs. Measures of a political-legal, so-cio-political, and socio-economic nature are outlined, the realization of which is deemed essential for resolving this contradiction. In conclusion, the article delineates the key aspects of modernizing migration policy, the con-tent of which, according to the authors, reflects a methodological orientation towards further investigation of issues related to the formation and implementation of effective programs for managing migration processes.

Лингвопрагматическая специфика дискурсивного жанра «миссия» в книгоиздательской коммуникативной практике

The objective of this study is to identify the linguopragmatic specificity of the discursive genre “mission”, as represented in the image-building texts of contemporary Russian book publishers. The article presents qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the publisher's mission genre: the logico-rhetorical structure of the genre is described, and its axiological and thematic dominants are identified. The main focus is on the pragmatic features of the genre, due to its hybrid, polyfunctional, and multi-addressed status. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that this promotional genre is being considered for the first time not only in book publishing discursive practice, but also within the paradigm of a new scientific direction – marketing linguistics. The research results indicate that the mission genre is stylistically and substantively heterogeneous; its argumentative structure reflects the realization of the functions of informing, influencing, promoting, as well as image-building and differentiating functions. The multi-addressed nature of the publisher's mission genre is expressed in appeals to a mass or target audience of readers, as well as to the professional community of book distributors. The thematic dominant of the texts of the genre under study is the book and everything related to the process of its creation and distribution.

Formation of a Mobilization Mode of Science Management in Russia

The article examines theoretical approaches and practical steps to the formation of a mobilization mode of management in the Russian science policy. The introduction of such a mode is connected with the pressure of sanctions and other restrictions that have appeared since 2022 and the increased task of ensuring technological sovereignty. The aim of the study is to identify the characteristics of the mobilization mode in science and on their basis to analyze the processes occurring in civil science management in Russia in the last 2–3 years. The central questions are how the mode of mobilization is formed and whether all the necessary components ensuring the development of technological sovereignty are taken into account. A mobilization mode in science is generally understood as such management of scientific and technological potential and allocation of resources, under which the primary science and technology tasks of national importance should be solved in an accelerated manner. Drawing on the analysis of previous works, we identify four attributes that should characterize such a regime. They include (1) changes in goal setting, focusing on priority areas of development and restructuring of legal and regulatory frameworks in line with the new goals, (2) growth in research funding and increase in the scientific workforce, (3) organizational changes characterized by increased coordination and centralization, and (4) search for international partners who share the country’s goals and objectives in science and technology. Contemporary Russian science policy is further analyzed on the basis of these attributes. The regulatory and legal framework of science, changes in the system of management and international cooperation, as well as current and planned personnel and financial parameters are considered. We conclude that although the mobilization mode of science management is officially proclaimed, not all its components are developing at the pace and scale required to address new scientific and technological challenges. The most vulnerable components are related to funding and human resources.

Contemporary Russian philosophical studies and evaluations of Sergei Bulgakov’s philosophy

Contemporary Russian philosophical studies and evaluations of Sergei Bulgakov’s philosophy

Linguistic Means of Creating Female Images in Contemporary Russian Fashion Media Discourse

Linguistic Means of Creating Female Images in Contemporary Russian Fashion Media Discourse

Environmental injustice in Russia: internal and settler colonialism in the 21st century extractivist empire

ABSTRACT This review explores the colonial land practices employed by Imperial and Soviet Russia and their enduring influence on environmental inequality in contemporary Russia. Drawing on secondary histories and academic literature in Russian and English, it situates Russian environmental issues within global patterns of colonial ecological violence, emphasizing the historical and ongoing exploitation of Indigenous lands, the marginalization of ethnic minorities, and centralized governance reliant on extractive industries. By employing the decolonial lens, this paper bridges the macro-historical processes of Russian imperialism with micro-level research on resource extraction and pollution. In so doing, it contributes a nuanced perspective on how enduring colonial structures and centralized governance perpetuate environmental inequalities. By synthesizing insights from Environmental Sociology and Russian Area Studies, this paper addresses existing gaps in understanding how colonial legacies shape the contemporary unequal distribution of pollution and environmental harm. The review calls for a decolonial environmental justice lens to analyze these systemic inequalities and to challenge state-promoted narratives of equality, prosperity, and the denial of colonialism in Russia’s history.

Ivan Ilyin’s views on war and violence and their use among Russian religious and military audiences, 2005–2023

Abstract Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin (1883–1954) was a Russian philosopher whose writings have recently resurfaced among Russian political elites and in contemporary Russian Orthodox Church discourse. This article provides a reading of Ilyin’s main works on violence, The Basic Moral Contradiction of War (1914) and On Resistance to Evil by Force (1925), outlining how Ilyin’s texts have been utilised by both the Russian Orthodox Church and security service actors from 2005 to 2023. The case study demonstrates that Ilyin’s writings have been instrumentalised by these groups to support arguments in favour of soldiering and for a deeper connection between the church and the military. This article contributes to our understanding of religious militancy in Russian Orthodox discourse by examining an inherent tension in both Ilyin’s work and its reception among Russian religious and military audiences. The article concludes that both Ilyin and references to his works made by individuals associated with the Russian Orthodox Church rely on a problematically subjective conception of morality and attribute virtue to soldiering.

Russian Obscene Language and New Religious Ontologies

The paper focuses on the resemantisation and the new mythologies of Russian obscene language in present day Orthodox culture and larger cultural contexts. The social history of Russian obscene language (known as mat or maternaia bran’) still appears to be quite obscure and intriguing. Unlike profanities in many other European languages that employed a lot of symbols and topoi from Christian culture, Russian swearing concentrated predominantly on sexual symbolism. Certain researchers still follow the hypothesis by Boris A. Uspensky who argued that Russian mat was historically related to pre‑Christian mythology and rituals including the allegedly existing pagan cult of the “Mother Earth”. Yet this point of view does not seem to be well‑grounded; religious connotations of Russian mat Uspensky proceeded from were probably ascribed to particular formulae only in the 16th and 17th centuries. However, the hypothesis of “pre‑Christian origin” influenced the reception of Russian obscenities in present day Orthodox and secular discourses where mat can be considered as a survival or even a driving force of paganism and Satanism. On the other hand, both Orthodox and other religious / spiritual ontologies in contemporary Russia usually involve “holistic” understanding of obscenities, the latter believed to transmit particularly harmful “energies” which are understood and discussed in terms of physics and biology. Proceeding from these beliefs, ideas, and practices, the article deals with how post‑secular religious ontologies elaborate their own ideas and senses of language that paradoxically intertwine linguistic and semiotic ideologies, moral reasoning, political expectations, and the image of human body. This new mythology of language is obviously linked (but not limited) to the New Age or holistic worldview, where conventional boundaries between material and spiritual, individual and collective, human body and its environment are erased or blurred, and deserves special investigation as an important part of post‑secular and postmodern ontology in general.

Works of Oleg Pavlov in Context of Literary Reflection: A Review of Research

This article addresses the issue of literary reflection on the artistic legacy of contemporary Russian writer Oleg Pavlov. The study is based on critical and journalistic articles, literary analyses of the author’s works, and selected literary pieces. It presents an attempt at a systematic description, generalization, and analysis of Oleg Pavlov’s poetics. For the first time, the article proposes a periodization of the writer’s oeuvre. The author identifies and interprets the classical stages of Pavlov’s creative biography — early (“biographical”), mature (“critical-journalistic”), and late (“reflective”). It is established that literary criticism has offered a mixed assessment of the writer’s artistic mastery, presenting contradictory judgments ranging from condescending and tolerant to sharp and accusatory. On one hand, his prose is associated with the classical literary tradition; on the other hand, a cliché of the “gloomy” writer has emerged. The article highlights a sustained interest in Oleg Pavlov’s works within academic literary studies, identifying mythopoetic, philosophical, historical-cultural, and linguistic research directions. The author concludes that current philological reflection opens up research perspectives in the study of Pavlov’s poetics as a representative of “new realism” in contemporary Russian literature.

Define a Dragon

Define a Dragon

Transformation of the Historical Narratives of the Second World War and the Decommunisation of Memory Policy in Ukraine

In the research note I will analyse the changes of historical narrative of the Second World War and transformation of memory policy in contemporary Ukraine. The aim is to highlights the deconstruction of Soviet mythology of the Great Patriotic War, and the gradual formation of Ukrainian dimension of war instead. The impact of key actors in Ukraine's memory policy will be described, including: scholars who introduced new approaches for deconstruction the Soviet concept of the Great Patriotic War and have been creating a new historical narrative; authors of history textbooks who have been updating the content and improving the teaching methodology; Presidents of Ukraine and politicians who, by decrees and laws, propose changes of official discourse and memorial practices. Decolonisation a historical narrative, as well as the decommunisation of state memory policy in Ukraine regarding the Second World War were perceived by contemporary Russia as a threat. So, the accusations of Ukraine's distortion of the “truth” about the war and the alleged spread of “fascism” and “neo‐Nazism” in Ukraine play a significant role in the Russian hybrid war against Ukraine which started in 2014—and in 2022 evolved into justification for full‐scale aggression.

Between Stalin and Coca-Cola: Postsocialist Geopolitics and Utopian Ambivalence at Castorf’s Volksbühne

This article examines Frank Castorf’s engagement with East-West geopolitics at the Volksbühne, especially in light of the subsequent Russian invasion of Ukraine. In the 1990s, Castorf’s productions focused primarily on postsocialism through an Ost-oriented lens. As NATO expanded eastward, Russia and the work of nineteenth-century novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky became a conceptual space for Castorf to explore the discontents of Western liberal democracies and to sustain a utopian ambivalence or openness. His interpretations of Dostoevsky, starting with Dämonen (1999/2000) and culminating in Die Brüder Karamasow (2015), however, reveal significant shifts in his reception of Russia. In Dämonen, Castorf projected onto Russia a combative, carnivalesque vitality that resisted the perceived consensus and conformism of Western liberal democracies. In Karamasow, the Russia that emerges is more violent, nationalistic, and authoritarian. Here, however, Castorf marks Russian Orthodoxy as the source of its otherness and hence as a terrain where existential questions of morality, politics, and religion remain open. Fully embracing these contradictions, Castorf treats contemporary Russia as a response to the postsocialist condition that takes us beyond the antipodes of Stalin and Coca-Cola.

Theoretical expression of self-portrait in contemporary Russian art history

The article considers the meaningful and conceptual boundaries of self-portrait in the modern Russian art history. A study of self-portrait is being carried out both on the example of intellectual positions of thinkers of the last century and of the scientific works of contemporaries. The text of the article reveals the ideological perspective of the semantic meanings of the self-portrait according to the ideological and constructive views of the present era. The object of research is the portrait genre in the fine art. The subject of research is the theoretical definition of self-portrait in the Russian art history. The purpose of this work is to establish the ideological and substantive values of a self-portrait in the modern art science. According to the set goal, the following tasks are solved: - to provide scientific and theoretical views on the artistic image of a self-portrait of modern researchers of the 21st century; - define terminological lexical units in these judgments, which can subsequently take the role of conceptual values. The novelty of the study is determined by the disclosure of the conceptual and theoretical aspects of the artistic form of a self-portrait, which has strong interpretative significance in the field of contemporary art. The author formulates the following conclusion: the ideological and theoretical expression of a self-portrait in the space of modern art history is revealed through interdisciplinary methods of scientific research, which assert their own terminological units in the meaningful disclosure of the artistic image of the portrait genre. Each of the terms established in the article is related to the conceptual representation of the socio-psychological sphere.

Peculiarities of Teaching Word-derivation and Morphology of Contemporary Russian Language at the Philological Faculty in Shenzhen MSU-BIT University

The article deals with the peculiarities of teaching word-derivation and morphology of contemporary Russian language in the 3rd academic year at the Philological faculty in Shenzhen MSU-BIT university. The article contains brief description of this course and its position in the system of philological subjects, characterizes peculiar features of organizing seminars and effective teaching techniques, specifies different forms of students’ knowledge assessment and defines difficulties that students experience while studying the course.