The article analyzes the terms on gastronomic culture, recorded in the first half of the 18th century by the Russian traveler Jacob Lindenau for the first time. As a participant of the Second Kamchatka expedition (1739–1743), he recorded Yakut terms denoting the culinary culture and the culture of eating of the people along with invaluable ethnographic material. Lindenau wrote them down in a specific way according to his transcription due to the absence of the Yakut alphabet at that time.The materials of Lindenau were not available for a long time. His book was published only in Soviet times, in 1983 and it represents invaluable and rich material for studying not only history and ethnography, but also the culture of the Sakha people. Lindenau was one of the first to record the terms of traditional Yakut food in his materials, left descriptions of products, types of food products and methods of their preparation. Still, there has not yet been conducted a separate monographic study of the national gastronomic culture of the Yakuts at the present stage in the cultural aspect. The author of the article substantiates the theoretical understanding of the gastronomic culture of the Yakuts, makes an attempt to transcribe the terms of the culinary culture of the Yakuts with the purpose of a detailed study of the culture of the people. The materials of the article are words not transcribed into the modern Yakut language, this article based on the materials of Lindenau. Most of the Yakut terms of gastronomic culture were introduced by him for the first time. The author included research methods terminological, lexical-semantic analysis, methods of defining concepts, and sampling. The results of the study are 44 terms of national gastronomic culture that have been transcribed and analyzed. Lindenau first described meat products, which included meat of large and small animals, various types of waterfowl, forest birds, wild and domestic animals, mentioned 11 types of different fish, and left notes on 12 different types of dairy products. Lindenau was one of the first to describe the culture of eating among the Yakuts. The researcher recorded several types (boiled, fried, dried, frozen, jerked) of preparation of meat and fish products, cited 5 Yakut names of fish dishes, 12 different types of dairy products, in total cited 12 types of plants as 7 names of roots, 2 names of herbs, 2 names of leaves and sapwood (bes uere), which the Yakuts used for food.

Introduction. The relevance of studying the verbal component of travel media texts is due to the development of new forms of communication in the modern information society; the popularization of travel journalism; the dynamics of linguistic changes under the influence of digitalization and mediatization processes; the lack of knowledge of the linguistic means of organizing travel media at different levels. Aim. To describe the specifics of functioning of the impersonal sentences with modal modifiers in modern travel media texts. Sources, materials, and research methods. Research sources: 169 travel media texts implementing the communicative scenario “travel through the territory” and posted on the Internet portals “Voyage”, “Russian Traveler” and “Rest in Russia”. Research material: the author's file of examples, including 257 impersonal sentences with modal operators. Methods of collecting and researching linguistic material: continuous sampling, descriptive-analytical, functional-semantic, contextual and quantitative analyses. Results. It is established that impersonal sentences with modal modifiers are a prominent part of the syntactic “landscape” of media texts-“instructions” and “destination” media texts. They use a limited range of modal operators that implement in contexts different submoduses of common meanings of possibility/impossibility and necessity, as well as infinitives included in certain lexico-semantic subgroups of verbs – movement, food consumption, acquisition, etc. The activity of dissected structures with a postpositive position of the modal modifier is noted. Scientific novelty. The scientific novelty of the work is to identify the specifics of the functioning of the structures under consideration, due to the communicative scenario of travel media texts, their communicative tactics and attitudes. Practical significance. The obtained results can be used in the complex analysis of travel media texts in the framework of university courses “Media Linguistics”, “Theory of linguistic units and practice of speech”, “Communicative Linguistics”, etc.

This study aims to identify the philosophical and anthropological aspects of the forms and nature of the interaction between aesthetic experiences obtained in real or imaginary life experience and the formation of the semantic integrity of the individual. To achieve this aim, the concept of the “aesthetic” proposed by the outstanding Russian philosopher A. F. Losev was taken as a theoretical premise. The works of domestic authors, which provide an analysis of the category of “aesthetic”, were also analyzed. Based on this methodological premise, a textual analysis of the diary entries of the famous Russian traveler F. F. Konyukhov, which he made during his solo circumnavigation, was carried out. Along with this, a figurative and semantic examination of the film “Himalaya, Where the Wind Dwells (Himalayaeui sonyowa)” (2008) by the South Korean film director Jeon Soo-il and the film “Wild” by the director Jean-Marc Vallée (USA, 2014) is presented. These films also raise the problem of correlating aesthetic experiences and the semantic integrity of the subject. The novelty of this study lies in the fact that the consideration of aesthetic experiences in connection with the formation of the semantic integrity of the subject’s self-consciousness is given on the basis of real or imaginary experience, which allows us to connect theoretical points with real life situations. As a result of the analysis, it was revealed that aesthetic feelings of a certain type, which are given in experience, serve as one of the significant factors in the formation of the semantic integrity of the subject.

This article deals with the issue of lexical explication of geocultural territory images in tourist discourse. As a linguistic tool for creating authentic images of spaces in “other cultures”, the author considers exotic lexemes functioning in the relatively new magazine “Russian Traveler” as a written alternative of tourist discourse. By continuous sampling of the issues for the period 2023–2024 a selection of 238 exotic words was made. These words were interpreted with the help of lexicographic and ethnographic sources as well as contextual analysis. In the process of systematising the linguistic material, 12 thematic groups of exoticisms with different frequency were identified: “Natural geographical objects”, “Food and drinks”, “Mythology”, “Plant world”, etc. These groups describe basic fragments of the ethnic world view. The use of various thematic groups of exoticisms-appellatives as well as simultaneous functioning of realonyms and mythonyms, among which there are theonyms, hydronyms, anthroponyms, demononyms, toponyms, and other semantic subgroups of the above lexicon, makes it possible to create geocultural images of territories at the verbal level of the analysed texts in conjunction with their physical and geographical, sociocultural, traditional and domestic, ethnic, and other components. In general, exotic vocabulary in tourist discourse actualises readers’ background knowledge about “other” countries, regions, towns and cities, explicates ritual meanings, supports ethnostereotypes, thus contributing to the promotion of a tourist product.

In the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, Russian military travellers dedicated significant attention to the study of the military organisation of the peoples of Central Asia. The focal point of this study is the Kashgarian army during the reign of Yaqub Beg. The materials of Russian military Orientalists who repeatedly visited Kashgaria of that period provide evidence for the peculiar form of recruitment, training and armament of the Kashgarian army, in which a certain role was assigned to English and Turkish instructors.

This article examines the three translations of Nikolai Karamzin’s Letters of a Russian Traveler published in nineteenth-century France. Relying on Descriptive Translation Studies so as to challenge the traditional narrative about the political innocuousness of Karamzin’s travelogue, it reconstructs the historical contexts of the three publications in order to highlight the political agendas of their translators and/or translating patrons. Far from being the innocent product of the translators’ sheer curiosity, the three translations prove to be political objects, used at three key moments in the history of Franco-Russian relations in the nineteenth century, in order to call for political change, to try and restore Russia’s damaged reputation, or to attempt to forge new diplomatic alliances.

Loanwords are the terms borrowed from one language to another as a result of cultural contacts and thus carrying valuable information about the multifaceted mutual impacts, both direct and indirect, between different languages. In the history of Russian lexicology, much attention has been paid to words originating from European languages (Anglicisms, Gallicisms, and Germanisms), while the evolution and adaptation of Chinese loanwords have received little interest so far. In this article, the use of Chinese loanwords in the Russian texts of the 19th and early 20th centuries, specifically in the works by B.A. Pilnyak, a distinguished Soviet writer, and Y.P. Kovalevsky, a famous Russian traveler, scholar, and public figure, was analyzed. By introducing new sources into the scholarly discourse, the functional characteristics of these words were examined, as well as their forms and meanings, variant types, and other relevant features. Since many of them are not reflected in the existing lexicographic records, the results obtained are especially important. Many Chinese loanwords coined in the Russian language are still to be identified and described, which requires the incorporation of new text corpora and the work with explanatory and etymological dictionaries. The insights gained unveil the history of contacts between Russia and China.

The article treats with the participants of the 1904—1905 voyage around Africa of the 2nd Pacific Squadron under the command of Zinoviy Rozhestvensky and their contribution to the accumulation of knowledge about the Black Continent. The role of the Squadron’s predecessors in the exploration of Africa, Russian travellers and scientists, as well as military sailors, who had been conducting long voyages since 1803, the results of which were reflected, in particular, on the pages of the Marine Collection and travel reports, is noted. A distinctive Squadron’s contribution to the study of Africa has been revealed, which is that for the first time, an unprecedented large number of travellers from various social and professional backgrounds have left numerous and diverse documents of personal origin about African territories little known to Russians.

The paper explores the linguistic and cultural patterns behind an oral incantation against snakebite that appears on the last page of a Middle Bulgarian book of psalms. The manuscript dates back to the 14th century, and was created in the Eastern regions of Medieval Bulgaria, observing the orthography of the Tarnovo Literary traditions. The Russian traveller Norov found the book of psalms during a trip to the Holy Land at the beginning of the 19th century and brought it to Russia. The incantation contains a significant number of words of unclear origin. Yatsimirskiy – the first researcher of this incantation – offers two possible explanations about the source language that allude either to its derivation from an Oriental tongue, or to local folklore practices. Modern Russian researchers maintain the hypothesis about its folklore origin and emphasise its opening words sarandara/marandara as an example of ritual nonsense speech – in their view, this could have been a popular phenomenon in the ethnic religious practices of Slavic communities. After a linguistic analysis of the text and its unclear words, I hypothesise that the words belong to one of a range at used the incantation.

The article is devoted to the formation mechanism of national cultural myths about Europe in “Letters of a Russian Traveler” by N. Karamzin. Using the example of four countries, visited by the Russian traveler (Germany, Switzerland, France and England), we explore the main models for creation of national cultural myths. The example of Germany shows the importance of the traveler’s empirical experience in the absence of literary cultural mythology concerning this country. The experience of Switzerland allows the traveler to project his own personal experience on the myth already established in literature, describing Switzerland as the Arcadia of modern times, the country where the “golden age” reigns. The national cultural mythology of France allows the traveler to compare the 18th-century myth of Francocentric Europe, when France performed the role of cultural hegemon, with the historical realities of the French Revolution, which gradually turn France into an outsider country in the eyes of other European monarchies. N. Karamzin’s world image of England is the most complex version of the national cultural myth. On the one hand, the Russian traveler compares the realities of genuine English life with the image of foggy Albion and its inhabitants, which he formed under the influence of reading English novels in the context of the Enlightenment bibliophilic cultural myth. On the other hand, his analysis of the main national features of the English people allows the traveler to think about identifying himself as a Russian person, to compare the English world image with the Russian one, stating the existence of a number of differences between them.

By analyzing works of second-row sentimentalist writers of the early 19th century, the research aims to identify the imagological aspects peculiar to the travelogues of these authors. The article contains imagological analysis of four sentimental travelogues: “The Journey through the Whole Crimea and Bessarabia in 1799” by P. I. Sumarokov (1800), “The Journey to Kazan, Vyatka and Orenburg in 1800” by M. I. Nevzorov (1800), “The Journey to Ukraine” by P. I. Shalikov (1803), “Letters from London” by P. I. Makarov (1805). The researchers make conclusions pertaining to the manner and methods of depiction of the “alien” in the traditions of sentimentalism. The research is original in that it is the first one to identify the imagological aspects characteristic of the sentimental prose of the 18th and 19th centuries, employing the works of the most popular genre during this period (besides the novella), namely, the travelogue. As a result, it was found that sentimentalism, with its cult of sensitivity and empathy, assumed thoughtful observation of other people’s life, deep understanding of people and interest to their inner world. The genre of travelogue allowed the writers to immerse themselves into a foreign cultural environment, paying much attention to the image of “aliens”. Following N. M. Karamzin, who had popularized this genre (“Letters of a Russian Traveler”, 1791-1792), many other writers appeared in Russian literature, who described their journeys in a sentimental way. Travel, as a method of self-development and cross-cultural understanding, aligned with Enlightenment ideals and their emphasis on knowledge.

The Russian State Library (RSL) holds a photographic album of 87 Chinese view images, dated 1876 and erroneously attributed to the St. Petersburg photographer N.A. Ermolin. The present article publishes the results of the research which showed that in reality this album was probably collected by the Russian traveller, writer, doctor and amateur artist P.Ya. Pyasetsky (1843—1920) during the scientific and trade expedition of 1874—1875 to China, organized by the Russian government for commercial, reconnaissance and scientific purposes. P.Ya. Pyasetsky, attached to the mission as a scientist and medic, during the journey acquired, by his own admission, a number of pictures from the British photographer W. Saunders, who had settled in Shanghai after the Opium Wars of the mid-century. Upon P.Ya. Pyasetsky’s return home, N.A. Ermolin reshot (with his permission) the photographs purchased in China and began to distribute copies on the market. A collection of such copies is probably in the Russian State Library.The article shows that the authorship of the original photographs from the album actually belongs not only to W. Saunders, but also to many other Western photographers from Great Britain, America and Australia. It is established how they got to P.Ya. Pyasetsky; why he needed to compile such an album, given that the expedition had a staff photographer; how P.Ya. Pyasetsky, being an artist and organizer of art and ethnographic exhibitions, used the photographs he bought.

The article analyzes “Letters of a Russian Traveler” by Nikolay Karamzin in terms of the symbolic-mythological perception of space, suggesting a view of the countries, depicted in the travelogue, as symbolic-mythological units of the “mental map” in the book. A “mental map” is understood as a holistic image of a geographical space, value-restructured in accordance with the author’s vision of European cultural and the historical situation. The purpose of the work is to reveal the hidden additional plot of Karamzin’s book, which determines the logic of the perception of geographical space and its comprehension, taking into account the historical and political situation witnessed by Karamzin’s hero-traveler. Using the methodology of the structural-semiotic, historical-genetic and comparative-typological reading of the text, as well as the methodology of human geography, the article shows how Karamzin generalizes ideas about the logic of the Western European history and culture development at the end of the 18th century. We also characterize the writer’s symbolic and mythological view of the cultural dialogue between Russia and Europe, the place and role of the “Letters...” of France, Switzerland, England and the countries of the German world on the “mental map”. Conclusions are drawn about the significance of the spatial image of “Letters...” for the design of Karamzin’s historical and political concept of the late 18th century, in which the key role was played by the ideas of the dialogue, the ability to evaluate the achievements of European culture and to develop the potential of Russian culture.

Aim. To analyze the specifics of organizing a creative dialogue with the reader in the structure of A. S. Pushkin’s unfinished prose in the aspect of genetic connections with the traditions of the rococo novel, to establish structural units of Pushkin’s text associated with the rocaille novel, to reveal the features of expressing the author’s view of literature as a living, developing system that requires special erudition and responsiveness from the reader.Methodology. The analysis proposed in the article is based on the principles of historical-genetic and comparative-typological analysis of a literary work. Characterization of the main elements of the text, comparable to the Rococo novel as a literary, polemical and metatextual phenomenon, is carried out using elements of the structural-semiotic method, as well as elements of cultural semiotics.Results. The analysis undertaken made it possible to identify literary motifs in Pushkin’s unfinished works – “Arap of Peter the Great”, “Novel in Letters”, “Roslavlev”, as well as to consider the significance for the design of Pushkin’s historical and literary concept, to identify the features of its substantive and formal aspects, to establish genetic sources of the similar “games with the reader” associated with the rocaille traditions of Western Europe, as well as the work of N. M. Karamzin, primarily with his book “Letters of a Russian Traveller”.Research implications. The results of the study can be the basis for considering the historical and literary concept of Pushkin as a whole, as well as studying the concept of literary play, the motive of the hero-reader in a literary work, as well as the deep processes of transformation occurring in the novel at the turn of the 18th – 19th centuries.

Статья посвящена проблеме языка тревел-медиадискурса. Цель работы – выявить основные модели итеронимов (наименований туристских маршрутов) в современных тревел-медиатекстах и описать их. Актуальность темы обусловлена популяризацией в медиапространстве внутреннего туризма; интересом филологов к своеобразию вербального и невербального компонентов тревел-медиатекстов; малоизученностью ономастикона журналов путешествий. Предмет исследования составляет структурная организация итеронимов в тревелмедиатекстах. Фактическим материалом исследования выступает отечественный глянцевый журнал-тревеллер «Russian Traveler», аудитория которого насчитывает свыше 550 000 человек. Анализу подвергался контент 11 выпусков журнала за 2022–2024 гг. При систематизации материала использовались методы контекстуального и количественного анализа данных, описательный метод. Новизна работы связана с рассмотрением итеронимов как инструмента смыслопорождения в тревел-медиатекстах и установлением зависимости между их моделью и функциональными возможностями. В исследуемом журнальном контенте автор выделяет однокомпонентные, двухкомпонентные и поликомпонентные модели итеронимов, дифференцирует их на продуктивные и непродуктивные. Самыми продуктивными в собранном материале являются двухкомпонентные модели «И. п. им. сущ. + Р. п. им. сущ.» и «И. п. им. сущ. + И. п. им. прилаг.», грамматически представленные простыми словосочетаниями с управлением или согласованием компонентов. Ядром почти всех выделенных моделей итеронимов выступают топонимы, что обусловлено коммуникативным сценарием «путешествие по территории» тревел-медиатекстов и локативностью как одной из ключевых их интенций. В структуре итеронимических единиц отмечены не только общеизвестные астионимы, гидронимы, оронимы, хоронимы, но и вернакулярные топонимы, вторые официальные имена, а также искусственно созданные единицы. Автор приходит к выводу, что при увеличении количества компонентов структурной модели итеронима расширяется и его функциональный потенциал, поскольку двух-, трех-, четырех- и пятикомпонентные итеронимы, помимо информативносодержательного компонента, способны включать имплицитные смыслы, культурно-исторические, эмоционально-оценочные, этнографические и иные типы коннотаций. The article deals with the issue of the language of travel media discourse. The purpose of this work is to identify and describe the main models of iteronyms (names of tourist routes) in modern tourist media texts. The relevance of the topic is due to the combination of linguistic and extralinguistic reasons: popularization of domestic tourism in media space; the interest of philologists in the originality of the verbal and non-verbal components of the travel media texts; the unexplored onomasticon of travel magazines. The subject of the study is the structural organization of iteronyms in the modern travel media texts. The actual material of the study is the glossy magazine “Russian Traveler” with the audience of over 550,000 people. The content of 11 magazine issues for 2022–2024 was analyzed. Descriptive and contextual methods, as well as the method of quantitative analysis were used in the systematization of the material. The novelty of the work is determined by the consideration of iteronyms as a tool of meaning generation in the travel media texts and establishing dependence between their model and functionality. In the studied magazine content, the author identifies one-component, two-component and polycomponent models of iteronyms, differentiating them to productive and unproductive. The most productive in the collected material are two component models of “Nominative case of a noun + Genitive case of the noun” and “Nominative case of a noun + Nominative case of the adjective”, grammatically represented by simple phrases with government or coordination of the components. The nucleus of almost all the studied iteronyms models are toponyms, which is due to the communicative script “Traveling through the territory” of the travel media texts and location as one of their key intentions. In the structure of iteronyms, not only well known toponyms are noted, but also vernacular toponyms, the second official names, as well as artificially created units. The author concludes that with an increase in the number of components of the structural model of iteronyms, its functional potential is expanding, since two-, three-, four- and five-component iteronyms, in addition to an informative component, can include implicit meanings, cultural and historical, emotional and value, ethnographic and other types of connotations.

The article deals with the problem of the effectiveness of the advertising language of the subject area “Tourism”, specifically, with the peculiarity of the organization of advertising texts at the lexical level. The purpose of the study is to model the onomastic stratum of the national tourist advertising discourse as a result of the denotative classification of proper names and the definition of their functions. The paper analyzes the multigenre advertising content of a new periodical among the domestic media — the magazine “Russian Traveler”, from which 270 proprietary tokens were extracted in 2022‒2023. Three main methods were used in the interpretation and systematization of linguistic material: descriptive, contextual analysis and modeling. It is established that the structure of the onomastic stratum of the advertising texts of the travelogue “Russian Traveler” is formed by 13 domains: natural-physical toponymic, natural-anthropogenic toponymic, cultural-geographical toponymic, urban, anthroponymic, ethnonymic, ergonymic, biblionymic, mythological, pragmatonymic, eventonymic, fictonymic and iteronymic. According to the number of incoming proprietary units, the most numerous are natural-physical, natural-anthropogenic, cultural-geographical toponymic domains as well as urban, which is determined by the content of the studied travelogue magazine. The volume of onyms included in the listed classification taxa is approximately 73 % of the entire author’s index of examples. The names of the selected domains act as multifunctional units and perform attractive, informative-identifying, individualizing, expressive, evaluative-characterizing and other functions. It is noted that, interacting with each other in texts, proper names participate in the linguistic world modeling of reality in the addressee’s mind. The author comes to the conclusion that units of the reconstructed onomastic stratum are actively involved in creating the geocultural image — the topos of Russia as a geographically huge multi-confessional country with unique climatic conditions, original culture of the regions and rich historical past.

This study explores issues related to the work of customs and border crossings by travellers from the territories of the Russian Empire. The article analyses travel notes, diaries, memoirs, and correspondence of several Ukrainian and Russian travellers who journeyed through European countries during the 19th century. The research primarily focuses on the narratives of Ukrainian and Russian travellers, including O. Bodyansky, H. Halahan, A. Glagolev, P. Kovalevsky, I. Sreznevsky, and others. It was found that travellers paid the most attention to crossing the Russian-Austrian border and, accordingly, to Russian and Austrian customs, there were several reasons for this: first, the main overland transport routes to France, Britain, and the German lands passed through Austro-Hungarian territories. Second, the first experience of crossing the border was associated with Russian and Austrian customs. However, travellers considered the work of British, Belgian, and French customs to be the most professional. The study identifies a typical list of prohibitions on the import or export of certain goods, such as tobacco, tea, printed materials (including books, sheet music, and newspapers, especially during the rise of revolutionary movements in Europe), and others. The letters of third parties, not belonging to the travellers, were also subject to inspection. Due to certain reasons defined by the specifics of Russian imperial internal policy and censorship bans, travellers resorted to smuggling printed materials. Illegal activities during border crossings in European countries were associated with ignorance of local laws, significant customs sizes (according to subjective considerations), and the lack of information about the presence of prohibited goods in rented transport. The study also reveals that rumors about customs officials’ bribery and horrific inspections were mostly unfounded. However, travellers did document numerous instances where officials violated the law and exceeded their official powers.

The article is an attempt to specify the genesis of the image of Laurence Sterne as it was created and presented by Nickolai Karamzin in the early 1790s. Karamzin’s Sterne, the most influential among other such attempts in Russian culture, turns out to be primarily French and imitative. Namely, the fragment “A Poor Man and His Dog”, presented in Karamzin’s Moscow Magazine (1792) as “Sterne’s work”, appears to be a translation not of Sterne but of an interpolation made by his French translator into the French version of Tristram Shandy. The very choice of fragments from Sterne presented in the Moscow Magazine (1791–1792) reflects not the editor’s own taste, but is a replication of the most common items from popular anthological editions of “The Beauties of Sterne”. Karamzin’s culturally influential decision not to translate and consequently not to introduce into Russian culture the original English notions of ‘sentimental’ and ‘humour’ is explained by the fact that he had viewed them through the prism of particular French texts-intermediaries. Karamzin’s insistence on reading Sterne “with tears in the eyes” and on alluding to him (in Letters of a Russian Traveller) primarily in melancholic charnel locations that made Sterne practically indistinguishable from Edward Young goes back not to the original Sterne, but to his later French imitators, such as François Vernes. Karamzin’s Sterne is contrasted with the assimilation of original narrative experiments and humour of Tristram by other Russian authors of the same period but of a different circle, Fyodor Rostopchin and Ivan Martynov.

The impressions of Russian travellers regarding the Italian region of Campania, the russkaya "neapolitana ”, are the subject of several studies that not only systematically catalogue the works of Russian intellectuals, artists and aristocrats, starting from the eighteenth century onwards, but also present an indepth critical examination aimed at incorporating Russian diaries, memoirs, short stories and poems into the extensive literature about travelling around Italy. In the panorama of literature regarding travelling around Italy, Naples undoubtedly occupies a central position, being the highpoint of a trip to the “Land of Lemons”, a distorted mirror of the myth of Italy for foreign travellers, who would virtually always reach the South at the end of their journey. The Neapolitan locus appears in a double guise - as a lively land, rich in wonders and a source of marvels as well as a place of filth, cowardice and extreme misery, sharply contrasting with the radiant serenity of its inhabitants. It was this antithesis that struck a great number of Russian travellers who journeyed to Naples from the eighteenth century onwards. In fact, for almost all of them, this city represented something “out of the ordinary”. The image of Naples and its surroundings, conveyed by memoirs, travel diaries, various descriptions and views, emphasises a vibrant dimension, an effect of extraordinariness, and the quirky cheerfulness of Neapolitans in the face of life’s adversities from extreme poverty to the ever-present apocalyptic threat in the shape of Mount Vesuvius, a paradigmatic challenge that captivates the foreign visitor. The accounts of Russian travellers about Naples and its surroundings intensified in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This article examines a selection of memoirs recorded in the travelogues of a number of Russian “tourists” (P.P. Muratov, N.A. Lukhmanova, S.S. Glagol’ (Goloushev), V.V. Rozanov, M.A. Osorgin, M.V. Dobuzhinskiy, I.A. Bunin, V.V. Veydle), who, being enchanted by the Gulf of Naples, mapped its cultural and interpretative “geography”. While the red thread of the russkaya "neapolitana ” is essentially the inherently Russian perception of the Campania felix, where the expanse of the Gulf of Naples is perceived as a mirage to aspire to, despite the looming threat of Mount Vesuvius, each of the Russian travellers mentioned in this article contributes to the creation of an image of Naples and its surroundings that seeks to transcend the Romantic and Decadent cliches of “paradise vs hell”, as well as to provide the Russian reader with a cultural insight into the Neapolitan way of life and customs. From an imagological perspective, this part of Italy is regarded, described and narrated via the cognitive spectrum of the “outsider”, yet mediated at the same time by a somewhat deeper factual knowledge of the genuine Neapolitan life. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

The genre of travel notes or a traveler's diary is definitely of interest to a wide audience and to field researchers due to the close interweaving of the cognitive and emotional levels of perception of the events observed by the author. The classic works of cultural anthropology are precisely the field notes from which future generations learn. The book under review Appropriation of Space from the series Letters of a Russian Traveler does not pretend to be scientific, but this is its advantage. The author, prose-writer Ilya Kochergin, based the text on his autobiographical experience of travelling in Siberia in the 1990s. He plunges into his memories to bring to life visions of the past. The first part of the book, Sensitivity to Geography, tells the story of his return to Altai, where he once was a forester in the Barguzinsky Nature Reserve. Despite all the measures taken, human intervention is visible in the Reserve. The author questions the very possibility for a city-dweller to experience virgin nature. In the second part, My House, the author takes the reader from the mystical space of the Altai mountains to the construction of a house in a village in the Ryazan region. The collective image here is associated with the interpretation of historical heritage. While the first chapter runs about man and nature, the second is devoted to the city versus the countryside. The third part brings the readers to the natural landscape of the middle zone, to fields, swamps, rivers, and forests. We cannot get back to nature, the cultivated lands are void of life, people, animals… The author observes the world shrink over the past decades: Russian cultural code rife with concepts of grandeur and vastness of the environment has been passed down from generation to generation, yet now it might not be adequate. In modern Russian society, the urban population predominates; in large agglomerations it is difficult to feel the true space and breadth. In the fourth part, Walks in the Water Meadows, I. Kochergin shares a tourist’s view of outdoor recreation on the left bank of the Oka river between Old Ryazan and Kasimov. The image of almost untouched nature relatively close to Moscow causes him boredom, anxiety or even fear. In the wild, different species of animals coexist in the same territory; it belongs to them, and humans are strangers here. In the final part, Inheritance, the author sets off with his teenage son along the route to the Barguzinsky Nature Reserve. A lot has changed in 30 years: transport accessibility, everyday life, and perhaps people. This part poses the key question of the book: “How can you inherit a space that doesn’t seem to belong to you? At times it is completely yours, appropriated and mastered, and at times it is completely alien.” Thus, balancing between involvement and alienation, Ilya Kochergin shares his field experience, shedding light on what is outside the urban civilization.