Russian Worldview Research Articles

Головні наративи сучасної російської пропаганди як впливогенна проблематика в умовах консцієнтальної війни Росії проти України

The objective of the study is to identify the main narratives of Russian propaganda as impact-generating issues in the Ukrainian media space in terms of consciental war of Russia against Ukraine. The methods of theoretical and methodological analysis and generalization substantiate how intensive and massive penetration of Russian narratives is implemented in the media segment of Russia and post-Soviet countries, in particular Ukraine. The narratives of the modern and histor-ical Russian propaganda are analyzed. It is shown that Russian propaganda consists of: 1) the veiled propaganda targeted at the population of Ukraine, which is close to the Ukrainian worldview in the system of coordinates, or which has an uncertain position (this type of propa-ganda aims to undermine the legitimacy and public support of the Ukrainian authorities); 2) The overt propaganda targeted mainly at the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine, which is in the system of coordinates close to the Russian worldview in the system of coordinates, or which has an uncertain position. Russian propaganda uses the narratives that manipulate using strong emo-tions. The narratives of the modern Russian propaganda – “Crimes of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and Minsk Arrangements” and “Ukraine – “Failed State” as well as the narratives of the historical Russian propaganda “All Ukrainian Nationalists were Fascists” and “Ukraine Forgot about the Victory over Nazism” are determined by the method of induction, deduction and generalization. These narratives are formed by virtual mythical facts, contain the concepts with powerful impact-generating potential and are the warfare by which it is implemented ma-nipulation of strong emotions and consciental impact on the recipients in order to shift their identities.

Topical Methods for Shaping a Linguistic World View in International Relations Students

The language is a specific type of human activity, «a shape of thought». As a means of communication, it acts as an exponent of the speaker’s spirit and world outlook. The issue of shaping a linguistic world view in students of non-linguistic colleges and, in particular, the problem of the language impact on the way of view of life still requires its solution. The author of the article harks back to the history of foreign linguistic school of thoughts of German linguists Wilhelm von Humboldt (founder of theoretical linguistics) and Johann Leo Weisgerber (who proposed the term «the linguistic world view»), of American ethno-linguists Edward Sepir (author of the comprehensive typological classification of languages of the world) and Benjamin Whorf (author of the theory of linguistic relativity), of an English philosopher John Langsho Ostin, one of the creators of the theory of speech acts. The article mentions some ideas of the Russian world view presented in works of the national linguists, such as A.A. Potebnya, A. Vezhbitskaya, Ye.S. Kubryakova, V.M. Vorobyev. Drawing on many years of experience of teaching the English language in departments of international relations, linguistics and translation studies in St. Petersburg Institute for External Economic Relations, Economics and Law, the author examines the methods of shaping the linguistic world view in students of International Relations and Linguistics. As an example, the author brings forth a scenario of the lecture course in the discipline «Professional Foreign Language (English) in Studying the Topic «National Identity».

Особенности репрезентации концепта ГРАЖДАНСТВЕННОСТЬ в русской национальной картине мира

In connection with the increased interest in the topic of patriotism in modern Russia the concept GRAZHDANSTVENNOST’ (CIVIC CONSCIOUSNESS) appears most attractive to linguists. The aim of the study is to identify and analyze the features of linguistic representation of the concept CIVIC CONSCIOUSNESS in the Russian world view. The study sets out to solve the following issues: to identify the content of the concept CIVIC CONSCIOUSNESS and to place it in the Russian world view as well as in the Russian artistic picture of the world based on the material of the Russian Language National Corpus. The following words were found to be related to the concept under study: citizenship, civic, citizen. The analysis of the content of the anthropomorphic axiological concept revealed some features related to a motivating act “citizen”. The conceptual framework was found to include the following features: “property”, “quality”, “sense”, “morality”, “consciousness”, “right”, “obligation”, “duty”, “civil society”, “state”, “patriotism”. “Civilization” and “social status” seem to be archaic conceptual features. On the basis of the studied material, the following value signs of CIVIC CONSCIOUSNESS can be pointed out: “activity”, “will”, “readiness”, “values”, “culture”, “thinking”, “responsibility”, “attitude”, “position”, “role”, “ability”, “consciousness”, “self-consciousness”, “property”, “skill”, “emotions”, “courage”, “principled”, “country”, “activity”, “democracy”, “Russia”. The analysis of the material of the Russian Language National Corpus revealed the following features in the structure of the concept: categorical, evaluative and conceptual figurative features.

Activism in the Worldview of Russians

The article is devoted to the analysis of the social phenomenon of “self-sufficiency” and the development of the “activist” type of worldview of Russians. The authors call self-sufficiency the ability of people (according to self-assessment) to live and provide for themselves, relying only on their own strength, without the help of the state. Attribution to the “activist” type of worldview is based on the installation of self-sufficiency, active defense of their interests, search and development of new (initiative, enterprise). The “ activist “type is analyzed in comparison with the passivist” type (it is based on the attitudes towards dependence / assistance of the state, adaptation to reality, conservatism / adherence to customs, traditions). The empirical base of the article is the data of a nationwide representative surveys FNESC Russian Academy of Sciences (formerly the Institute of sociology, RAS) carried out in 2005-2019 years. The objectives of the study were to analyze the dynamics of attitudes to self-sufficiency and activist type of worldview, to clarify the social base of their carriers, to confirm the previously made conclusions about the socially significant transformative potential of the carriers of these attitudes. The authors analyzed the perception of the carriers of “activist” attitudes of priorities in the qualities of people, values of personal and public good, attitude to work in the context of life success and traditional morality, priorities in the development of the country. The scrapping in 2018 of the previously identified trend for the growth of attitudes to “selfsufficiency” and active protection of their rights was noted. The change in dynamics is associated with pension reform. The development of the Self-oriented model of the worldview is fixed, when the private life of a person comes to the fore, and interaction with the surrounding world turns out to be rather on the periphery of interests. There is an increase in alienation from the state, the formation of tolerance for deviation from traditional morality in order to achieve success, while at the same time the demand for working formal rules, for life according to the law, and not “according to concepts”.

A Model of Phraseosemantic Field of Temporality in Russian Phraseology

The article deals with the expressions of time (the sample includes about 500 phraseological units with the temporal meaning) in the Russian worldview on the material of Russian phraseology. Phraseological units are analyzed alongside with the construction of a semantic field: such approach allows distinguishing the peculiarities of understanding of time by a concrete ethnos and helps to reveal the cultural-historical stereotypes based on the national mentality and religious ideas. A group of phraseological units with the common semantic component “time” is treated in the paper as a phraseosemantic field. The notion of time may be the basic one in the semantic structure of a phraseological unit; temporality may be also expressed in the form of a characteristic of a phenomenon, process or quality. In accordance with various degree of semantic proximity of phraseological units, the phraseosemantic field is subdivided into segments, and they, in their turn, are broken into microsegments (for example, the segment - units with the meaning of a stretch of time, microsegments - the initial phase of an action, the phase of the maximum manifestation of the properties, the final phase of an action). The article singles out 13 segments of the phraseosemantic field under study and defines its structure (the core phraseological units reflect the temporal notions from a distance, as a manifestation of changeability; around the core of the field there are groups of phraseological units the meanings of which, alongside the temporal seme, incorporate other ones, characterizing a concrete situation or object). It is noted that the differences between the units of the same segment may be either denotative or expressive-stylistical (some of them are typical of the literary style, while others have the features of the low colloquial nature). The author considers the mechanisms of transfer of meaning and idiomatization which result in the emergence of phraseological units and the process of metaphorization. Special attention is paid to nationally-specific units, and specifically to those associated with historical realia. It is convenient to represent the structure of the phraseosemantic field in the form of radar chart (in which the core area is surrounded by a number of sectors).

The Russian People as They Are. Turgenev’s View

The question of the Russian man – his past, present and future – is the central one in the philosophy of history. Unfortunately, at present this area of philosophy is not suffciently developed in Russia. Partly the reason for this situation is the lack of understanding by researchers of the role played by Russian classical literature and its philosophizing writers in historiosophy. The Hunting Sketches, a collection of short stories by I.S. Turgenev, is a work still undervalued, not fully considered not only in details but also in general meanings. And this is understandable because it is the frst systematic encyclopedia of Russian worldview, which is not envisaged by the literary genre. To a certain extent, Turgenev’s line is continued by I. Goncharov (the theme of the mind and heart), L. Tolstoy (the theme of the living and the dead, nature and society, the people and the lords), F. Dostoevsky (natural and rational rights), A. Chekhov (worthy and vulgar life). This article examines the philosophical nature of The Hunting Sketches, its structure and content. According to author’s opinion, stories can be divided into ten groups according to their dominant meanings. Thus, in The Hunting Sketches the main Russian types are depicted: “natural man,” rational, submissive, cunning, honest, sensitive, passionate, poetic, homeless, suffering, calmly accepting death, imbued with the immensity of the world. In the image and the comments of the wandering protagonist, Ivan Turgenev reveals his own philosophical credo, which he defnes as a moderate liberalism – freedom of thought and action, without prejudice to others.

The Ancient Slavs in the Russian Poetry of the 19th Century

The article considers the regularities of the depiction of the ancient Slavs by the Russian poetry of the 19th century, which, like literature in General, was a factor in the national consciousness of the era of Poets, based on the perception of the world and the culture of the ancestors of the Russian people, build an artistic concept, where the special inherent in a particular time is recognizable and after many centuries, helping to clarify the metaphysical depth of the Russian world view as a whole. Poets created their works in the context of philosophical ideas about Russia, its way in the world history, which existed at that time. The value components of the life of the ancient Slavs as identification signs of the distant nineteenth century, considered through the ideals of modern reality for the poets, served as an impulse to the poetic understanding of national life, the fate of the Fatherland and the people living in it.

Russia re-envisions the world: strategic narratives in Russian broadcast and news media during 2015

ABSTRACTThis study examines the strategic narratives embedded in Russia broadcast and news media to determine how the country advances a narrative framework portraying the Kremlin’s world view as propagated through Russian media. We argue these narratives help construct Russian identity in building domestic cohesion while fending off criticisms by Western nations. The study furthers our theoretical understanding of public diplomacy and global narratives by drawing from the work of rhetoricians and IR scholars in addressing how domestic and international narratives become tied together for strategic purposes and their reception by local actors. We analyzed 1016 broadcast and online news segments from 17 different sources representing governmental and official news sites, oppositional sites, and independent news sources. Two studies were conducted focusing on one particular ‘contour’ of the Russian worldview: Russian multilateral engagement through BRICS, SCO, and Iranian nuclear negotiations as well as media portrayals of NATO. The study concludes by discussing strategies for effective messaging.

The Representation of the Concept “Home/ Fatherland” (Based on Russian and Armenian Proverbs)

Linguistic and cultural analysis of the basic concepts of human external and internal world can reveal national character, national ideas, various cultural ideals reflected in these concepts. The concept “Home/Fatherland” is one of the key concepts in the worldview of Russians and Armenians. The author analyses the concept “Home/Fatherland” as a means of representing reality in national consciousness comparing two linguistic pictures of the world. We know that a concept contains important cultural information, concealing its direct meaning in a linguistic unit. The article presents the results of comparative linguistic and cultural analysis of the concept “Home/Fatherland” on the material of the two languages paremiology. The proverbs and sayings gave the author the opportunity to identify the similarities and differences in Russian and Armenian perception of the Home/Fatherland and to determine national and cultural specificity of the concept “Home/Fatherland”.

Лингвокультурный типаж «интеллигент» в западноевропейской и русской картинах мира

Лингвокультурный типаж «интеллигент» в западноевропейской и русской картинах мира

УРОВЕНЬ КОНФЛИКТОГЕННОСТИ КОНЦЕПТУАЛЬНОГО ПОЛЯ «БОГАТСТВО/БЕДНОСТЬ» В ЯЗЫКОВОМ СОЗНАНИИ РУССКИХ И КИТАЙЦЕВ

The article is devoted to the comparative analysis of the perception of poverty and wealth in Chinese and Russian world view and indification of the conflictogenity level of the units included in the “wealth/poverty” conceptual field. The topicality of the research is reasonable for necessity to study the above said concepts as the basic cultural values that determine relationships between people in society and the fields of concern. The topic is especially actual due to deepening relationships between Russia and China and economic, political and social changes that took place in the countries during the last decades. The target of the research is to reveal conflictogenity level of the the units included in the “wealth/poverty” conceptual field, which is represented in language consciousness of Russians and Chinese and directed at production of optimal strategy and tactics of successful intercultural communication. The basic research methods are cognitive ones (method of measuring the semantic similarity of language units; cognitive interpretation of the study results) and psycholinguistic. To collect data about the conceptual field in language consciousness of Chinese the association experiment was conducted. To research Russian language con-sciousness we used data of association dictionaries.

THE CULTURAL AND RELIGIOUS DIMENSION OF THE FOREIGN POLICY OF RUSSIA AT THE TURN OF 17TH AND 18TH CENTURIES

The author of this article aims to examine the role and place of the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia's transition from the regional state of the Middle Ages to an absolutist state of Modern history. Transformations in states' domestic and foreign policies that took place in Modern history cannot be reduced to a simple set of changes in various spheres of life of states, nations and peoples. By studying the transition from one type of statehood to another one we are dealing with a fundamental transformation of the entire state organism, the state as a cultural phenomenon, with a change in the very notion of what a state is and what its goals, objectives and functions are. The process of transformations in statehood affected all countries of the world including our Motherland. In Russia these changes had their own cultural and historical specificity which was largely formed by religiosity of our people and was rooted in the Orthodox faith. Therefore, the author considered it necessary to raise the question of how the cultural, historical and religious identity of the Russian people could influence the course of reforms in the sphere of the Russian state system in Modern history. The author focuses on the foreign policy of the Russian state built on cultural and religious values in I7th-I8th centuries. This foreign policy is seen as an alternative paradigm of the modern Russia's foreign policy. The author believes that the modern Russian state does not shape its foreign policy on the basis of core values of the Russian world view arising from the religious consciousness of our people. This fact deprives Russia’s foreign policy of unity with cultural and historical tradition of our state and in many respects weakens it. The article provides a possible answer to the question why a tendency to the framing of a foreign policy on the basis of values and religious outlook inherent in the Russian people did not prevail in the foreign policy of the Russian state.

Сибирь (Syberia) w świetle danych systemowych języka rosyjskiego

<p>Сибир należy do tej grupy pojęć, które zajmują szczególne miejsce w leksyce języka rosyjskiego, zatem i w rosyjskim myśleniu o świecie. W artykule zrekonstruowano wyobrażenie Сибири na podstawie danych systemowych języka rosyjskiego (za źródło których posłużyły opracowania leksykograficzne), przy wykorzystaniu metody definicji kognitywnej, zgodnie z postulatami Jerzego Bartmińskiego. Zaprezentowano kwestię etymologii nazwy Сибирь, definicje, synonimy, opposita, derywaty: semantyczne i słowotwórcze. Analizę dopełnia przegląd utartych zestawień, wyrażeń i zwrotów frazeologicznych. Na podstawie danych systemowych zbudowano definicję kognitywną pojęcia, którą współtworzy 30 cech definicyjnych, uporządkowanych w następujące fasety: kategoria, część czego, opozycja, lokalizacja, cechy niezwiązane z wyglądem, rozmiar, cechy związane z wyglądem, lokalizator, warunki bytowe, funkcja, odczucia i uczucia ludzi wobec Syberii, mieszkańcy.</p><p>W różnych kontekstach językowego użycia wyrazu Сибирь (i jego derywatów) najbardziej wyraźnie ujawnia się negatywne wartościowanie Syberii, które w sposób bezpośredni wyrażają jej charakterystyki związane z miejscem odbywania kary, także ze specyficznymi warunkami klimatycznymi oraz trudnymi warunkami bytowymi, jakie w niej panują.</p>

Realizing Cultural Component of Worldviews in Languages (Russian and English)

AbstractThe paper considers the interrelation of culture, worldview and language. The cultural differences are acknowledged from the philosophic point of view and determine/are determined by the worldview. The worldview differences predispose the Russian and English national characters and are reflected in the languages: lexis, grammar and speech practices. Vocabulary as the most vulnerable aspect of language registers the changes first. On the basis of the author’s classification of new vocabulary concepts some changes in the Russian worldview and language are treated as a result of the English culture and language influence.

Sentences with the ‘State of Nature’ Meaning in the Russian Language: Cognitive and Linguocultural Aspects of the Analysis

The article deals with the sentences denoting the ‘state of nature’ which are treated as bilateral units. In view of the approach to the sentences from the specified semantics as linguistic units with a symbolic nature, the author reveals a list of structural schemes, as a means of verbalization of the concept denoting the ‘state of nature’ in the Russian language. The ‘state of nature’ concept itself is qualified as a quantum of knowledge storage about extra linguistic situations of the same type, categorized by human consciousness. The content of this concept is structured in the form of the field represented by a number of cognitive characteristics, ranked by brightness index and distributed in nuclear and peripheral zones. As the speech units sentences with the ‘state of nature’ meaning are treated as statements which do not constitute a homogeneous group either by the process of perception by an Observer or the way of the state manifestation. The collection of such statements accumulates in their semantics archaic representation of the nature of the Slavs and the key invariant ideas of that fragment of Russian language worldview, which represents the ‘nature – state of nature’ extra linguistic situation. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n5s4p235

Journeying in Russian Space

This essay explores the interrelationship between space and identity in contemporary Russian literature. The focus lies on the metaphorical meanings of travelling as a way of constructing post-Soviet Russianness as it appears in Natal′ja Ključarëva's novel Rossija: obščij vagon. The metaphorical meanings embedded in a journey of Nikita, Ključarëva's hero on the move, in the geographical space of today's Russia are juxtaposed with the legendary train travel in Venedikt Erofeev's novel Moskva-Petuški.This exploration will start from a brief look at the significance of space in the constitution of Russian national identity and worldview. Then it moves to the introduction of the two main theoretical frameworks, Jurij Lotman's semiotic theory of literary space and geocriticism, which will be applied in the analysis of the literary texts. Apart from tracking the metaphoric articulations of space and travel in Ključarëva's and Erofeev's novels, they will also be placed into the Russian tradition of literary train trips. The main question addressed here is how the implied worldviews concerning Russianness and the path of Russia are constructed and communicated as spatial categories and metaphors in the mentioned narratives, in which spatial reference with metaphoric significance obviously plays a crucial role.

Security in the worldview of Russians

IntroductionIn the Russian language the word security is formed by simply adding a prefix (bez, without) to opasnost' (danger), which thus turns danger into an ideal state of reliability, safekeeping, and the absence of insecurity. However, this interpretation of the word security restricts the meaning of the concept. In English security and danger are derived from different stems and have different semantics. In this light it seems important not to reduce an understanding of security to protection against dangers exclusively but instead to deepen and widen the conceptual semantics of security.Rothschild (1995) notes that over the last few centuries the concept of security has been interpreted in different ways and has been evolving, together with the transformation of Western society, from weakly perceived notions in which it acts as an inner sensation of a person to increased rationalism and definiteness. In the course of this evolution the concept of security has been verbalized, fixed, and used to denote a right of an individual and the condition of one's individual freedom as set forth in legal regulations adopted in the days of bourgeois revolutions in Western Europe and the United States.A constant state of flux can be seen in modern society: the rapid tempo of reforms, the development of means of mass communication, changes in social structures and people's relationships. Sociopsychological parameters of social interaction depend largely on the type of culture as well as on certain strategies of behavior associated with national, mental features (Dontsov & Perelygina, 2011b, p. 232).Radical changes in the world destroy an individual's orientation toward social reality. People find themselves lost in a vortex of events, feel pressured by the surrounding world, and are unsure of their future and the safety of their lives. They face a discrepancy between old and new views, values, and traditions. Motivational factors and basic needs also change regularly. Kozyrev (2008, p. 34) states, The traditional Russian method of negative mobilization, actualizing the image of the «enemy», is nearly the only way of consolidating in the face of external threats and internal disorganization.Security is a condition of a person according to which he/she can satisfy basic needs for self-preservation and [can have a] perception of being secure (psychologically) in society (Dontsov, Zinchenko, & Zotova, 2013, p. 99).Security creates conditions for knowledge, exchange, and interaction within one's sociopsychological space. A condition of danger enhances preservation and one's detachment from one's sociopsychological space; in these circumstances a protective function is manifested. Alack of security conditions leads to a defensive stance and generates resistance that can be outward or inward: outward when conventional norms are broken, when so-called discipline infringement and acts of civil disobedience take place; inward when there is a flight from social contacts, self-accusation, negative self-attitude, and auto-aggression. Such resistance complicates the system of interpersonal relations and devastates every participant in this process. A long period of emotional tension provokes a search for destructive ways out of a mentally traumatic situation. It is the deprivation element that determines social behavior by its integral influence (Dontsov & Zotova, 2013, p. 81).The security/insecurity of reality facilitates the formation by every person of a specific set of beliefs, opinions, and attitudes -- a unique picture of the world. Guided by personal views on security people live and envisage events, build up behavior patterns, evaluate the results of their actions, and modify their interpretations of the world. A constant need to act in a condition of uncertainty, including those in which there is a lack of time for decision making and a lack of information, results in risk becoming an essential signifying element in every person's life. …

Religious Toleration in Russian Thought, 1520-1825

Religious Toleration in Russian Thought, 1520-1825 G. M. Hamburg (bio) In his landmark essay On Liberty (1859), John Stuart Mill described religious freedom as the foundation of liberty of thought, opinion, and sentiment and as "practically inseparable" from freedom of speech and freedom of the press. He asserted, "No society in which these liberties are not, on the whole, respected is free, whatever may be its form of government."1 Like so many other 19th-century thinkers, Mill regarded religious freedom as the virtually exclusive product of Western civilization, even though he had the honesty to admit that intolerance "is so natural to mankind ... that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realized, except where religious indifference, which dislikes to have its peace disturbed by theological quarrels, has added its weight to the scale. In the minds of almost all religious persons, even in the most tolerant countries, the duty of toleration is admitted with tacit reserves."2 Mill's position on the foundational importance of religious toleration to the wider practice of civil liberties deserves careful consideration, as does his caveat about the "tacit reserves" often attached to toleration. But Mill's assumption that religious toleration should be associated primarily with Western societies is almost certainly a major historical blunder. As Amartya Sen has contended in his essay The Argumentative Indian, religious toleration in South Asia has roots in the 3rd century BCE and took modern form in the 16th century under Emperor Akbar.3 Thus the South Asian record of tolerating, even celebrating, religious and intellectual diversity rivals or exceeds [End Page 515] that of the West. Moreover, no historian can be insensible to the fact that in 20th-century Europe, the supposed "home" of religious toleration, powerful political regimes committed themselves to the destruction of religious pluralism. Clearly, given the stakes for human liberty posed by religious toleration and the elementary misunderstandings surrounding the history of the phenomenon, it is urgent for scholars to analyze the development of toleration in Europe and elsewhere. This essay analyzes Russian thinking about religious toleration from the first quarter of the 16th century to 1825. The essay is divided into seven parts: a brief survey of recent historiography on religious toleration in early modern Europe; a short analysis of Russian terms connoting toleration; a multipart analysis of tolerationist thinking from the early 16th century to 1825; and an examination of the patterns of Russian tolerationist thinking with special reference to the European Enlightenment. The chief goal of the essay is to juxtapose Russian toleration, in theory and practice, with the early modern and modern record in Western Europe: in this context, the impact of the European Enlightenment on Russian toleration will receive special attention. Since this essay is a speculative piece designed to provoke informed discussion and further research, the reader should not expect monographic depth or strict proportionality in the treatment of subjects under scrutiny. At the outset, the reader should note that, in both Western Europe and Russia, the concept of religious toleration applied chiefly to groups rather than to individuals. It usually connoted freedom of religious practice for a religious minority or set of minorities, but not necessarily for all minorities in a polity. Toleration did not generally entail freedom of preaching to members of other denominations, particularly to members of the established Church, nor did it generally imply freedom of the press for the tolerated group. By definition, freedom of conscience denoted an individual right of religious belief and practice: it was therefore a more sweeping right than anything connected with toleration. In historical literature, religious toleration has sometimes been associated with the phenomenon of secularism, itself a multivalent concept. In certain contexts, the adjective secular has been used by historians to distinguish any political measures not directly bearing on religion: the trouble with this usage, especially for pre-Petrine Russia, is that the Russian worldview was thoroughly religious, so for a Muscovite to imagine an act of state devoid of religious significance was difficult. Sometimes it has been said that Peter the Great secularized Russia, this description usually meaning that Peter bureaucratically subordinated the Church to the state or that he confiscated monastic lands, [End...

‘My Father's House has Many Mansions’: Ethnic Minorities in the Russian Orthodox Church

This article describes the national mission of Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), the policy of the Moscow Patriarchate towards non-Russian Orthodox. The authors analyse the ROC as a multinational church that includes Finno-Ugrians (Karelians, Komi, Udmurts, Mari, Mordovians), Ukrainians, Belarusians, Chuvash, Yakuts, Ossetians, Kryashens, a significant number of Armenians, Jews, Tatars, Buryats and others. There are already millions of non-Russian Orthodox within the church who want to express their national identity in Orthodoxy. Meanwhile the social mood in Russia today is such that people quite frequently move from one faith to another. Russians become Muslims and Buddhists, and Tatars, Bashkirs, Kabards, Azeris, Buryats become Orthodox. Ethnic multiplicity in the ROC is growing, and this increases the ‘cosmopolitan’ potential of the church. The current authoritarian/bureaucratic system of government in the ROC means however that the ethnic question remains latent. At the same time national movements in the national regions of Russia have strongly criticised the ROC for ignoring the national interests of Orthodox native people. It is not really surprising that national movements and organisations are virtually never orientated towards Orthodoxy. Even among the most ‘Orthodox’ peoples, such as the Chuvash, Komi and Mordovians, with many practising Orthodox and a significant number of Orthodox priests, and among whom there is no other living religious tradition, the national movements are distant from the ROC, and indeed often hostile to it. Since the ROC has a Russian nationalist world view, Chuvash or Ossetian or Karelian Orthodoxy, each with its own original culture, will develop outside official church structures. From time to time Orthodox priests of local ethnic origin take initiatives to develop missionary work among the local people, but no such initiative has yet gained the support of the local hierarchy.

Africa and Africans in the Linguistic Worldview of Russians (From the Results of the 'Associative' Experiment)

This research paper attempts to explore the linguistic consciousness of Russian people which reflects the fundamental image about the residents of Africa, African culture, Africa‟s socio-economic development, the geographical location of Africa and Africa‟s nature, and at the same time the fundamental lexical items associated with Africa, which are basically linked with the colour of the skin of Africans and the hot climate of the continent. The image or worldview in this paper is to identify the general opinion which the Russians have about Africa and Africans. It is the picture that is formed in the minds of Russians about the inhabitants of Africa. The image of Africa and Africans in Russian linguistic consciousness is formed from the presentation of the continent of Africa and the people living in it. These conceptions about Africa and Africans by Russians are formed under the influence of historical, geographical, cultural and educational information received from studies in schools, tertiary institutions, books, journals, newspapers. Others are from documentary and animated films, television and radio programmes, personal life experiences and from communicative situations. In spite of the negative social processes in the Russian society, there is practically no reflection of racism and chauvinism in Russian linguistic consciousness about Africa and Africans. Judging from the result of the experiments carried out, negative information about Africa, and above all, Africans is very negligible.