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Based on the literary and cultural material, the article discusses two functions played by the term of emigrantology as a legacy of three waves of Russian emigration in the 20th century. The term was introduced by Lucjan Suchanek to the research space of Slavic emigration. It has systematized the area of intellectual and scientific self-reflection (including literary studies, historiography, philosophy and theology, and cultural studies), which developed in the community of Russian emigration. Additionally, the term provides modelling of the need for interdisciplinary and in the nearest future trans-disciplinary studies on the complex cultural phenomenon of Slavic emigrations. In this particular context, the article presents major research directions and achievements of Russian studies in Poland.
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The situation of heterotopia naturally appears in the areas in which multinational cultural and historic context creates premises for ambiguous choice of interpreting the message text, i.e., the areas where the common interpretative convention does not exist. Such premises have been a typical peculiarity of some parts of Central Europe, since the moment of the formation of national civilization structures up to the present time. In frontier areas the relations between centre and periphery are more complicated than the binary centric model “centre – outskirts” which presupposes reproducing the messages of the centre in terms of outskirts. The article deals with the application of the concept ‘heterotopia’ to the field of metric and semantic analyses of rhythmically ambiguous and semantically vague texts. As an example N. Aseev’s poem “Pliaska” (“Folk Dance”) is under consideration. The poem is of interest due to its rhythmical characteristics, as well as to its content and lexical choice, including that of proper names, which indicate the author being influenced by poetical and historic realia of Balto-Slavonic border areas (“kresy” in the Polish language). The poem is analysed in a wide context of Slavonic (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Bulgarian and Polish) poetry. The paper also touches upon a Slavonic versification universalia, the so-called hexasyllabic verse consisting of two (rarely three) phonetic words. Such type of verse in the context of Russian poetry is usually regarded as exclusively Ukrainian by its origin and as a bright sign of stylization of this kind. The article proposes another interpretation of hexasyllabic verse, namely as a sign of Balto-Slavonic heterotopia.
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The purpose of the article is to present the poetic activity of Joseph Morelowski and his career path as a hardworking educator and student of the Jesuits in Polotsk. Morelowski devoted his life to teaching at Jesuit colleges, the Academy of Polotsk, as well as in the schools in Galicia. He was known as an educator of the youth, a professor of Rhetoric and Poetics, teacher of languages: Russian and French. The testimony of his efforts as the youth educator, the cleanliness of the Polish language and survival of mother tongue at the Time of Partition can be found in his literary work. Daily job as educator and attention to his own poetic work and certainly religious duties were associated with the need to impose him much of discipline. Despite the immensity of work for Morelowski the great importance was the pursuit of excellence in the art of poetry. A large part of his literary works was dedicated to reflection on the writer’s work. Some remarks are also devoted to places of work and rest of the Jesuit because there can also be found poetic ‘documentation’ forms of recreation in his poetry.
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In this paper, dance is considered as an element of the artistic structure of dramatic works of Russian, Belarusian and Polish authors of the 1990s–2010s. It was revealed that this element represents the level of the chronotope: it becomes one of its expressive modes (creating an atmosphere due to emotional «charge»), manifests itself as a «non-everyday form of behavior» of a character (J. Faryno), as a «spatial motive» (O. Bagdasaryan) as a sense-forming centre of the artistic universe. A comparative analysis of the plays written by Russian, Belarusian and Polish playwrights of the indicated period showed that in Russian drama the transition occured from the dance – a «spatial motive» to the dance – a semantic center representing author’s model of the world and a Nietzschean man in the terms of a spontaneous, unstable world order. That was caused by the strengthening of the performative and receptive potential of modern drama. At the same time, in the Belarusian drama, due to more strong genetic ties with folklore, the dance for a long time has been manifesting itself as a game form of non-everyday behavior, however, since the mid-1990s it is often introduced as a «spatial motive» representing the extremely deformed consciousness of characters. If it comes to Polish drama, despite the actualization of the dance in the significant for its development works, in the latest plays it rarely functions as a semantic center, because of political and social themes predomination. The authors of this paper made an attempt to clarify the reasons for differents of the dance in the Russian, Belarusian, Polish drama of the 1990s–2010s, based on sociocultural factors, as well as on the logic of the development of the literary proces.
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Mass protests in Belarus after the presidential election in 2020 showed all weaknesses of the official propaganda. The monograph characterises the tools of the cultural protest (banners, music, street art, digital forms of resistance), which exposed a deficit of truth in the relations between the government and society. They undermine and ridicule the actions undertaken by the presidential centre as well as the long-term strategy of the official propaganda. Regardless of the political outcome, the 2020 crisis will have long-lasting political, social and cultural consequences. It is an important factor in building the contemporary Belarusian identity.
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The article discusses life and work of Vyacheslav Bogdanovich (1878–1939/1940?), an outstanding figure of Belarusian national movement, a senator of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The son of a Belarusian Orthodox priest, he became one of the most recognized intellectual leaders of his nation, a talented writer, a skilled polemicist and a politician. V. Bogdanovich is the author of many different works. Special attention is paid to his articles devoted to the poetry of Yanka Kupala and Yakub Kolas as well as hagiographic studies related to the mission of the Orthodox patrons of Belarus – Anthony, John and Eustafij. The problem of autocephaly of the Orthodox Church in Poland, which became disastrous for V. Bogdanovich, affected all aspects of his multilateral activities. It also had a direct impact on his description of such topics as “Belarusian spiritual heritage”, “languages of the Orthodox Church”, “the people and the intelligentsia”, “the church and the state”. The last days of V. Bogdanovich’s life were tragic. He was released from Polish detention in September 1939, less than a month later he was arrested in Vilnus by the NKVD and went missing.
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The military actions of the 20th century (Revolutions, the First and Second World Wars, the Cold War, the war in Kosovo, Chechnya, Iraq) left a terrifying mark on the history. The article discusses traditional and innovative forms of recreating the military context in the Russian and Russophone Belarusian military prose on the example of V. Astafiev and S. Alexievich’s works.
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In the present work we will show how school theatre influenced dramatic works of Simeon Polotsky. Considering him as a founder of drama genre in Russian baroque literature, we will try to demonstrate the importance of school plays in that process (didactic role, elements of rhetoric, and declamation patterns). We will focus on his two dramas in order to examine this influence: Parable of the Prodigal Son, and On Nebuchadnezzar the King. Further, we will examine the importance of Polish and Ukrainian school theatre, National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and Slavonic-Greek-Latin Academy. Moreover, we will focus on the influence of Catholic and Orthodox religions on Simeon Polotsky’s works through the school theatre.
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Henadz Buraukin is a famous Belarusian poet, translator, and public figure. The main theme of his poetic world is heroic. First, the poet gives much attention to the theme of the Great Patriotic War; secondly, he is in search of a hero – a contemporary man who is honest and conscientious, who works for the benefit of his country; he is also conscious about the topic of Personality and Society. The poet loves his motherland very much; he is devoted to it and poeticizes its image. An elevated humanistic idea runs through the entire creative work of Henadz Buraukin. The poet loves Belarusian nature and glorifies it; it is a source of lyrical feelings for him. Henadz Buraukin also touches upon the problem of land, the man’s attitude to his home and his roots. The study of Henadz Buraukin’s biography and works at the lessons in Russian as a foreign language at the music higher educational institution makes it possible for the foreign students to learn the Russian language and Belarusian culture better; to boost their interest in learning Russian; to help them participate in the cultural dialogue and become highly-educated creative personalities.
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This monograph celebrates the 65th anniversary of Belarusian Studies at the University of Warsaw. It presents little-known facts from the history of the Department of Belarusian Studies as well as the Department’s present-day academic and didactic achievements and directions of its development. Apart from anniversary-related texts, the book feature research articles by Polish and Belarusian scholars, touching on socio-linguistic, anthropological, lexicographic, etymological, dialectological and toponymic questions, in both historical and modern contexts.
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The article refers to the 65th anniversary of the Department of Belarusian Studies at the University of Warsaw. It discusses the beginnings of Belarusian studies in Warsaw and describes the figures of its first researchers, starting with Prof. Antonina Obrębska-Jabłońska. The author also alludes to the contemporary socio-political situation and the importance of academic research in the field of Belarusian studies in this context.
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The sexual and corporeal vocabulary of the Belarusian language is still extremely taboo and euphemized. At the academic level, however, it remains underdeveloped due to primarily extralinguistic factors, such as the ideological and moralistic attitudes of the Soviet and now Belarusian society. At the level of the history of language, literature, folklore, as well as on the example of modern Belarusian dialects, sexual vocabulary is actively used and developed. This gap is especially evident during teaching and translating into Belarusian. The article attempts to explain the gap between practice and theory and suggests ways out of the impasse.
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The article presents the figure of Edvard Pjatrovič Cynhiel, a Belarusian regional activist of merit for the Belarusian minority in Latvian Latgale. Born in 1913 in the village of Cynhiele near Indra, he graduated from, among others, the Belarusian gymnasium in Daugavpils and courses for teachers of Belarusian schools. After returning from exile in Siberia, he worked as a teacher in Krāslava and in a village school, supporting the Belarusian national movement.
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The article analyses the first examples of the systematic use of the Belarusian-language version of toponyms in the mass media from 1906–1907: in the Vilna (Vilnius) newspapers "Nasza Dola" and "Nasza Niwa". Some of the forms of toponyms used in these weeklies are the same as contemporary ones: Брэст, Вілейка, Віцебск, Глыбокае, Гомель, Гродна, Заслаўе, Магілёў, Мікалаеўшчына, Мінск, Навагрудак, Полацк, Рагачоў, Смаргонь, Стоўбцы and others. At the same time, other forms of the names of some of these settlements appear, borrowed both from the Russian language or spelling tradition: Вітебск, Глубокае; and from Polish: Брэсць, Вітэбск, Гродно, Магілеў. The names Ашмяна, Смаргоні, Стоўпцы may be derived from Belarusian-Polish linguistic practice. The town of Маладзечна is referred to only in the form Маладэчна. The name Менск appears in the first Belarusian newspapers only in 1906, sometimes in parallel with Мінск, and from 1907, only Мінск is used. The formation of the “national pattern” (the term introduced by the Belarusian researcher Iryna Haponienka) of Belarusian toponymy in the first Belarusian-language newspapers reflects the complex process of the formation of Belarusian national identity. This process was significantly influenced by Polish, but above all by Russian. This explains the similarity of the forms of many toponyms in "Nasza Dola" and "Nasza Niwa" in 1906–1907 and in contemporary Belarusian literary language, which, in turn, underwent a strong Russification after the reform of spelling (in fact, grammar) in 1933, as well as the official change of the form Менск to Мінск in 1939.
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The article deals with the Belarusian Latin script in the second half of the 19th century, which the author analyses on the basis of the first illegal newspaper in the Belarusian language, "Mužyckaja Praŭda". The paper focuses on the realization or non-realization of akan’e and jakan’e, two important vocalic phenomena. Significantly, the newspaper was published during the pre-orthographic phase of the Belarusian language, which was characterized by a great inconsistency in orthography. The article aims to note the distribution of the realization and non-realization of the above-mentioned phenomena and in this way trace possible trends in the evolution of Belarusian orthography. In a corpus-based analysis, the two phenomena are studied according to parts of speech, which allows exploring whether phonetical (or even morphological) criteria might have influenced the realization of akan’e and jakan’e in "Mužyckaja Praŭda".
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The subject of research is the Belarusian subdialect from the town of Krynki (Podlaskie Voivodeship), which was analyzed lexically. The words for analysis were taken from the conversations with the residents of Krynki recorded by the author in 2020. These people have known the local subdialect since they were children. As for the subdialect itself, it is used in Podlasie (in the modern sense; historically, this region would be called Lithuania). In previous centuries, Podlasie was also populated by Baltic tribes, which affected local subdialects as well. The analysis showed that the dominant part of the vocabulary in this subdialect is of indigenous (Belarusian) origin. The next biggest group are loanwords from Polish, of which there are 185. (The words chosen for the analysis – 247 in total – were characteristic of this subdialect and/or nonexistent in literary language. In some cases, a word was assigned to several groups because it was impossible to determine its etymology). Besides words of Polish origin, words of Russian (22), German (6), Romance and Latin (3) origin were identified. The largest group of loanwords came from the Polish language, which makes sense, given that Krynki are located in Poland. Other loanwords are evidence of contacts with other nations, but it should be emphasized that the dominant part of the vocabulary remains indigenous, i.e., Belarusian.
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The article addresses the problem of the modern preconditions for the formation of the Belarusian nation. Among the open questions investigated by the author are the identification of the period in which the specific collective identity of the population settled on the territory of today's Belarus emerged, as well as the study of historical and cultural factors that may have influenced their national identity. As proposed in the article, the inhabitants of the territories of today's Belarus did not begin to consider the Grand Duchy of Moscow as a separate political entity until at least the 15th century: similarly, it is possible that they did not perceive themselves differently from the Ruthenians of Ukraine before the 17th century. It was only with the Chmel'nyc'kyj uprising and, in particular, during the war between Muscovy and the Polish-Lithuanian Confederation (1654-1657) that the peoples of the Belarusian and Ukrainian regions of Ruthenia began to exhibit significant differences in their interests, values and cultural peculiarities. The long-standing membership of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the historical interaction of the Slavs with the Baltic peoples helped shape many specific traits of Belarusian culture and laid the basis for the historical foundations of Belarusian identity as an independent national community. It therefore seems appropriate to associate the creation of the Belarusian nation not only with the Ruthenian identity, but also with the Lithuanian tradition.
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