Slavic Languages and Societies Commons^™

Introduction, Liudmila Klimanova Phd

Russian Language Journal

On behalf of the editorial team of the Russian Language Journal, it is with great pleasure that we present Volume 73, Number 1. This issue, available exclusively online, features six articles and two book reviews that span a broad spectrum of topics within Russian language studies. The issue opens with Nadezhda Braun's exploration of how Russian minority languages are minimized through Russian educational policies. Sofya Yunusova investigates the educational potential of literary texts in eliciting affective responses in the language-literature classroom. Joan A. Chevalier's study explores the semantic value of connecting phrases and conjunctions, providing insights into the linguistic …

Minority Language Education In Russia: An Example Of Social And Cultural Reproduction And Correspondence Theories, Nadezhda Braun

Russian Language Journal

Russia is an incredibly diverse country, both linguistically and ethnically. However, Russia is often presented, and presents itself, as a monolith. Russia’s approach to minority language teaching further perpetuates this monolithic view by creating a hierarchical language structure with Russian at the top. This hierarchy is created through societal pressure, language requirements in the Russian education system, and the minimization of minority language instruction, in direct contrast to best practices for language instruction. Chuvash in Chuvashia and Nenets, Khanty, and Selkup in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug serve as examples of this linguistic hierarchy. This paper uses social and cultural reproduction …

Literature As An "Affective Magnet": Defining, Engaging And Investigating Emotions In A (Russian) Language-Literature Classroom, Sofya Yunusova

Russian Language Journal

The purpose of this article is to conceptualize affective processes in reading literature in a foreign language. While generations of scholars and methodologists have stressed the educational potential of literary texts in terms of engaging learners’ emotions, the field has a relatively poor research base for discussing what these reading-induced emotions are and how to systematically promote them in a language-literature classroom. To this end, the current study first conceptualizes the different types of emotions that are arguably involved in reading literature in a foreign language and then formulates a set of pedagogical principles to foster their emergence in a …

A Corpus-Based Analysis Of Vvodnye Slova: Pedagogical Applications, Joan F. Chevalier

Russian Language Journal

Parenthetical expressions referred to as vvodnye slova in Russian have remained on the periphery of Russian linguistics. This is, no doubt, due to the fact that they are heterogeneous and difficult to define as a category. Traditional and more recent approaches to vvodnye slova are discussed. Vvodnye slova play a key role in expressing authorial stance and in organizing and providing cohesion to texts. On the basis of these two main functional characteristics, an argument is made for the inclusion of vvodnye slova in Russian Language L2 curricula. This corpus-based study establishes frequency patterns for semantic sub-groups of vvodnye slova …

Russian L2 Learners' And Teachers' Perceptions Of Learning Affordances, Marina Tsylina, Jose Luis Garrido Rivera, Hadis Ghaedi

Russian Language Journal

The environment offers a variety of resources for language learning and teaching. However, students and teachers might not recognize the same affordances or may perceive them differently. The mismatch between instructors’ and learners’ perceived affordances may result in ineffective use of time for both students and teachers, lower student motivation, and retard the language learning process. The study draws on the ecological approach (van Lier, 2000) to second language acquisition to investigate L2 Russian learners’ and teachers’ perceptions of language learning affordances, i.e., any physical objects, online materials, humans, and other resources which are embedded in the environment, and emerge …

L2 Writing As A Tool For Improving L2 Speaking Accuracy Through Text-Reconstruction Tasks In A Communicative Language Classroom, Natalia Sletova

Russian Language Journal

This study’s objective was to attract researchers’ attention to the potential role second language (L2) writing can play in improving L2 speaking grammatical accuracy in a communicative language classroom. Twenty-three beginner, twenty-one intermediate, and twenty advanced English learners of Russian completed a ‘noticing the gap’ activity using a text-reconstruction task in both written and spoken modalities, followed by a second text-reconstruction only in the spoken mode. The responses were measured for syntactic and semantic accuracy and complexity. The results indicated that lexical diversity and semantic complexity of produced output significantly improved with each level of proficiency in both written and …

Review: Student-Centered Approaches To Russian Language Teaching: Insights, Strategies, And Adaptations, William J. Comer

Russian Language Journal

This volume consists of twelve chapters, three written by the editors setting an overview of "student-centered teaching" (two at the start of the volume and one at the end), with nine chapters in the middle, written by different authors. These nine center chapters share a basic structure: an opening statement of the problem they will look at, a Russian-language version of that overview, then several pages of theory/background on the specific topic being addressed, and then a discussion of the specific study/intervention conducted. Each chapter ends with both a conclusion and a "lessons learned" section. Each of the nine center …

Эвфемия Как Инструмент Создания Альтернативной Реальности В Российских Пропагандистских Медиа (На Примере Освещения Войны России Против Украины), Ksenia Turkova (Kiriya)

Russian Language Journal

В российском общественно-политическом и новостном дискурсе эвфемизмы уже на протяжении многих лет используются как один из главных манипулятивных приемов. Так, во время финансового кризиса 2008 года СМИ практически не использовали слово “кризис” — сотрудникам государственных телеканалов рекомендовалось его избегать и использовать вместо этого такие словосочетания, “финансовые трудности”, “финансовые проблемы” или обязательно добавлять к слову “кризис” прилагательное “мировой”, чтобы показать, что в России кризиса нет. Агрессию против Грузии в 2008 году официально называли не войной, а “операцией по принуждению к миру”. Аннексию Крыма в 2014 году — “присоединением” или даже “воссоединением”, делая акцент на “возвращении” полуострова. Масштабная программа под названием “реновация” …

Review: Dostoevsky's Crime And Punishment. A Reader's Guide, Michael Ossorgin

Russian Language Journal

For decades, Martinsen fostered international dialogue on Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, gathering interpretations from the most dedicated students and scholars. Her reader's guide distills this criticism into a concise, accessible handbook, an authoritative scholarly guide in English. Martinsen' s guide is handy for syllabus writing and as a teaching supplement to cover the novel's central themes and narrative techniques.

Rlj Volume 73, Number 1 Full Issue

Russian Language Journal

No abstract provided.

Свет Слов. Стихи Декабря 2022 — Мая 2023., Victor Fet

Open Access Books

Фет, В. Свет слов. Стихи декабря 2022 — мая 2023. Київ: Друкарський двiр Олега Федорова. 2023. 148 с.

Эта книга — продолжение двух предыдущих книг стихов, «Над бездной» и «Ткань памяти» (К.: Друкарський двiр Олега Федорова, 2022). Сюда вошли стихи, написанные с декабря 2022 по май 2023. Многие, кто писал по-русски по всему миру, сейчас замолчали от шока и боли. Со мной случилось так, что после Крыма (2014) я вообще перестал писать стихи; мне казалось, что я уже написал всё, что мог. Но война прорвала этот затор, и стихи текут уже более года постоянным потоком, почти ежедневно. Похоже, …

The Search For Existential Meaning: Tracing Leo Tolstoy’S Nihilism Through His Later Works, Elisabeth Koyfman

Student Theses and Dissertations

In this senior thesis, I explore the writings of acclaimed 19th-century author Leo Tolstoy through the lens of existential and ethical nihilism: a philosophical ideology espousing an assertion of a meaningless existence shaped by similarly meaningless governing social, political, and religious conventions. Prior to the author’s religious conversion at the age of 50, Tolstoy’s writings reflected a nihilistic worldview that opposed any socially accepted definition of a meaningful existence. Although within the span of 1800s Russia nihilism was strongly associated with atheism and terrorism, Tolstoy distanced himself from any accepted cultural value or label—including the negative political associations and other …

Morphosemantic Integration Of -Ing Anglicisms Into Russian And Kazakh In The Context Of Trilingual Code-Switching, Timur Akishev

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The current dissertation is an attempt to determine and describe the characteristics of the process of linguistic integration of English noun loans into Russian and Kazakh. One of the main objectives that my study was guided by was the analysis of the relationships between or across the linguistic and quantitative parameters of the loans based on the data drawn from the Russian National Corpus, an online database containing multiple examples of using the Russian language. Another important objective of the research conducted was to provide a holistic interpretation to the process of secondary adaptation of the nominal Anglicisms from Russian …

Echoes Of Eternity: The (Meta)Physics Of Time And Space In Eugene Vodolazkin's Laurus, Samuel Jayasi

World Languages, Literatures and Cultures Honors Theses

This study will consider ways in which Eugene Vodolazkin demonstrates his aesthetic and cultural understanding of what he calls “Christian reenchantment” in his novel Laurus. While “national medievalism” and “Christian reenchantment” share concerns about postmodernism, Vodolazkin’s novel investigates not so much issues of Russian national identity, but the consciousness of the age itself. Leaving aside any possibility of representing some kind of new utopia to counter the problems of postmodernism as too historically traumatic, Vodolazkin recreates the “medieval mindset” as a way to introduce “Christian reenchantment” of the (fictional) world. In the novel, the return to the medieval way …

Три Шага К Свободе (In Russian), Slav Gratchev

Open Access Books

Грачев, Слав. Три шага к свободе. Библиотекa университета Маршалла, Хантингтон, 2023.

Три шага к свободе — это первый роман исторической трилогии, которая перенесет вас в страшный мир разрушений и отчаянной борьбы за жизнь в Советском Союзе во время сталинских репрессий, Второй мировой войны, и жизни при коммунистическом режиме в 1980-х годах. События, описанные в романе, а также жесткая критика коммунизма, его бесчеловечного лица и его далекой от всякого гуманизма философии, привели бы автора к немедленному тюремному заключению, находись он в путинской России сегодня. К счастью, он не там, а значит, он сможет закончить свою работу и опубликовать все книги этой …

В Поисках Снарка, Victor Fet

Open Access Books

Фет, В. В поисках Снарка. Библиотека Университета Маршалла, Хантингтон. 2023. 434 с.

Этот том содержит статьи и рецензии Виктора Фета (1955 г.р.), написанные и опубликованные в 1995-2022 гг на различные темы, от истории науки до рецензий на театральные спектакли. Автор, биолог по профессии, который провёл первую половину жизни (1955-1988) в СССР, соединяет глубоко личный опыт, воспоминания и наблюдения, преследуя одну основную тему: уникальность творчества во всех аспектах гуманитарных и естественных наук. Интересы автора прежде всего фокусиртуются на двух очень разных, но не независимых фигурах Льюиса Кэрролла и Владимира Набокова. В наши дни, при быстром распаде и трансформации русской культуры, …

Raising The Iron Curtain: Healing Collective Oppression Through Literature, Alisa Chirkova-Holland

Student Works

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by former gulag prisoner Alexander Solzhenitsyn, is a short novel that entails an ordinary day for a prisoner, Shukhov, in a Siberian gulag. Although the work is a typical skaz, a traditional Russian narrative form, the novel was well-received by Russians at the time of publishing in 1962. This paper will explore the reason for such acclamation, understanding how Solzhenitsyn’s innovations to the skaz allowed readers to connect with their past. The paper also mentions theories such as Traumatic Realism to comprehend how such a bleak novel positively impacted post-Stalinist readers. …

Blood Cries Out From The Ground: The Einsatzgruppen And The Holocaust In Ukraine, Lauren R. Letizia

Student Publications

After the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the Wehrmacht occupied much of the western Soviet regions. The Third Reich deployed special killing squads known as the Einsatzgruppen to protect its military and ideological interests. These units were responsible for murdering over two million Jews from 1941 to 1944, primarily through mass shootings. Ukraine was one of the most afflicted countries by this “Holocaust by Bullets.” Because of the efficient genocidal techniques of Einsatzgruppen units operating in the region, one in four Jews who perished in the Holocaust was Ukrainian. The scale on which these killings …

Stolperstein/Stumbling Stone For Holocaust Survivor Otto Heimann/Bob Hymann, Bochum/German, Toronto/Kanada Und New York, Ny, Usa, Courtney Conte, Mona Eikel-Pohen

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

The documentation tries to capture the life of Holocaust survivor Otto Heimann/Bob Hyman who spent his youth in Bochum-Langendreer, Germany, and was forced by the National Socialists to leave parents, home, and country. The documentation does not claim to give a full picture, just an insight into Otto Heimann's/Bob Hyman's life.

It will be read out on June 6, 2023 in Bochum, Germany when a Stolperstein, a stumbling stone, will be place near Alte Bahnhstraße 6 in Bochum-Langendreer, Germany, to commemorate Otto Heimann/Bob Hyman, so that we and future generations may learn from history.

Diese Dokumentation versucht, das Leben Bob …

Bookends: Freemasonry In Russia, Past And Present, James Patrick Greene

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks to explore Russian Freemasonry in both the reign of Peter I and in theRussian Federation following the collapse of the Soviet Union, two periods where the relevant scholarship has largely fallen silent. The first chapter argues that early Masonic influences were both present at the court of Peter I and accepted by the Tsar. These intellectual trends, traceable in the libraries, social connections, and writings of individual Jacobites, would reemerge in the institutional Freemasonry in the reign of Catherine II. The printing and translation activities of Novikov and Lopukhin indicate a strong interest in these mystical ideas …