Slavic Languages and Societies Commons^™

The Wolf Attacks: A History Of The Russo-Chechen Conflict, Christina E. Baxter

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the 1990s and early 2000s, the Chechens fought against the Russians for independence. The focus in the literature available has been on the wars and the atrocities caused by the wars. The literature then hypothesizes that the insurgency of today is just a continuation of the past. They do not focus on a major event in Chechen history: the Soviet liquidation of the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1944. It is this author’s assertion that the liquidation of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR forever changed the mindset of the people because it fractured a society that was once unified. This …

Is Russia A Block Of Ice Floating Back Into The 16th Century, Marko Dumančić

History Faculty Publications

Editorial published in The Moscow Times and The Huffington Post

Faith, Doubt, And Chiasmus In Krzysztof Kieslowski's Decalogue I, William Bartley

Journal of Religion & Film

This article proposes a reinterpretation of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s exploration of the first commandment in Decalogue I. It argues that the narrative structure of the story is chiastic—i.e., inversely parallel—which follows from recognizing for the first time the crucial role that Irena, the devoutly Catholic sister of Krzysztof, a professor and religious skeptic, plays in the story. The pattern of inverse parallelism (chiasmus) emerges as Krzysztof and Irena respond separately to the tragic death of Krzysztof’s son, Pawel: as Krzysztof’s skepticism gives way to a new faith in God, inversely and unexpectedly Irena’s faith retreats into doubt. This outcome, in …

Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch Of The East In Russian Fairy Tales, Sibelan Forrester, Helena Goscilo, And Martin Skoro, Eds. & The Russian Folktale By Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp (Review), Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby

Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Nabokov's Silverfish, Victor Fet

Biological Sciences Faculty Research

I discuss silverfish, of Lepisma—a strange insect that crawls through many of Nabokov’s pages.

Marriage In The Short Stories Of Chekhov, Mark Richard Purves

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Marriage in the Short Stories of Chekhov" Mark Richard Purves explores Anton Chekhov's often occurring depiction of marriage. Purves posits that Chekhov's depiction of the experience of marriage raises important ontological questions about the core features of family life such as what it means to be a husband, what it means to be a wife, and the degree of relatedness between them. Chekhov elaborates on what he sees as matrimony's central antinomy, namely that the wedding of one individual to another produces loneliness, an absence of intimacy, and a kind of alienation so acute it causes love …

Hotel Bukovyna, Rebecca Ann Bosshart

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This collection of short stories and first chapter of a novella take place in the historical area of Bukovyna, the beech tree land, partly located in Chernivetska region, western Ukraine. On the edge of it, or under it, or traveling to and from it, in contemporary time. I've been occupied with "the outsider," represented here, and where the seven stories reside, by the giant grande dame tourist hotel on Main Street, across from Shevchenko Park, in Chernivtsi, the region's city center. The occupants: the outsider looking in and around. Outsiders looking at other outsiders. An outsider being welcomed in. Most …

Driving Force Of The Ukraine Crisis, Mark Mccarthy

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"For many people in North America, trying to understand what is taking place in Eastern Europe between Russia and Ukraine can be a bit confusing. Even Winston Churchill once described this part of Europe as a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. "

Posting about the crisis in Ukraine from In All Things - an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for the entire world.

http://inallthings.org/the-driving-force-of-the-ukraine-crisis/

Pavel Tretiakov’S Icons, Wendy Salmond

Art Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"Between 1890 and his death in 1898, the Moscow art collector Pavel Tretiakov acquired sixty-two icons of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. With this comparatively late entry into the world of icons, Tretiakov laid the foundation for one of the world’s greatest collections of medieval Russian paintings. Why is it, then, that Tretiakov’s icons are today so rarely mentioned and so hard to find? The most practical explanation is that they were simply swallowed up into the vast repositories of the reorganized State Tretiakov Gallery in 1930, along with thousands of icons from churches and private collections nationalized afer 1917. …

The Moralist’S Perspective: An Analysis Of A Contemporary Reader’S Connection To Leo Tolstoy’S Themes Of Life As Presented In Five Selected Works, Kelly Almeter

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

For my honors capstone I examined the development of Tolstoy’s philosophies and how they are illustrated throughout his literature. I have compared two of Tolstoy’s works written before his theological conversion: “The Cossacks” and Anna Karenina, to three short stories written after, “The Death of Ivan Ilych”, “The Kreutzer Sonata,” and “Master and Man”. As time passed, the moralistic undertones of Tolstoy’s works became more apparent. His literature, whether short story or novel, includes a vast number of complex themes ranging from topics such as death and infidelity to a spiritual awakening and nature. As a result, I chose …

The Russian Fatalist Mentality: A Study Of The Protestant Ethic Among Russian Latter-Day Saint Converts, Daniel Cardoza, Dr. Tony Brown

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The traditional Russian mentality views life with an optimistic fatalism and passivity. This ideology is so inherently Russian that even grammar has adopted passive tendencies with phrases like mne prikhoditsia or mne nuzhno (“to me is necessitated,” or “to me is needed”), as opposed to standard English, constructions, “I must” or “I need” (with emphasis on the I as the agent of action). Typically, Russians see life as something that happens to them rather than something in which they participate. This mindset differs radically from the way in which Westerners view their place in the world.

Martin Luther: Vater Einer Allgemeinen Sprache? Martin Luther: Father Of A Common Language?, Annika Ewaldz, Adam Woodis, Faculty Advisor

John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference

Martin Luther is well known for his 95 Theses, in which he rejects the Catholic practice of selling indulgences; but it was his groundbreaking translation of the Bible into German that instigated the standardization of the German language. After his excommunication, Luther was in hiding in the Wartburg Castle, where he translated his Bible into a vernacular and cohesive form of the German language. Many different dialects were spoken throughout Germany at the time making communication between regions difficult. Luther’s translation soon became the most influential Bible in Germany and was disseminated quickly due to the recently invented printing …

Patterns Of Language Use And Language Choice Among The Cuban Community In Russia, Maria Yakushkina

Open Access Theses

The multiculturalism of a modern society involves constant interrelations of minority and dominant linguistic communities, which are reflected in language. Within this context patterns of language use and choice, language attitudes and language and identity connection have received special attention from a sociolinguistic perspective to better understand the outcomes of such language contact

The aim of the present study is to analyze patterns of language use, language choice, and language identity issues of two groups of Cuban immigrants in Russian society: individuals born in Cuba with both parents of Cuban origin (CC group) and individuals born in Cuba from mixed …

The Holy Fool In Late Tarkovsky, Robert O. Efird

Journal of Religion & Film

This article analyzes the Russian cultural and religious phenomenon of holy foolishness (iurodstvo) in director Andrei Tarkovsky’s last two films, Nostalghia and Sacrifice. While traits of the holy fool appear in various characters throughout the director’s oeuvre, a marked change occurs in the films made outside the Soviet Union. Coincident with the films’ increasing disregard for spatiotemporal consistency and sharper eschatological focus, the character of the fool now appears to veer off into genuine insanity, albeit with a seemingly greater sensitivity to a visionary or virtual world of the spirit and explicit messianic task.

Russian Sign Language Glossary Of Lds Terms, Nathan Boyce, Dr. Christopher Wakeland

Journal of Undergraduate Research

There are over ten missions in the Church among Russian speakers. The largest group is in Kiev, where the first deaf branch in the former Soviet Union was formed. There are around sixty deaf members there. Since many words used commonly in the Church are not used commonly outside of it, deaf people have had to make up their own signs for these new words. Many words have no signs and are spelled. Several similarly written, but different-meaning words are given the same sign. This results from members in isolated cities not thinking up the same signs.

Gender In The Everyday Life Of The Russian Home, Jyoti Arvey

Slavic Studies Honors Papers

Despite significant shifts in Russia’s social and political spheres since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, traditional gender norms within the domestic sphere have remained generally constant to the present day. The home is a crucial site of gender identity construction due to its importance in Russian culture as a space that has long functioned as a refuge from public life and official discourse. Based on ethnographic interviews with twenty residents of Ufa about their daily practices in the domestic sphere, this study aims to illuminate the domestic social structures within the Russian home in order to achieve …

Competing For The Motherland: Sports Spectacle And Nationalism During The 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, Tara Law

Slavic Studies Honors Papers

The Russian state guided the extended narration of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games, and hence the reproduction of the Russian nation in the months preceding the spectacle. The Sochi Olympics proffered a vision of Russian national identity before a global mass audience, but also to the Russian nation itself. The Olympics courted the gaze of the Russian national audience, drawing its attention to the accomplishments of individual Russians. The image of Russia constructed during the Games was of a robust, modern nation guided by a strong state under the leadership of President Vladimir Putin. Combining athletic and artistic elements, …

Spheres Of Semi-Legality: Discourse, Media And Informal Economic Practices In St. Petersburg, Russia (2000-Present), Maria Rosaria Roti

Wayne State University Dissertations

My dissertation project focuses on how the post-Yeltsin (2000 onwards) market economy actually works and how people define, identify and engage within this newly structured market economy. In order to understand this phenomenon my ethnographic study focuses on business in Russia from two perspectives. First, it discusses how Russian enterprises operate in Russia with the socially embedded informal economic practices inherited from the Soviet system, including trust, personal networks, patron-client relationships, system avoidance, bribery, and corruption. Second, it examines how foreign firms operate under these existing economic conditions in Russia while simultaneously still following FTC regulations and international law. Keeping …

Translation Of "The 'Metropol’ Affair" By V. Erofeev, V. Erofeev, Brian R. Johnson , Translator

Russian Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Translation Of "On Prose" By V. Shalamov, V. Shalamov, Brian R. Johnson , Translator

Russian Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Stalin's Russia: Visions Of Happiness, Omens Of Terror, Mark Konecny, Wendy Salmond

Art Faculty Creative Works – Exhibitions

"In 1970 an American high school teacher began a thirty-year journey into Stalin’s Russia. The items you see here were selected from more than 8,000 artifacts conserved on that journey.

Tom Ferris (the teacher) began collecting early, and he collected just about everything. But in 1970 Tom found a focus for his collecting and a new love and passion – Russia herself...

Tom’s dream was that his collection of Russian memorabilia be preserved, kept safe, and made available for study so people could understand how Stalin came to be; so Soviet history would be real, not abstract; so future generations …

Introduction To Volume 64

Russian Language Journal

On behalf of the editorial team of the Russian Language Journal, it is with great pleasure that we present Volume 64. The current issue of RLJ sees an expansion of our reinstated section of reviews, under Professor Michael Gorham’s editorship, as well as a special section, Humanities+, edited by Dr. Tony Brown of Brigham Young University, on the excellent joint Symposium held there this past January by the Russian State University for the Humanities and BYU. His summary appears next; as a participant in the symposium, I can report that the papers collected here present the symposium’s thought-provoking perspective on …

Introduction To Articles From The 2014 Annual Conference Of The Russian State University For The Humanities American Studies Center: Special Section On Humanities+, N. Anthony Brown

Russian Language Journal

After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Professor Marina Kaul of the Russian State University for the Humanities (RGGU), together with Professor Irwin Weil of Northwestern University, co-founded the American Studies Center at RGGU, the two-fold goals of which were 1) to expose post-Soviet Russian scholars and students to a reasonably objective view and appreciation of American history, culture, and politics; and 2) to help American scholars and students to see themselves as others saw them. Thus far, the Center has held annual conferences, facilitated professional and student exchanges, and published numerous conference proceedings. It has enjoyed the …

The Language Flagship Model And The Humanities, Sam Eisen

Russian Language Journal

The Language Flagship program provides a model that strengthens and deepens cultural engagement within the humanities and creates bridges to collaboration across disciplines. Flagship addresses needs for national security and global competitiveness and integrates professional and life experience into the humanities and other fields for the students who engage in this course of study. The cross-disciplinary nature of the Flagship program and the level of personal, cultural and professional engagement required to complete the program are successfully changing the undergraduate study experience in ways that address significant issues in the ongoing discussion of a crisis in the humanities. The Language …

The University Of Rhode Island International Engineering Program: A Model For The Merger Of Technology And The Humanities, John M. Grandin, Sigrid Berka

Russian Language Journal

Contrary to a long-established and seemingly irrefutable tradition, American parents, educators, private and public sector leaders, and students are beginning to doubt the value of a university education. Charges have been leveled, for example, that students today are spending substantially less time on academics than their predecessors and are making little progress during their undergraduate years in their ability to read, write, speak, or think analytically and critically (see, for example, Arum and Roksa 2011, Vedder and Denhart 2011). Others have argued that college is burdening young people with lifelong debt to the degree that it is stifling their creativity …

Foreign Language Study Coupled With Internship Experience As An Entrée To Professional Opportunities, N. Anthony Brown

Russian Language Journal

Today’s global age presents its share of unique challenges, not the least of which is communication. Whereas in past centuries, fossil fuels played a central role in driving economies and influencing policy decisions, “language is the new oil” in the twenty-first century.1 Some forward thinking individuals and organizations have responded to the times and teamed up with universities and government agencies to develop new and innovative foreign language programs. Consider, for example, the U.S. federally funded National Flagship Language Program that offers upwards of nine months to one year of intensive language instruction in the target language culture and experiential …

On Semantic Peculiarities Of Secondary Imperfective Verbs In Russian: Their In/Compatibility With The Notions Of Duration And Completion, Valentina S. Soboleva

Russian Language Journal

It is a well-known fact that some secondary imperfective verbs in Russian cannot express duration – a notion, ascribed to the imperfective aspect. Of the three, or even four, possible aspectual meanings of the imperfective aspect – duration / progressive continuity, general validity, and repetition – some secondary imperfective verbs are limited to expressing only iterativity, a notion of repetition, embedded in their lexical semantics. The interpretation of the term iterativity in this work is close to the one given by Mehlig (2006) in which the iterative predicate describes an unbounded number of repetitions and the particular meaning is embedded …

Politeness And Sociocultural Values In American And Russian Cultures Emerging From The Speech Act Of Complaint; Pragmatic Competence Of L2 Learners Of Russian, Beata Gallaher

Russian Language Journal

In the last two decades, there has been an increasing number of empirical studies on complaints that explore the effects of sociocultural values and linguistic politeness on the language performance of nativeand non-native speakers of English (Kasper 1981; Piotrowska 1987; Olshtain and Weinbach 1987, 1993; Trosborg 1995; Arent 1996; Murphy and Neu 1996; Kraft and Geluykens 2002, 2007; Tanck 2002; Umar 2006; Prykarpatska 2008). However, the empirical data on complaints by Russian native and non-native speakers remains scarce (Olshtain and Weinbach 1993; Gershenson 2003; Kozlova 2004; Perelmutter 2010). The research on complaints is particularly important for studying the impact of …

Review: The Meek One: A Fantastic Story: An Annotated Russian Reader, Cynthia L. Martin

Russian Language Journal

Both of these readers are excellent additions to available annotated readers for students of Russian that would be most appropriate after students have completed two full years of Russian.

Full Issue

Russian Language Journal

No abstract provided.