No 5 (2025)

The article is devoted to the biography of Lieutenant General Grigory Yanushevsky, who served in the Hetman, Petliura and White armies, and then became interested in pseudo-historical research and tried to prove the reality of three brothers from the etymological legend - Czech, Lech and Rus. The author examines the connection between the general's military career, his "scientific" research, and his national self-identification. Not wanting to serve the Bolsheviks, Yanushevsky joined the Ukrainian army, then he was captured by the Whites and was in the reserve of the Russian army in Wrangel's Crimea. The Whites treated the general with disdain, prompting him to realize his Ukrainian identity and rejoin the Petliura army, but he did not find a place for himself there either. Having begun to promote the idea of the origin of Rus' from Croatia, the general found admirers among Russian emigrants and returned to Russian identity himself.

The article examines the perception by Russian press of military operations in the Balkans in the interval between the end of the Second Balkan War and the beginning of the First World War. In the paper there are examined, for the first time, the reaction of Russian newspapers and travelers to the Albanian crisis of 1913-1914 and military operations in the region, to the internecine war and uprisings within Albania. On the example of weekly newspapers "Slavyanskie Izvestia", "Ogonek" and "Dym Otechestva", the monthly magazines "Vestnik Evropy", "Russkoe Bogatstvo" and "Russkaya Mysl'", the change in assessments and forecasts for the future of Albanian statehood. Attention is paid to the perception in Russia of the Greek-Albanian (Epirotic) and Greek-Turkish (Aegean) border conflicts as well as the Macedonian one during this time. The growing awareness of Russian public about Albania and Albanians and the preparedness of the Balkan peoples for the escalation of the conflict with Austria-Hungary, Germany and Turkey are demonstrated.

More than 70 years ago, the well-known dictionary of selected Indo-European synonyms by C.D. Buck was published. It represents an important work in the field of comparative lexicology and semantic reconstruction. It is structured according to the ideographic principle and covers 22 thematic groups, reflecting various aspects of human life, nature, and abstract concepts. The dictionary is far from being exaustive, as not all Slavic data were included; only Serbo-Croatian, Czech, Polish, Russian, and Old Church Slavonic were represented. The authors make a cause for why it is necessary to create a new ideographic dictionary of Slavic vocabulary, constructed in accordance with the principles of Buck's work, but including data from all Slavic literary languages (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish, Kashubian, Upper Sorbian, Lower Sorbian, Czech, Slovak, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, Old Church Slavonic), as well as a number of neighbouring languages (Lithuanian, Romanian, Albanian, Greek, Hungarian). Unlike Buck's dictionary, a more detailed semantic and etymological analysis of Slavic vocabulary is envisioned. A number of errors made by Buck in the collection of Slavic material are demonstrated. The tasks and theoretical foundations of the new dictionary are defined, and examples of dictionary entries for "World", "Man", and "Father-in-law (father of the wife); Father-in-law (father of the husband)" are provided.

The article discusses the attempts made in the early 1860s to resolve the Polish question by Prince N.A. Orlov (1827-1885). As an envoy to the Belgian court, he was in close contact with the Polish elite in exile. He advocated the reconstruction of Poland based on the model of Serbia and Egypt, trying to persuade Emperor Alexander II, Grand Dukes Konstantin and Nikolai in personal conversations. In his arguments, he emphasized the diplomatic and international importance of the issue. In expressing his personal opinion, Prince N.A. Orlov, of course, voiced the position of a certain part of the Russian aristocracy, which combined loyalist and liberal sentiments. For the first time in scientific discourse is published the letter from Orlov to Alexander II, describing the plans of Polish aristocrats for the future of the region after the February 1864 uprising. The source expands the existing historiographic ideas about the attitude towards the Polish Uprising in Russian diplomatic circles, outlines an alternative view of the reorganization of Poland and reflects the mechanisms of information and influence on decision-making at court.

The post-Stalin thaw, which swept through all the countries of the Soviet bloc, due to specific historical circumstances, was late in Czechoslovakia in comparison with neighboring Poland and Hungary. The renewal processes here gained momentum only in 1963. In Slovakia, these processes had their own specifics and were associated with demands for expanded autonomy and bringing to the fore the tasks of national revival. Readers are offered a report on the trip of a young literary scholar, later a leading Russian specialist in Slovak literature, Yu.V. Bogdanov, who spent 4 months in Czechoslovakia (including 3 months in Slovakia) at the end of 1963 - beginning of 1964. Note from Yu.V. Bogdanov is interesting not only for the assessments it contains of the literary process, the creativity of individual writers and the state of literary scholarship. It also reflected the socio-political changes taking place in the country.