This article explores religious marriage in the USSR during the New Economic Policy (NEP). From the start, the Soviet authorities made great efforts to gradually eliminate religious beliefs within Soviet society. One of the first steps in that direction was the removal of marriage from Church jurisdiction. Moreover, Soviet power was constantly trying to compromise the tradition of religious marriage. However, many people still preferred to be married in church in addition to civil registration. A wide range of historical sources studied in this research (political and sanitary propaganda, communist and entertainment media, printed court reports) reveals that the new “civil” marriage was considered to be extremely unreliable by “ordinary” people, especially young girls of marriageable age and their parents. It was too easy to enter into such a marriage and to end it. It was associated with divorces, alimony suits, almost legalized cheating. The intention to marry in church at least meant a serious commitment, a willingness to take responsibility. Also, even many years later, during the Census of 1937, the majority of the population of the USSR considered themselves believers. This situation continued until a crucial change in ideology and social politics took place in the late 1920s, when most churches were closed. This study is focused on psychology of the “little man” in an epoch of global political and social changes.

The Soviet project of creating the “new man” included the construction of a collective memory which was not only a legitimate version of the past, but also a repository of cultural values, and the background or space for celebrating Communist rituals. The project itself was rather uniform, but had multiple local incarnations that were determined mostly by the ethnic and religious identity of the local population. The Old Believers’ communities of the Russian North shared with the rest of the country symbols of the past, sites of memory, and commemorative rituals. Still, local perceptions of the Communist regime and its symbols depended in this milieu on a variety of factors: first, the high literacy rate of the deeply religious Old Believers, as well as their erudite knowledge of Christian, and specifically Old Russian literature; second, the very critical attitude toward Soviet power; and third, local beliefs. This article analyzes the process of adaptation of the Communist project to Old Believers’ persistent religious and cultural traditions and seeks to explain how Communist symbols symbiotically coexisted with hostile local attitudes and why they even survived the collapse of the regime. Mutual adjustment of the imposed Communist project and the local symbolic language took many decades, yet finally, by the end of the Soviet era, when three or four generations had seen no other reality than that they were surrounded by, the strong rejection of this reality was smoothed out, everyday tensions mostly disappeared, and the earlier alienation itself became part of collective memory on both family and community levels. The article is based on interviews with Old Believers of the Upper Kama region (Verkhokamie), conducted by the author in 2011 and 2013.

The article deals with Kalmyk folk songs about the deportation of the Kalmyk people to Siberia (1943–1957). The purpose is to exhibit the Siberian cycle of Kalmyk songs as a special genre, to elucidate its folklore specifics and to show how its pragmatics have changed depending on the political context during the last 80 years. The study is based on a corpus of 80 texts in the Kalmyk language. The songs were collected among folk song performers in Kalmykia, and from archival recordings, social networks and published songs. The tradition of the Siberian song operates with its own fund of various types of constants and formulas. The article provides an analysis of plots, stylistics, reflections of small genres of folklore in song texts. Particular attention is paid to the pragmatics of Siberian songs in connection with the historical policy of the state, to the development of the performing canon and to the role of songs in the process of ethnic identification and collective memory. The songs of the Siberian cycle have a special role: these local voices became a vital source about the life and feelings of the Kalmyks in 1943–1957, as a kind of musical ego-documents reflecting the thoughts and feelings of the exiles: bewilderment, bitterness, resentment, hope. The authors show that the Siberian songs were the only public form of protest and a way to proclaim the suffering of the Kalmyks as a group.

During the Soviet era, the works of 55 contemporary Iranian authors were translated into Russian and published in the Soviet Union. Prefaces and afterwords, usually written by Iran scholars, provided the Soviet reading audience with a paradigm for perceiving the translated novels and short stories. This paper aims to offer an analytical survey of the history of the translation of modern Iranian fiction into Russian and to trace the major trends in the representation of the translated works. The thematic range of translated works correlated with the domestic political agenda and the changes in Soviet-Iranian relations, as well as with the current state of Soviet Iranian Studies. The influence of personal tastes and connections of certain Iran scholars engaged in the process of translation can also be detected. Generally, the translations of contemporary literature of Iran were to demonstrate that Iranian intellectuals were aware of the flaws of their society, and eager to choose the more humanistic values of the socialist countries. Before World War II, the translators were mainly interested in the socio-political aspect of the works. After the war and before the thaw in Soviet-Iranian relations, translators focused mainly on social satire. In the 1960s – early 1980s, many works of the most prominent Iranian writers of the period were translated into Russian. In the early 1980s, these translations were viewed as a means of understanding the reasons for the Iranian upheaval. The novels and short stories of Iranian modernists, as well as other ideologically inappropriate works, remained untranslated.

The article is devoted to the problem of demand and concomitant reinterpretation of the Soviet literary heritage in the 2000s. The work of Arkady Gaidar, recognized as the best Soviet children’s writer during his lifetime and as an author who fully expressed Soviet values — heroism in the struggle for the establishment of Soviet power and collectivism — in the Soviet period was widely available to readers-children. Both the print runs of his works and the number of reprints (including in school anthologies) were very significant: he was in the top ten in terms of the size of print runs and the regularity of reprints. Based on a study of the history of the publication of Gaidar’s texts from 1926 to 1984, publishing and pedagogical preferences in the selection of works for reprinting have been identified: most often, “The Tale of a Military Secret” was reprinted in impressive numbers, as its ideological content glorified heroic sacrifice in the name of establishing Soviet power. The story “Timur and His Gang” had the same number of reissues as “Military Secret”. In the 1990s, reprinting of Gaidar’s works was sharply reduced, and the choice of what was published also changed: the first place is occupied by “Chuk and Gek”, which depicted everyday family life. In 2000–2022, the story “Timur and His Gang”, which emphasizes the values of class mutual assistance and collectivism, becomes the most reprinted. Publication of other works by Gaidar also demonstrates a noticeable change in emphasis: there is a sharp drop in reissues of the stories “School” and “R. V. S.”, which have temporal contextualization in the historical events of the October Revolution and the Civil War. This allows us to say that the mobilization narrative, which is generally characteristic of Gaidar’s works, is losing its historical conditionality (the Revolution and the Civil War). At the same time, the reprinting of works about peacetime, which takes place in the immediate vicinity of hostilities that require mobilization efforts by both adults and children, have been renewed in the current book offerings for young readers. Recent initiatives to bring Gaidar’s works back into the school curriculum also testify to the reactualization.

The article is an attempt to specify the genesis of the image of Laurence Sterne as it was created and presented by Nickolai Karamzin in the early 1790s. Karamzin’s Sterne, the most influential among other such attempts in Russian culture, turns out to be primarily French and imitative. Namely, the fragment “A Poor Man and His Dog”, presented in Karamzin’s Moscow Magazine (1792) as “Sterne’s work”, appears to be a translation not of Sterne but of an interpolation made by his French translator into the French version of Tristram Shandy. The very choice of fragments from Sterne presented in the Moscow Magazine (1791–1792) reflects not the editor’s own taste, but is a replication of the most common items from popular anthological editions of “The Beauties of Sterne”. Karamzin’s culturally influential decision not to translate and consequently not to introduce into Russian culture the original English notions of ‘sentimental’ and ‘humour’ is explained by the fact that he had viewed them through the prism of particular French texts-intermediaries. Karamzin’s insistence on reading Sterne “with tears in the eyes” and on alluding to him (in Letters of a Russian Traveller) primarily in melancholic charnel locations that made Sterne practically indistinguishable from Edward Young goes back not to the original Sterne, but to his later French imitators, such as François Vernes. Karamzin’s Sterne is contrasted with the assimilation of original narrative experiments and humour of Tristram by other Russian authors of the same period but of a different circle, Fyodor Rostopchin and Ivan Martynov.

The article analyzes the relationships between the sources of energy and of human culture in Russian and foreign utopias. The author considers the main way of correlation between the evolution of energy and anthropological evolution, which involves their mutual influence. Utopian texts demonstrate this interdependence quite clearly. Technological stagnation is combined with the totalitarian structure of society in the early utopias: in texts by Plato, Thomas More, Tommaso Campanella (in Francis Bacon’s utopia it is the pursuit of modernization). Bacon’s model is reproduced in the novel Andromeda Nebula by the Soviet writer Ivan Yefremov, however, the discovery and the implementation of innovative energy sources in this utopia is accompanied by a qualitative change of human beings and society. In Ayn Randʼs novel Atlas Shrugged the motif of the “perpetuum mobile” is organically combined with the motif of human transformation. Nikolai Chernyshevsky also wrote about the “perpetuum mobile”: in his stories he emphasized the inextricable link between “energy” and “anthropology”. Analysis of current trends in the development of this topic (as seen, for example, in Kim Stanley Robinsonʼs novel The Ministry for the Future) allows us to conclude that totalitarian narratives in utopia are being revived. These totalitarian narratives impose on humankind the inevitability of rapid energy transition.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the originality of the estate topos and its role in the novel The Golden Pattern, and to identify some significant parallels in the depiction of estate space by Tolstoy and Zaytsev. Our tasks include assessing the typology and characteristics of estates in the artistic world of Zaytsev’s novel, clarifying the writer’s attitude to the form of estate life in the past and to the possibility and significance of preserving the memory of it. The estate topos plays an important role in Zaytsev’s novel: it organizes its chronotope, helps the writer lay out the characters’ path to an awareness of the value of home and family. We show that the writer created the psychological portrait and behavioral characteristics of the protagonist of The Golden Pattern with the image of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina as a reference point. Thanks to a focus on Tolstoy’s discoveries, Zaytsev implements in the artistic world of his novel the motif of disregard for the land, the motif of managing the estate, the opposition of the natural and the machine. At the same time, he creatively uses non-plot connections, which his predecessor developed in the novel Anna Karenina and a number of other works, and which are based on a multi-level interlinkage of various elements of artistic representation.

“American Lectures” (Six Memos for the Next Millennium) are well established in the minds of readers as a testament of Italo Calvino addressed to posterity. The course of lectures prepared by the writer for delivery at Harvard University in 1984 was the last work from his pen. In his last book, Calvino identifies several features of literature that are of particular value. Thanks to their mind-stimulating cognitive functions, these features, according to the writer, will help future generations cope with the dangers that are inherent in the language of media with its vague concepts and in visual promotional images that clog our imagination. “American Lectures” not only allow us to look at the history and theory of literature from an unexpected angle, but also shed light on Calvino’s own creative path. The reflections contained in the lectures are primarily related to the search for new mechanisms for creating a literary work, which occupied the writer in his last, “combinatorial”, period. In his lectures, Calvino reflects on speed, which is equivalent to agility, mobility, ease of storytelling, which above all are characteristic of oriental fairy tales. Calvino’s novels Invisible Cities and If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler are like The Thousand and One Nights thanks to a frame composition capable of accommodating a potentially infinite number of inserted short stories. As in The Thousand and One Nights, in the novel Invisible Cities the plot of the frame is built on the relationship between the narrator and the ruler. By contrast, in If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler the engine of the plot is the art, borrowed from Scheherazade, of interrupting the story at the climax of the unfolding plot. In addition, according to the ideas contained in the lectures, a large form made up solely of beginnings actualizes the potential of the novel as a genre that concentrates its power precisely at the beginning of the narrative. Both novels considered here are in line with the writer’s experiments with the form of “map-novel” or “hyper-novel”, capable of accommodating a potentially unlimited number of images and plot combinations.

The article analyzes modification of cultural stereotypes about famous people in the postfolklore space of small poetry genres that appeared on the Internet in the 2000s and are usually called stishki (short insignificant poems, sing. stishok). The most popular among them are pirozhki (sing. pirozhok) and poroshki (sing. poroshok). We also consider material from other close genres found at the website “Poetory” — https://poetory.ru: ekspromt (impromptu), depressiashka (depressing poem), dve deviatki (two nines), artishok (artichoke). Both real people and fictional characters are the object of research. The article considers stishki about the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and Clara and Karl, characters from a tongue-twister, as well as the postfolklore ties between Beethoven and Van Gogh. The article traces their ties with other characters, both those existing in a common cultural space (for Gagarin it is Korolev, Titov and the like) and those appearing in poetic postfolklore (for Gagarin these are God and Lenin). The convergence of characters can occur not only on the basis of stereotypes, but also on the basis of random similarities, both external to the language (event, thing) and linguistic (for example, coincidence or consonance of names). The “logic of postfolklore” is described, that is, associative links that connect “distant” characters (separated by time or social standing) and form pantheons of postfolklore heroes.

This article provides research into poetic bonfires, a collective reading practice in modern Russia, for example, the Marina Tsvetaeva bonfire and the Nikolay Rubtsov bonfire. On the popular poets’ death day or birthday, readers gather to read his or her poems and sing songs in a special place related to the poet’s biography. This practice is important in the context of reading practices and the formation and maintenance of a readers / reading community. The authors interpreted through the prism of cultural anthropology collected materials such as ethnographic diaries with thick descriptions and interviews. The authors make the assumption that poetic bonfires, with their ritualistic nature, are connected with the concept of cosmos (everything has to exist in right order). The cosmology of poetic bonfires is set through the repetition of behavioral templates, for example, reading poems and making the bonfire, and by semiotization of the area where the poetic bonfire takes place through the biography of the poet and the readers’ own poetry. Legitimization of the poetic bonfire depends on these factors, but at the same time, in most cases the poetic bonfire itself is informal. Therefore, the informal status of the poetic bonfire makes it a safe space and a special emotional refuge for the participants. The rituality that characterizes poetic bonfires allows participants to unite as a whole group with their own rules and behavioral models.

The article compares the representation of architecture in French and Russian academic art history, on the one hand, and in Eugène Atget’s photographs, on the other. The starting point for the art historical descriptions is Jacques-François Blondel’s analysis, supported by Jean Marot’s drawings. The choice of characteristics analyzed by Blondel and later researchers reflects the schematism in the understanding of architecture, its distance from the human being, and its lack of existential characteristics. This representation finds correspondence in the illustrative material — in the preference for drawings, plans, frontal point of view, and the absence of the human being in it. Atget’s images, due to the personal characteristics of their author, as well as of photography as an art form in general, reflected those characteristics of architecture which art historians overlooked, and which are related to its fundamental immersiveness and inseparable connection with the human lifeworld. Atget achieves this effect with the help of complex angles, naturalness of visual coverage, and seriality of photographs. “Unadorned” pictures of old buildings correspond to the naturalness of their aging, to actual and potential ruin as an important characteristic of architecture. On the basis of the analysis, the conclusion is reached about the need to revise the subject of architectural studies in the direction of its greater multidimensionality, inseparability from the human being, dynamism and uncertainty.

Studies of propaganda in Allied countries during World War II for the most part concern either printed matter or cinema, while animated films (cartoons) have been much less investigated in this regard. The present article is devoted to the representation and reflection of World War II in American cartoons in 1941– 1945 — an unusual and little-studied issue in Russian historiography. Specific examples and artistic features, as well as approaches to the use of cartoons as a means of propaganda, are considered. Within the framework of the article, samples of propaganda cartoons were analyzed, a certain typology of setting images and placing accents was derived, and conclusions were drawn about the importance of animation in the development of propaganda. Specific examples show the transformation of animation to suit military interests and the connection of the largest (and not only) film industry representatives with the state. Also, within the framework of the article, it was analyzed how the state interacted with animators and studios, along with how it itself was involved in the creation of propaganda and animation films. In particular, the history and activities of the “First Motion Picture Unit” and the first results of its work at the beginning of the war were considered. The case studies showed how American animation was modified in response to new needs and characteristics of the market, how existing characters were used for propaganda purposes and new works were created, as well as what stereotypes about America’s opponents were formed in cartoons. The article is based on literature and sources on the topic.

“Agency” or active transformative behavior of individuals in relation to the social world remains one of the central concepts of discussion and research for both the social and the political sciences, and for practice in the field of education, economics, culture, and social policy. The current state of societal processes, de-structuration, makes individual agency especially important for both individual and collective well-being. The contribution of art to understanding and promoting agency remains little known in the scholarly world. The purpose of this research is to study the vision of agency issues by representatives of the contemporary European artistic process in the context of social and cultural trends relevant to Europe and to compare this vision with interpretations in other spheres of public life. The authors try to show how initiatives aimed at developing agency originate in the institutional and noninstitutional art fields in Europe; how they manifest themselves and with what effects. The article puts forward a typology of agency in the contemporary cultural process: 1) social transformation; 2) escapism; 3) crisis adaptation; 4) transformation of actor; quantitative characteristics and concrete examples for each type are provided. Particular attention is paid to the concrete forms of agency that the field of art generates, and how discovered cases reflect broader processes in the social life of Europe.

The article is devoted to the study of hybrid images in digital fashion, to which the concept of “metamorphoses” can be applied. Using the concept of “metamorphoses” both form and content of visual objects are analyzed simultaneously, which corresponds to the idea of overcoming binarity, namely philosophical essentialism in relation to the concept of the human body and human subjectivity. Instead of a unitary subject, we propose an “expanded” vision of the human being as undergoing constant transformation depending on the internal and external environment. The philosophical justification for this position is based on the notion of “becoming” by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, as well as the concept of “metamorphoses” by Rosi Braidotti. The author also refers to Ovid’s poetic work of the same name as a primary source of the idea of metamorphoses and as a collection of myths that inspire designers around the world. The article examines images-metamorphoses of digital designers and brands such as The Fabricant x Trs.Mnz, Bad Binch TONGTONG with XTENDED IDENTITY, Tribute, Eva Iszoro, Antoni Tudisco, etc. They have become famous thanks to their placement on recognized digital clothing markets such as The Fabricant, The Dematerialized, and participation with digital shows in official fashion weeks. The author concludes that the concept of metamorphoses is a visual and methodological tool that permits one to analyze the relationship between man, animal, and machine. Metamorphoses are not only a way to represent the diversity of bodies, but also an occasion for discussion regarding aesthetics, politics and ethics from the point of view of these bodies.