The article explores Polish-Ukrainian language contacts in the context of dialectal lexicography exemplified by Słowniczek prowincуоnalizmów Podolskich, ułozony w Kamieńcu Podolskim w roku 1863 (further in the article – Dictionary) by Aleksander Кrеmer, a Polish scholar who lived in Kamyanets-Podilsky, a city in the region of Podillia in Ukraine. In his Dictionary, Kremer documented the local dialect of the Polish language spoken by Polish--speaking residents in Kamyanets-Podilsky, which contained lexical items borrowed from Ukrainian. Accordingly, Kremer’s Dictionary provides a rare insight into Polish-Ukrainian language contacts on the dialectal level. Furthermore, Kremer compared the dialectal lexical items collected and recorded by him in Kamyanets-Podilsky with the lexical material of Słownik języka polskiego compiled by S. Linde (1807-1814). However, Kremer’s Dictionary has not been properly researched in the prior studies. In this light, the aim of this article is to identify and systematize the Polish-Ukrainian language contacts that are reflected in Dictionary. The results of the study have revealed multiple instances of the local dialect of Ukrainian in Kremer’s Dictionary, which are further discussed in the article. The results of the study are relevant to historical linguists, dialectologists, and ethnographers in Ukraine as well as in Poland.
The subject of the study are the object clauses with the complementizers ČTO ‘that’ and KAK ‘how’ in modern Russian, with a partial comparison to their German counterparts. The study concerns the alternations of syntactic actants, implemented in the form of a dependent clause. The authors focus on one type of such semantically conditioned alternations. For this purpose, the authors compare alternative syntactic forms of sentential actants with the Russian complementizers ČTO | KAK and the German equivalents DASS | WIE. The analysis shows that each type of sentential actant allows for different valency classes, and there are also differences between the studied languages: German and Russian.
The article analyzes how Vilnius University (1803-1832) functioned as a figure of memory for Poles in the Northwestern Governorates of the Russian Empire after its suppression in 1832. The primary source is the manuscript memoir of Witold Małcużyński, which records the recollections of his father, Stanisław – a graduate of a teachers’ seminary and later a schoolteacher. The study combines ego-document analysis with microhistory and cultural memory studies, juxtaposing the narrative with the context of Russification following the uprisings of 1830/31 and 1863/64. Based on the manuscript memoir, it reconstructs the channels through which the memory of Vilnius University was transmitted (family storytelling, teachers’ milieus) as well as the repertoire of images of the university that sustained communal identity into the early twentieth century. The analysis indicates that this memory functioned as a symbolic resource and a point of reference for Poles in the Northwestern Governorates amid intensifying repressions by the partitioning power.
The Vainakhs, who include the Chechens, Ingush and Bacoi, were the only people of the North Caucasus who managed to resist the 13th-century Mongol invasions, taking refuge in hard-to-reach mountain valleys in present-day Chechnya. After the fall of the Golden Horde and Timur’s State in the Caucasus, a new balance of political power emerged, ensuring relative security for the Vainakhs. This allowed for the continuation of the consolidation of the Caucasian highlanders, which had begun in the 14th century, and the emergence of a specific social and state organization at the end of the 15th century. It was based on a federation of clan--tribal organizations, creating thukums and taipas. The supreme body of this state was the State Council, called Mehk-Kheł, which performed legislative, executive, judicial and control functions. The social organization of the Vainakhs in the period under discussion also showed specific features. Its basis was the freemen and a small number of dependent people recruited from among prisoners of war and freedmen. Despite the increasing stratification of wealth and attempts at subjugation by Kabardian, Kumyk and Avar princes and khans, the vast majority of uzdeni managed to maintain their independence. The Vainakh state organization system remained unchanged until the beginning of the 19th century.
The article attempts to reconstruct the premises that led to Joseph Brodsky’s writing of the (anti)elegy On the Independence of Ukraine. According to critics’ opinions that accuse the poet and justify his attitude, Brodsky was influenced by many external factors (e.g., the ideological pressure of the culture in which he was formed) and often unconscious psychological stimuli, which were a realisation of the social unawareness of Russian culture. In the article, opinions of famous intellectuals, writers and literary critics (Czesław Miłosz, Bengt Jangfeld, Oksana Zabużhko, Aleksander Fiut, and others) were taken into account.
