Since the breakdown of the USSR, attempts have been made in post-Soviet Russia, and now the Russian Federation, to come to terms with its Soviet past. These have, over the past decades, become increasingly politicized and streamlined. Coming to terms with one's own past is rarely an easy task, as examples from all over the world can testify. The combination of a colonial empire (with qualifications) and the 70-year attempt to build a socialist state (also with qualifications) in one country, however, poses particular challenges. This paper attempts to sketch the situation researchers currently face and makes a few suggestions, aiming at both a fair and sober analysis.
This article presents a study of Mariology in the thought of two women from the Orthodox Christian dissent in the late USSR: Zoia Krakhmal'nikova and Tat'iana Goricheva. Examining their trajectories toward Christianity under state socialism and their underground publications, it investigates how they reappropriated the figure of the Mother of God to envision new models of women's roles and, ultimately, to articulate a broader response to what they perceived as Russia's national impasse. Both women turned to the Bogoroditsa in their activism, drawing on Russia's tradition of Marian devotion, yet their engagements with Mariology followed distinct paths. Krakhmal'nikova's approach, deeply rooted in textual tradition and inspired by the figure of Mother Maria Skobtsova, centered on the idea of "comprehensive motherhood." Goricheva's, by contrast, was more personal and experimental: for her, the Mother of God became both a source of personal transformation as a woman and a universal model of ideal womanhood in the late Soviet Union. The article concludes by tracing later developments in their respective Mariologies as these evolved or were reappropriated in the post-Soviet context.
This article seeks to clarify the phenomenon of the so-called “Z-philosophy”, which has emerged in Russia since 2022 against the backdrop of military propaganda justifying the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I define “Z-philosophy” as public statements that, in legitimizing Russian aggression, explicitly invoke philosophical heritage, employ philosophical arguments, or are produced by authors who identify themselves as philosophers. This broad understanding situated at the intersection of academic philosophy and propaganda has become possible due to the blurred boundaries between professional and nonprofessional philosophical discourse, as well as the particular role of Telegram and other social media in Russia’s contemporary public sphere. The article also surveys the main communities associated with this phenomenon and outlines the key patterns through which Russian philosophical heritage is being instrumentalized within it.
This article explores how the perspective of existential philosophy provides insight into interpreting changes in values in the context of the war in Ukraine. It argues that the war in Ukraine is not simply a geopolitical conflict between two states but also raises deeper existential and metaphysical questions about the foundations of the existence of the individual, the nation, and the political community (Bystrytsky 2025; Karivets 2022). This war goes beyond the conflict between two states and has broader existential and value-based implications for European countries. The aim of this article is to demonstrate that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine gives rise to an experience of borderline existence, which can be interpreted using Karl Jaspers’ concept of boundary situations. The article argues that the approach of existential philosophy allows for a conceptual interpretation of the existential changes caused by war at both the individual and collective levels and for the recognition of reactions to this borderline experience. The transition from the analysis of individual existential experience to the study of collective value reorientation under conditions of perceived geopolitical threat and war’s risk is grounded in ontological security theory, which provides a conceptual framework for linking Jaspers’ notion of boundary situations with changes in collective identity, security, and value orientations, while explaining how individually experienced insecurity and anxiety may acquire a collective dimension. Particular attention is paid to the case of Lithuania in the Baltic region. Due to its geopolitical position, historical experiences, and sensitivity to security threats, Lithuanian society perceives this war as a direct challenge to national security, democratic values, and their stable existence. The novelty and timeliness of the article are also based on the integration of theoretical analysis based on existential philosophy with empirical data analysis. Drawing on data from the eleventh wave of the European Social Survey (ESS, 2023–2024), the article analyzes changes in the values of Lithuanian residents based on data from the period before and after the outbreak of the war. In this way, the boundary situation is conceptualized not merely as a theoretical category of existential philosophy, but also as an empirically observable social and existential experience. The findings indicate that as Lithuanian society moves closer to this boundary experience, it undergoes a reorientation of value priorities and simultaneously forms a specific regional existential attitude that can be defined as existential resilience.
