This article features V. F. Khodasevich’s poem The Mummers and explains why horror replaces humor in the main character’s self-analysis. According to M. M. Bakhtin, the voice of the Persona fades or becomes distorted if it sounds alone, outside the Chorus. In this particular case, falling away from the Chorus provokes the fear of losing self-identity. The speaker identifies himself as Me / Not-Me based on the sacred boundaries between Mine and Someone Else’s. This situation is most clearly manifested in the line when the eyes of the speaker meet those of the mummer in a certain "uncoordinated" way, which can be interpreted as separation. The Yuletide chronotope makes the artistic world of the poem unfamiliar and alien. The masquerade blurs the boundaries between the worlds, and the speaker discovers that participation in this ritual requires personal responsibility. The open meeting of Me and The Other is anything but one-sided, and the ritual game appears to have a deep and serious meaning. 

The article questions the appropriateness of using the concept of myth in relation to the XX century culture. The term originated in the German Romantic philosophy and philology. The current use of the concept of myth is mostly connected with the irrational side of reality. The concept of neo-mythologism can be applied to the epoch of Modernism because it preserved a substantial understanding of the myth. Post Modernism, however, understood the myth in a formal way, as an expressive means. This understanding was adopted by semiology and structural anthropology. In the contemporary society, the so-called quasi-myths have become an effective tool of controlling mass consciousness. Unsubstantial quasimyths tend to merge into a simulacrum of the mythology of myth. The article describes this simulacrum and reveals that neo-mythologism as a substance-oriented mentality is not peculiar to Post Modernism. Philologically speaking, today’s myth concerns the key issue of historical poetics, i.e. the relationship between tradition and creativity, where individual creativity is a statement of tradition and national myth. This article was originally published in English as a monograph chapter: Kuznetsov I. V. Mythology of Myth in Twentieth-Century Culture. Philological sciences: Modern scholarly discussions. LvivToruń: Liha-Pres, 2019. P. 64–78.

This article explores the intermedial and metapoetical semantics of the artistic image of a train. This image is part of the artistic semiotics and plays two interrelated roles: it marks the connection between the discourses of cinema and literature and signifies the act of artistic creation. Based on the Russian literature of the ХХ–ХХI century, this article reviews the origins and development of the arrival of a train as a cinematic metaphor, as well as the ways of depicting images in time and space (including the inner space). Before the age of cinema, the classic Russian literature introduced the railroad motif to make the discourse more dynamic and to highlight the key opposition between traditional lifestyle and technological progress, e.g. in works by F. Ostrovsky, A. Chekhov, etc. The literature of the XX century merged cinematic devices with literary motifs and introduced fragmentation, editing, changing angles, and other new ways of artistic perception, e.g. in A. Platonov’s oeuvre. Train imagery may attain mythological semantics when it manifests the themes of disaster, death, Apocalypse, and revolution, thus becoming a metapoetical symbol, e.g. in B. Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. In the contemporary Russian literature, train movement is associated with the life of human consciousness (V. Pelevin) or with text generation (S. Sokolov). In some cases, episodes of rail traffic interspersed with episodes of filming complicate the narrative and multiply transitions from external to internal focalization (E. Vodolazkin). 

Passion for R. Wagner’s music and aesthetic ideas was characteristic of the Art Nouveau culture. At the turn of the XIX–XX centuries, it affected the Symbolist theater and shaped the aesthetic and artistic worlds of many Russian authors. Innokentii Annensky stood apart from the Russian mainstream symbolism. In his letter to E. M. Mukhina, he defined himself as a Wagnerian. The role of Wagner's aesthetics in the symbolist drama has received a lot of scientific attention, whereas its effect on the Russian modernist poetry remains largely understudied. This article introduces the Wagnerian layer in I. Annensky’s poetry. His Quiet Songs and The Cypress Chest appeared to have numerous references to such Wagner’s works as The Ring of the Nibelung, Parsifal, Tristan and Isolde, and Faust. The author analyzed I. Annensky’s poetry and correspondence. The analysis showed that the method of leitmotif composition helped the poet to structure his poetic ensembles. I. Annensky adopted Wagner's experience of combining operas into a tetralogy and used it to unite his own poetry into cycles. This device is especially obvious in the themes of secret love, the God sense, and the search for the ideal in his stand-alone cycles and poetry books. 

M. Karamzin’s Poor Lisa is a precedent in Russian literature: it both celebrated and brought down the principles of Sentimentalism. However, many aspects of this canonical text still remain understudied. The present research featured the moral and religious issues in N. M. Karamzin’s Poor Lisa. It also involved some fragments from N. M. Karamzin’s The History of the Russian State; Natalya, the Boyar’s Daughter, and Filalet to Melodor. The methods included the historical and literary approach, as well as comparative and typological analyses. As for N. M. Karamzin’s religious views, the authors agree with those literary critics and historians who relied on N. M. Karamzin’s biography and statements and declared him an orthodox Christian. The research concentrated on various moral and religious components of the story. Lisa’s worldview was shaped by that of her parents, who built their family relations based on the Old Russian Household Book. Lisa’s traditional Orthodox background explains many of her decisions, which critics tend to interpret through the prism of Sentimentalism. Spatial images of the novel seem to correlate with ceremonial tradition: they show how Lisa’s Christian worldview was gradually overtaken by the pagan belief system. The central motif of Lisa’s purity and innocence correlates with those of oblivion, delusion, the death of soul, punishment, built, sin, etc. As a result, the novel can be treated as a dialogue of two world outlook systems: Sentimental ethics vs. religious and moral ideas. The reader sees Lisa from the point of view of a compassionate narrator with a Sentimental worldview. However, a more complex problem of religious ethics appears as a moral background. 

The concept of happiness is actively discussed in various areas of modern science. The present article features the phenomenon of happiness in M. Lermontov’s fiction. The statistical data were obtained from the national corpus of the Russian language. The subcorpus of Lermontov’s fiction was analyzed for such lexemes as happiness, misery, happy, and bliss. The authors used systemic and phenomenological approaches, as well as hermeneutic, analytical, statistical, and interpretive methods, to reveal the peculiarities of happiness in Lermontov's artistic world and to examine the paradoxical nature of the characters' ideas of happiness. For most personages, happiness determines the search for the meaning of life and destiny. Some characters believe that happiness is possible in this life. For example, Ashik-Kerib is a story of finding a multifaceted kind of true happiness. Other personages believe that happiness cannot be achieved and that man is a fundamentally miserable creature. However, all Lermontov's characters keep looking for happiness. The article introduces the spheres and conditions that Lermontov's heroes associate with happiness. It focuses on Pechyorin from The Hero of Our Time, his ideas about weird people, happiness, and misery. 

The research featured the relationship between the indicators of identity and the characteristics of the attitude to personal security in university students. The study relied on M. Kuhn and T. McPartland’s Who am I questionnaire, M. Berzonski’s Questionnaire of Identity Styles adapted by E. P. Belinskaya et al., J. Chik and L. Tropp’s Aspects of Identity, A. A. Ozerina’s Professional Identity, and E. L. Soldatova’s Ego-Identity SEI-test. The attitude to personal safety was investigated by the methods developed by the author. The study involved 238 students of 1–5 year that were majoring in humanities. The cluster and regression analyses of the data obtained by the cross-sectional method identified the related characteristics of identity and attitudes to personal security, as well as their differences at different stages of training. The author revealed some general tendencies in the phenomena that occurred in students during the period of university study. Positive dynamics included the following trends. The professional position became more active (I as a subject of relations). The assessments of threat of losing one’s reputation and connections decreased. Senior students preferred a personal security strategy, i.e. they relied on themselves. Positive dynamics included the following trends. Superficial identity increased, while the autonomy in the awareness of one's own values and emotional component decreased. The assessment of psychological risks and that of criminal organizations increased, while common preventive efforts mostly decreased. Security strategies in terms of the macro environment also changed: senior students preferred adapting strategy (living in an authoritarian society) to individualizing (living in a humane and tolerant society). The article introduces some conclusions about the correlation of identity and attitude to personal security, as well as the complexity and multidirectional nature of their development in university students. 

Educational institutions need more effective patterns of interaction between teachers and students in digital environment. Digital teaching technologies are associated with the process of socialization. The research objective was to determine the specifics of the socialization of students, teachers, and university staff in a digital educational environment. The analysis relied on the theory of generations developed by W. Strauss and N. Howe. The authors identified the specificity of socialization in generation Z as the perception and accumulation of new information through the prism of digital component of culture. This specificity is essential in teaching and upbringing children and adolescents of generation Z, since they endow digital space and digital information with values and meanings. Differences in the perception of modern technologies caused the so-called digital gap phenomenon. The authors defined two fundamentally important directions in the study of the socialization of generation Z students by the teaching staff of other generations in the context of digital education. The first is to create conditions and activate the process of socialization in the digital educational environment of the older generation teachers. The second is to reduce the digital gap by organizing targeted active communication in the digital educational environment when solving pedagogical problems. 

Russian and foreign scientists have repeatedly noted a decline in public confidence in the government and most political institutions. This article studies the phenomenon of political trust and readiness for political behavior in terms of value orientations among Russian youth. The study carried out diagnostics of the young generation of Russians living in different regions of the Russian Federation, aged 18 to 34 years (n=291). The following were used as methodological tools: scales of political trust (O. A. Gulevich, I. R. Sarieva, 2020); the scale of readiness to participate in political activity (S. Pattyn et al., 2012; J. Van Assche et al., 2018, 2019) and the PVQ-R method for measuring individual values (Schwartz et al., 2012). It was noted that the representatives of Russian youth have a tendency towards social cynicism rather than political trust. It was found that the values of public safety and universalism increase the desire to take part in street actions, in the work of political parties, and encourage participation in signing collective petitions and voting in elections. The values of reputation and benevolence have the strongest influence on trust in authority. 

The article shows the dynamics of the stress-recovery balance of skaters in the context of individual psychological support programs. The study followed figure skaters 14–15 years old: athletes of the experimental group (n=15) underwent individually formed psychological support programs for three weeks, in the control group (n=15) directed psychological support was not implemented. The diagnostic tool is presented by "Stress recovery" questionnaire for athletes (E. Y. Kovbas, 2015). It was revealed that female athletes have difficulties with expectations regarding sports training and success in sports, insufficient use of psychological skills in preparing for a sports load and a decrease in the quality of sleep. hese positions were considered as targets of psychological influence, in accordance with which individual programs of psychological support were developed. Following the implementation of the programmes, a positive trend was observed in the balance of stress and recovery of skaters: the level of general and sporting recovery is increasing. The pilot group showed higher recovery rates and lower stress indicators. According to the results of the implementation of individually formed programs of psychological support, there was a shift in the balance of stress-recovery towards recovery. 

High morbidity and mortality make cardiovascular diseases socially significant. The Health Development Strategy of the Russian Federation though 2025 states the importance of diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of cardiovascular diseases. This research featured the psychological profile of patients with myocardial infarction at different stages: 1) risk of myocardial infarction, 2) soon after myocardial infarction, 3) after rehabilitation. The study involved 159 patients aged 38–47, including those at risk (43), those soon after a heart attack (39), those after rehabilitation (37), and a conditionally healthy control group (40). The psychological characteristics were assessed using a number of psychodiagnostic methods and included cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components of personality. The obtained data were processed using the nonparametric Mann-Whitney U-test (significance level=0.05) and calculated with STATISTICA 10.0. The research revealed active early maladaptive schemes. At all stages, the patients experienced a contradictory combination of the need for approval and intransigence in relation to other people's mistakes, high anxiety and irritability, non-constructive strategies for coping with stress, and a low level of reflexivity. These factors were interconnected, caused destructive behavior, and increased the psycho-emotional stress. The research also covered the attitude to the past, present, and future at different stages of disease development. The trends revealed the effect of psychological profile on behavioral factors that could increase the risk of primary and recurrent myocardial infarction. The results can help specialists to improve the existing psychological support programs for cardiovascular patients, develop preventive measures for risk groups, and identify targets for psychotherapeutic work with these two categories. 

The paper addresses a vital issue of forming idioms with nominations of human body. Human body-related words nominating body parts, physiological and mental processes are used to form numerous English idioms. In given paper these idioms are referred to as human body-related. The paper aims at revealing the specifics of lexical and semantic constituents of the idioms with reference to their contexts. We collected 200 human body-related English idioms from academic books and dictionaries. The research comprised four stages. The thematic classification based on the lexical structure of the idioms revealed prevalence of the idioms comprising words head, eyes, heart, back, foot, and hand. The similarities found in the meanings of all the idioms under study provided semantic classification into five groups, namely, characteristics, action, state, causation, and ability. Next we focused on contextual and semantic specifics of the idioms. In particular, the idioms, containing the word head were studied in the texts of the British National Corpus. The contexts provided the following additional meanings of the idioms: higher position, achievements, location, expenses, and inability to do something. The revealed collocations follow A^V+K type. The obtained results and developed algorithm may be applied to lexical and contextual studies of idioms and lexical groups. 

The transition to the paradigm of sustainable development and safe production has provoked an exponential increase in the number of scientific papers on the topic of green technology. This article deals with the linguacognitive approach to the metaphor of green technology and the modeling potential of this color metaphor. The research was based on ten scientific articles on green technology published in 2011–2020 in different countries. The analysis involved traditional linguistic methods in combination with a discursive-cognitive approach, as well as a corpus and contextual analysis supplemented by statistical and bibliometric methods. The author identified the conceptual core of the green technology discourse and organized the conceptual domain into a framework structure. The cognitive approach facilitated the identification of non-semantic elements of meaning, e.g. emotional and sensory reactions, psychological associations, positive attitude, etc., i.e. the total aura of meanings around the color green which are superimposed on the professional context and determine the vector of its interpretation. The article introduces this metaphorical model as a lexical manifestation of professional discourse of sustainable production and development. 

This article deals with the consonant phonemes /kː/~/k/ and /tː/~/t/ of the Teleut language in the intervocalic position. These sounds were contrasted as long and short ones in the previous studies. The paper offers a brief review of works on the formation and development of the Turkic consonantism and the problem of long consonants in the ancient and modern Turkic languages. The author focuses on the relevance of the short – long opposition for the Teleut stop consonants in the intervocalic position and makes an assumption that their length depends on their position and morphonology. The Turkic languages have two non-mutually exclusive types of consonant length: the qualitative length of voiceless consonants caused by aspiration and the quantitative length of the geminates caused by the extended closure. The research involved a Praat comparative analysis of sonograms of lexical stimuli that illustrated the length of [k] and [t] in intervocalic positions. The preliminary conclusion is that Teleut stops [k] and [t] are contrasted according to their voicing, while the length opposition seems to be a less significant discriminating feature. The sonogram also proved their voicing. 

The article deals with the development of international relations in Central Asia in the 1930s. The research featured the relationship between England and the Soviet Union during the uprising of the indigenous peoples of Xinjiang against the Chinese administration in 1931–1934. The analysis involved recent publications and archival sources. The research clarifies the historical picture of the confrontation between Great Britain and the Soviet Union in Central Asia. London made persistent attempts to establish its control over the rebel movement in order to gain economic and political influence in the province, which it had lost in the 1920s. However, the reciprocal actions of the Soviet government proved effective and completely deprived Britain of any serious prospects in that region. The confrontation, its forms, methods, and results affected the entire complex of international relations in Central Asia. The conflict became the final episode of the Great Game, which later determined the predominant position of the Soviet Union in Central Asia. Contrary to the opinion of many western researchers, the USSR never intended to annex the territory of Xinjiang. The research summarizes the history of international relations in Central Asia. 

The article introduces an alternative opinion on Brexit voiced by John Major, who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom when it joined the European Union. In his public speeches, John Major touched upon such issues as national sovereignty, British identity, migration, economy, political and diplomatic influence, state unity, etc. John Major believes that Brexit will eventually do more harm than good and that the pro-Brexit rhetoric is a manifestation of populism. He does not consider the European Union as a threat to the British identity. The research was based on I. S. Semenenko’s idea of the panEuropean identity as a resource for the development of the European Union. Even though Brexit and Covid-19 weakened the European identity, the further development of identity policy is likely to strengthen the sense of belonging. Thus, John Major’s reasonable rhetoric can be considered from the opposite standpoint. 

The article covers 30 years of EU agenda on migration and development. The research objective was to assess its continuity, determine the main trends, and outline the challenges that the cooperation between the EU and the ACP has to face after the pandemic. The EU agenda on migration and development proved to be rather stable. However, the EU motivates migration cooperation by development aid while most ACP countries do not welcome this approach. As a result, the contradictions between the EU and the ACP still exist, despite their formal cooperation after the Cotonou agreement expired. The main trends in the EU policy were the principle of conditionality and the EU's attempts to abandon the universal approach to their ACP partners. The COVID-19 pandemic has aggravated the contradictions in migration and development issues, thus preventing the European Union from upgrading its development policy. The pandemic has the following consequences: global increase in securitization of immigration; strict entry rules and immigration policies; the prospect of expanding access to health care systems for citizens and immigrants. These consequences will inevitably affect the relations between the EU and the ACP.

The article focuses on the transformation of the European Union’s policy in the South Caucasus after the NagornoKarabakh war of 2020. Before the war, the foreign and security policy in the region had depended on the OSCE Minsk Group, Georgia’s role in the Russian-Georgian confrontation, and the Eastern Partnership program for the South Caucasus. After Azerbaijan won the Nagorno-Karabakh war with Turkey’s support, the previous line of policy stopped being effective. It failed to unite the countries of the South Caucasus, to remove the Russian Federation from the region, and to make the European Union a real mediator in the conflict zone. The democratization of the local political regimes also failed, despite the proEuropean position of Georgia and the velvet revolution in Armenia. As a result of the Armenian-Azerbaijani war of 2020, Russian and Turkish troops entered the South Caucasus, and Russia, Turkey, and Iran started acting as peace mediators. The European Union failed to strengthen the role of the OSCE Minsk Group and the mechanisms of the Eastern Partnership in the region. Ever since 2020, it has been trying to develop a common policy for all ethnic and inter-confessional conflicts in the postSoviet space. The European Union keeps failing in its competition and partnership with Russia, while Turkey is getting more active and independent in the region. Thus, the European Union will have to develop a new model of influence in the South Caucasus and the whole post-Soviet space. In the current global confrontation, it is very important to find an international actor able and willing to interact with all parties. The European Union seems to be the one, and its actions in resolving regional conflicts require a detailed research.