RUDN Journal of Studies in Literature and Journalism

This article explores the circulation of the idea of multiple worlds as it unfolds within the creative universe of F.M. Dostoevsky. The relevance of the study lies in the interpretive complexity of The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, particularly in the insufficiently examined ontological foundations of its fantastic narrative. The piece aims to identify the mechanisms through which the possibility of a multiverse is articulated, as well as to analyze the motif of the “appearance of a star” (the imaginary Sirius) as a marker of interworld transition and as an indicator of the protagonist’s existential choice within the text. For the first time, an attempt is made to interpret the story’s cosmological utopia through the lens of non-Euclidean metrics and to reveal a connection between the image of the star in the narrative and the representation of Sirius in the “imaginary geometry” of Nikolai Lobachevsky. The study investigates how an existentially intensified problem, the leveling, or “nullification”, of sin, is articulated through the narrative framework of a “journey to another planet”. Textual parallels can be traced that connect the story with the corpus of Western European Enlightenment works (Voltaire, Flammarion), as well as with Dostoevsky’s own writings from the 1870s-1880s. The article demonstrates that the author’s hypothesis concerning the possibility of the manifestation of “other worlds” and the redemption of sin is conceptually aligned with contemporary theories of geometric infinity, the idea of the heat death of the universe, speculative models of reality construction (including non-Euclidean axiomatics), and the internal logic governing the formation of “moral feeling”, understood as being determined by the affirmation of the probability of a posthumous existence.

The purpose of the study is to analyze the collection of V.Ya. Bryusov’s Nelly’s Poems (1913) in the context of women’s poetry of the early twentieth century. Bryusov’s literary mystification has already attracted the attention of researchers, but mainly in terms of the circumstances of its creation, critical reception and biographical facts of his life, reflected in this book. The relevance of this article lies in the fact that the emphasis is placed on the literary context of the era of the 1900s and early 1910s, which seems to be no less important for the emergence of the poems that made up this collection. In particular, the work of Nadezhda Lvova is examined in detail, the dialogue with which in this book seems to be more extensive than previously thought. The novelty of the study lies in the identification of Bryusov’s imitations of actual female lyrics in Nelly’s Poems, as well as significant references to the texts of Natalia Grushko, Cherubina de Gabriak (E. Dmitrieva) and Anna Akhmatova. The poems of the collection are written in different stylistic manners (philosophical, erotic, hedonistic, urban lyrics, classical and ultramodern poetry) and represent a polyphony of lyrical voices. Bryusov created several female heroines within the framework of one book at once: a dreamer, a sexually liberated emancipation, a cheerful townswoman or a woman-child. As a result, it is concluded that author embodied a collective portrait of a female poet at the turn of the 1910s, and Nelly can be considered a collective subject of female lyrics.

The article analyzes the motif of fate and the related strategy of documentary-fiction investigation chosen by Anna Matveeva to describe the tragedy in the mountains of the Northern Urals, which claimed the lives of nine young people in February 1959. The intertwining of the fictional plot and the unsolved mystery of the Dyatlov group’s demise creates a unique effect: through the sparse documents of the investigation and the personal diaries of the participants, the milestones of the characters’ destinies emerge. The receptive consciousness of the thirty-year-old heroine Anna plays a pivotal role in the novel. Compassionate and deeply empathetic, she strives to comprehend not merely the physical cause of death, but the metaphysical question of why fate singled out these nine individuals. Hence the inevitable intrusion of mystical motifs into the narrative fabric. The hybrid documentary-fiction text reveals its evocative nature at the level of composition and framing elements: it becomes an ascent to death, a pass of grief, shaping a polyphonic perception of the tragic material and reflecting the author’s worldview. The novelty of the work lies in examining not linguistic, but compositional evocation within the artistic text.

The article examines the genre and narrative originality of the Horrible Histories book series; whose key author was educator Terry Deary. His creative work has been poorly studied in Russia and abroad, while in many countries the interest to historical literature for school students is growing. The material for this study comprises books from the series published between 1993 and 2004, as well as works by Russian and foreign critics. For the first time in Russian literary studies, an attempt is made to define the genre of illustrated texts on historical themes aimed at a school audience, which pay considerable attention to the “gory” pages of the past. As a result of the analysis, conducted using systemic, comparative, textual, and linguistic methods, the authors of the article conclude that Horrible Histories possesses features of children’s fictional-educational and instructional literature, and is also in many ways close to the comic book genre. A special place in the books is occupied by an omniscient narrator, who strives to be not a boring instructor but a friend to children and teenagers. In simple language, he recounts both well-known historical events and those not covered in school. The narrator allows himself to criticize teachers who “don’t know everything”, suggesting that the readers test their own mentors. Irony, wordplay, and breaking of stereotypes distinguish Horrible Histories from other educational books. This unconventional approach to presenting material attracts the young audience and motivates it to study history. Deary has found a new format in fiction that meets the youth expectations.

The study of plots and motifs in Uzbek folktales within the context of world folklore allows for the identification of both universal patterns in the development of folk narratives and their unique national characteristics. In the context of modern globalization, a comparative-typological analysis of national tales using international catalogues (ATU, SUS) remains a key objective of modern folkloristics. The research aims to conduct a comparative-typological analysis of specific search motifs in Uzbek folktales and determine their correspondence with international plot types. The study employs structural-systemic and comparative-typological methods for analyzing folklore texts. The research is based on the classification of world folklore plots and the comparison of functional combinations of heroes and motifs. The analysis revealed that plot types such as “In Search of a Miraculous Medicine”, “In Search of a Songbird”, and “In Search of a Spouse” have broad parallels in the global fairy tale fund. It has been established that the interpretation of international plots in the Uzbek tradition is closely linked to the socio-cultural and territorial characteristics of the people. The study showed that alongside international plots, Uzbek folktales contain unique motifs, such as “a son searching for his father’s beloved” or “the search for a lost horse”, which are not reflected in international catalogues. This highlights the deep national specificity and originality of Uzbek oral tradition.

This article explores the semantic and cognitive mechanisms governing the functioning of the lexeme “irreversibility” (Unumkehrbarkeit) within contemporary German media discourse covering the crisis in German-Russian relations. The study tests the hypothesis that the use of irreversibility semantics in the mass media serves as a rhetorical strategy intended to reinforce the perception of ongoing changes as definitive. However, as the analysis demonstrates, this strategy conflicts with the deep-seated structures of the German linguistic worldview, generating cognitive dissonance in the audience. The research material comprises texts from leading German media outlets (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Tagesschau, Süddeutsche Zeitung) as well as data from relevant sociological surveys. Linguistic and conceptual analysis reveals that narratives of a “definitive rupture” are perceived negatively because, within the German mentality, eschatological codes are traditionally associated not with a linear apocalypse, but with a cyclical model of “ending - beginning” and the idea of renewal. Consequently, in times of crisis, an archaic, non-linear model of time perception is activated, rendering the linear rhetoric of “irreversibility” communicatively ineffective.

This article examines the social dimension of technology adoption and development. Based on Russian media coverage of one of the stages in the adoption of the EU AI Act in June 2023, it analyzes the interpretive flexibility of technology - a situation in which a technology has not yet acquired a fixed evaluation, and this evaluation is being shaped through negotiations. The theoretical framework is the social construction of technology (SCOT), while the analysis of empirical material draws on the discourse theory of E. Laclau and Ch. Mouffe. The analysis shows that this particular stage of adopting AI regulation in the Europe reveals the heterogeneity of positions within the Union: the stance of the governing bodies (the European Commission, which approved this stage) - protecting end-users from potential risks of the new technology; the stance of business - advocating for freer development of AI systems; and the deep involvement of American technology corporations in the negotiation process. The Russian position is presented as more homogeneous; nevertheless, there is a call to accelerate the implementation of Russia’s own regulatory system, with particular attention to the development of material infrastructure.

This article examines the audience reception of Chinese television dramas, which have been gaining popularity in Russia. The production of Chinese TV dramas requires compliance with state censorship, which largely determines the final version of the media product. Under conditions of uncertainty and limited transparency regarding regulatory requirements, audiences of Chinese dramas (commonly referred to as C-dramas) develop their own understandings of the nature of restrictions and the outcomes of censorship interventions. The aim of this study is to identify the characteristics of audience reception of Chinese television dramas in relation to censorship. The analysis focuses on three research questions: how VKontakte fan communities dedicated to Chinese dramas construct audience knowledge about censorship; how viewers conceptualize restrictions in C-dramas and interpret the shows in light of this knowledge; and how Russian fans of C-dramas perceive the regulation of television drama content in China. The study employs qualitative thematic analysis of 465 posts and comments published in VKontakte communities devoted to Chinese dramas. The analysis identifies key features of Russian viewers’ perceptions of censorship in Chinese television dramas, including practices of sharing information about censorship, expectations of regulatory intervention, assumptions about taboo topics, and attitudes toward censorship. The findings demonstrate that many C-drama fans are not only aware of censorship but also incorporate it into their interpretive practices, developing a particular mode of reception that we term censorship sensitivity.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the interaction of academic and industrial fields in the involvement of media specialists in the educational process of the Media Communications program. Based on the materials of in-depth interviews with teachers and practicing media specialists, persistent differences in value orientations, epistemological attitudes, and criteria for evaluating educational outcomes are revealed. The theoretical basis of the research is P. Bourdieu’s concept of social fields and M. Polanyi’s theory of tacit knowledge, critically reinterpreted in the context of modern higher education. It is proved that the interaction of fields is not a confrontation, but a dynamic negotiation space, where practitioners with hybrid habitus play a key role, acting as “translators” between academic and industrial discourses. It is concluded that the stability of this interaction of fields is achieved by coordination: the academic framework provides methodological rigor, and the industrial framework provides relevant content. The competitiveness of educational programs depends on the ability to convert implicit professional experience into a legitimate academic resource while maintaining university autonomy.

This theoretical essay explores, at the intersection of empirical analysis and philosophical-cognitive reflection, the nature and boundaries of human-generative AI interaction in creative professions, specifically journalism and science. The study aims to determine whether such interaction can transcend the instrumental-executive model and claim the status of “co-creation”, or whether fundamental differences between human and machine “thinking” pose an insurmountable barrier. The methodological framework comprises secondary data analysis (industry AI readiness indices, VTSIOM surveys), philosophical-cognitive analysis of the nature of creativity (insight, intentionality, the role of the “supraconscious”), and an illustrative case study of a dialogue with the DeepSeek AI model. The results show that in the media and journalism and science sectors, AI is actively used primarily for production and organizational processes, while remaining marginal to the core of creative activity - the generation of meanings and new knowledge. A comparison of the operational principles of machine intelligence (statistical pattern recombination, rule-following) with the non-algorithmizable nature of the creative act (insight, empathy, contextual understanding) confirms that contemporary “weak” AI functions as a tool of simulation rather than genuine creation. The author concludes that human - AI interaction follows an asymmetrically instrumental pattern: the human acts as the subject who sets goals, context, and criteria of meaning, while AI serves as a powerful support mechanism. This interaction cannot claim the status of “co-creation” in any existential or heuristic sense, which gives rise to a set of ethical and legal dilemmas including the diffusion of authorship, the need for rigorous verification, and the risk of professional deskilling.

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