The theme of the article is the concept of credentials based on the data from general and terminological dictionaries. It contains a proposal for a Russian-Polish entry article with the name of this diplomatic document (entry article as a part of a translation dictionary within the project “Diplomacy and politics. Russian-Polish dictionary survey”). The author explains the history of this term in both languages, focusing on the dissimilarity of its grammatical form both in Russian and Polish monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, which is especially visible while comparing dictionary and textual data. The material derived from Russian and Polish parallel texts (autonomous, independent of each other) is described according to the recommendations adopted for translation dictionaries – providing their users with the practical information on the usage of units (their syntactic requirements and usage conditions). The analysis also devotes ample attention to the socalled undescribed translated items (equivalents not recorded so far in Russian-Polish/ Polish-Russian lexicography). The discussion of numerous bilingual dictionaries justifi es the claim that a considerable part of collected units can be regarded as undescribed translated items (undescribed equivalents).

The aim of the article is to present loan vocabulary connected to clothes and ornaments. The Old-Believers’ dialect is subject to Polish interference on the lexical level because vocabulary is the linguistic element which is changing most rapidly. The dialect studied is situated in the Polish linguistic environment and thus it is isolated due to its lack of territorial contact with the Russian language. It belongs to the so-called Pskov group – the western Central Great Russian akanie dialects. Since the 1950s, when research into the dialect was initiated by Iryda Grek-Pabisowa and Irena Maryniakowa, the biggest increase in loan words has been noticed in the vocabulary related to health, jobs, clothes and ornaments, and the expressions used to refer to the new reality: the progress of civilisation, education, transport and agriculture. The lexemes borrowed are subject to various adaptation processes, for example, phonetic, stress-pattern, morphological or derivational ones.

The article presents 123 names of clothing in the village of Wójtowce in Podole. The collected material is divided into subgroups: names of head coverings, names of outerwear, names of underwear, names of footwear, names of shoes and their parts, names of accessories and parts of clothing, names of actions connected with clothing. Among the names of clothing there are both borrowings from the Ukrainian and/or Russian languages and Polish native words, including the words common for Polish and Ukrainian/Russian. The presented words are compared with certain Polish dialects in Ukraine (including unpublished material). In the described vocabulary Ukrainian and/or Russian borrowings constitute 37% while native Polish lexemes are predominant and make up 44%, words common for Polish and Ukrainian/Russian – 19%.

In this paper I respond to Elżbieta Mikiciuk’s polemic with my article: The Brothers Karamazov: Dostoevsky’s Tainted Hosanna (“Slavia Orientalis” 2017, nr 1; the polemic was published in “Slavia Orientalis” 2017, nr 2). I use this opportunity to look at my article anew and restate my interpretative approach to Dostoevsky’s last novel as well as the line of argumentation I had decided to adopt. The substance of my response relies heavily on the point evoked several times by E. Mikiciuk, concerning my “biased” selection of citations from the novel which generates a “one-dimensional”, “manipulated”, and “false” image of Christianity as a religion that approves of an “economic” idea of God, a God from whom one has to “buy” a right to salvation. Recalling narrations of starets Zosima on the problem of involuntary suffering and death, and meditating on an indefi nite, unpredictable or highly ambiguous nature of such characters as Dymitr and Alyosha Karamazov or Smerdyakov, I emphasize the radical openness and polyphonic nature of Dostoevsky's text which allows for manifold, even contradictory readings and understandings of the same fragments of his complex works. Further, I develop a key thesis that both theological/religious interpretations of Dostoevsky’s oeuvre, as supported by Elżbieta Mikiciuk, and philosophical/ existential ones, as advanced by me, are feasible and valuable as long as they remain anchored in a close reading and do not lay claims to representing the one and only valid approach to his literary universe. The paper ends with a conclusion in which I encourage a mutually inspirational dialogue (the agon, if you will) between these two exegetic strategies. Such a dialogue seems essential for a reinvigoration of Dostoevsky’s literary work, against which one should continuously measure himself in a constant, even painful at times, sense of insuffi ciency of his/her interpretative insight facing a paradoxical, axiologically ambivalent, and strictly polyphonic oeuvre.

This article describes the study of the reception of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s works by Polish and Russian readers. I have tried to identify similarities and differences in the interpretation of his novels in relation to readers’ nationality, age, education, life experiences and worldview. This study (survey) confi rmed some of the previously obtained results. It turns out, once again, that Dostoevsky is a writer who still arouses interest, his novels are popular. The study also showed that the interpretation of Dostoevsky’s works usually does not depend on reader’s nationality – Polish and Russian respondents are in agreement when it comes to their views about the books. Differences in the reception of novels can be correlated mostly with respondents faith and/or unbelief.

The article describes semantic roles of instrumental case (tvoritel’nyj padezh) in Russian and other Slavic languages. Its functions as the instrument, agent, route, temporative, vehicle, comparison, nominal predicate and object of action, and their place in human mental world are considered. Examples of izosemic (standard) and non-izosemic realization of these functions are provided. It is concluded that each semantic role is associated with the specifi c range of lexemes. The idea of interdependence or syncretism of meanings of the instrumental case is discussed. Examples from modern fi ction, where the opposition between certain functions of instrumental case is neutralized, worn off, are provided too. It is hypothesized that in certain discourse circumstances the instrumental case becomes the symbol of common dependency of noun from verb.

The aim of the article is to discuss the written legacy of Philaret Drozdov, the Orthodox Metropolitan of Moscow (lived 1782–1867), in the context of human freedom and the freedom of the imperial Russia’s system – the autocracy. The basic research material constitutes of four homilies by Philaret Drozdov written in the years 1849–1856. To present a certain evolution of the Russian thought the author of the article also cites works which were created in earlier periods, i.e.: in the Moscow Russia time and in the time of Peter I. First, the author presents the orthodox anthropology as the ideological base for Philaret Drozdov’s considerations of freedom and power. Then, individual texts are discussed in detail in order to define the view of the Metropolitan of Moscow on the foregoing issues. At the end, the author sums up the carried out analysis and presents conclusions.

The work is devoted to the analysis of quite rare kind of wedding speeches occurring in a ceremony of the part of Vologda province in the end 19th – early 20th century. The author considers features of functioning of the text in a wedding ceremony, national terminology, the territory of distribution, poetic features, a ratio of all-Russian and regional components in the texts. It is shown that by means of these texts the party of the bride implicitly declared about her physical and emotional preparedness for marriage because the themes of female physical beauty, health, portliness, youth, fertility, complaisance, etc. are emphasized in these texts.

The Polish language in Lithuania, Belorussia and Ukraine has been researched from many points of view, but it needs further studying. New material is required: records, letters, diaries, treatises, especially for researching standard Polish of the 20th century in its regional variant spoken by magnats, middle nobility, petty nobility living in villages, and by inteligentsia of cities and small towns. Also there are needed new methodological approaches to studying essential features of Polish mentioned above, which will take into account the frequent (common) traits as well as relict ones. The examination of these features will create a good base for distinguishing separate areas of the Polish language in Lithuania and Belorussia. The characteristic of vocabulary requests confrontation of words among others in synonymic pairs: native and foreign ones in register and in text, preferably based on computer text corps. To ascertain code mixing (also to find the homogenous/mixed character of the texts) it is necessary to apply both a panchronic approach (which regards all foreign elements), and a synchronic one (leaving out those foreign elements, which entered the grammatical or lexical systems of Polish). The paper proposes some ways for solving these problems

The following article is devoted to the process of adapting loanwords into the Russian language in the first half of 17th century. The material which was subject to analysis was extracted from the first, handwritten editions of Russian opinion journalism, written from 1600 to 1650. The purpose of the article is to present the process of absorbing loanwords on the phonetic and morphological level, and to record changes in word genders and resonance variants in the words internalized into Russian either originating directly from another language or passed on through one from other languages

The article deals with the adaptation of Belorussian and Russian affixes in Polish dialects of Braslaw region. The author singles out certain models of af fixal adaptation on the basis of phonetic, morphological and semantic or phonomorphological equivalence. Collected vocabulary provides many examples where we can observe the assimilation of foreign elements into the native system of the multilingual population. Modifications of borrowings in this way indicate the vitality of the systemic word-formative rules of the Polish language in the speakers’ consciousness.

The article is dedicated to philosophical and religious aspects of the work of Russian writer and thinker Mary (Skobcowa). The aim is to investigate the key concepts that shaped her writings such as the problem of creativity, asceticism, the problem of the person. Particular attention was paid to the religious roots of her works. Her ideas are examined in the context of the theological thought of the twentieth century. Mother Mary synthesized the Sergiei Bulgakhov’s ‘philosophical system’ and the existentialist analysis of Nikolai Berdiayev. Special attention was paid to a critical rethinking of nineteenth-century Russian monastic tradition as well as polemic in the academic tradition of the early twentieth century.

The aim of this article is a translation in the nation-creating function. From the middle of 18th century Ukrainian writers want to improve position of Ukrainian language in the state, show his uniqueness. Their method to achieved the object was translation masterpices of European literature into Ukrainian. This was evidence that Ukrainian language is independent language and could exist.