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• A work of fiction as a path to a biography: The problem of reconstruction of the personality psychology of the young L. N. Tolstoy

  Lia Bushkanets

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  21

  A new museum of Leo Tolstoy is being created in Kazan, dedicated to the author’s adolescence and youth. Despite the fact that the basic facts of the Tolstoy’s life in Kazan have been restored by biographers, the inner life of the young Tolstoy and the features of his psychology are difficult to reconstruct due to the almost complete lack of sources. Since Tolstoy’s work is autobiographical, and he especially often relied on his own psychological experience in the draft versions of his works, the paper makes an attempt to reconstruct some features of the personality psychology of the young Tolstoy on the basis of the first complete draft edition of the novel War and Peace. The heroes of the novel, especially at the beginning, are at the age of youth, and Tolstoy, showing mental processes, recalls his youth. We can claim that Tolstoy, in his youth and adolescence, experienced the joy of life, suffered from ambition and awkwardness, found salvation in philosophical hobbies and daydreaming, in acting out certain situations, etc.

• The Search for a Social Ideal as a Cultural Tradition of Russian Thought

  Natalya Matveeva

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  159

  This study investigates some important lines of Russian social thought of the 19th and early 20th centuries in the context of the interpretation of the social ideal. Four perspectives of the problem are outlined: the first one is cultural geographic, divided into three branches (Westernism, Slavophilism and, Eurasianism), the second one is sociological positivism, the third one is philosophical liberalism, and the fourth one is religious thought. The cultural-geographic orientation created  a wide field of the work of social thought in studying the paths of social development. Sociologists positivists P. Lavrov and N. Mikhailovsky, who were founders of ‘narodnichestvo’ movement, formulated the notion of social ideal as an object of sociological research. The positivist perspective that was intended for the ideals of social solidarity, transformed into the left the traditionalism that was narodnichestvo ideology. Narodnichestvo created the ideal prerequisites for the dissemination of  Marxism in Russia. Liberal philosophic thought offered the original concept of the development of personality as a social ideal (P. Novgorodtsev). The fourth perspective was closest to the modern comprehension of the processes of unification of humankind and the development of the world economic system. The issue of social ideal thus became the main tradition of thought in the pre-revolutionary Russia.

• One can only Understand a Journey by Embarking on it

  Antonina Nikonova

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  101

  The present article is devoted to a new field of research in humanities–the „hygiene of culture” and its leader – Olga Szűcs. The formation of an international researh community is a long and difficult procedure. In the course of the development of the theoretical and the empirical basis of the „hygiene of culture” owing to Olga Szűcs’s personal qualities,the scientific and ethnic norms of a collective of researchers working in different fields of humanities have been set. The results of the research have been published in collective monographs. The paper considers Olga Szűcs’s main scientific contributions to this field and the role she played in this scientific project.

• Boldino as a carnival topos in the film “Guard Me, My Talisman” (1986) (Preliminary Notes)

  Natalia Nyagolova

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  29

  The paper attempts to interpret the Boldino topos in the film directed by Roman Balayan “Guard Me, My Talisman” (1986). It discusses the main tendencies in the reception of the Pushkin myth in Soviet culture in the period from the 1960s to the 1980s – the neoromantic attitude to Pushkin’s personality and works in the texts of the “sixtiers”, the transformations of the myth in documentary cinema, and dissident literature over the next two decades. It examines the elements of cinema poetics of the time of “stagnation” and the cinema of Perestroika in the artistic structure of the film. The carnival character of the Boldino topos in the film is traced on several levels: the resemanticization of the “Paradise” topos, the discreditation of the social hierarchy and eclecticism of poetic texts, functions of the carnival dress-up, and deviance as an ostensible feature of the characters.

• Curator of Culture

  Liya Bushkanets

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  24

  In 2024 we celebrate the 80th birthday of Professor Zoltán Hajnády. The articles in this issue of Slavica have been written by his colleagues to express their respect for him and his work. In addition to the international significance of Zoltán Hajnády’s research on Tolstoy, which is the main focus of his articles, the laudation introducing the series of articles also mentions a broader aspect of his work on Russian–European relations and reveals his deep personality. A representative of humanistic values, a great educator and scientist, he works for the mediation and mutual enrichment of Russian–Russian and Hungarian cultures. For this endeavour,  Hajnády was honoured with the Pushkin Medal in 2006.