This thesis examines the patterns of stress found in modern Russian inflectional paradigms (nouns, verbs and adjectives), and variation in these patterns. It also examines the 'retraction' of stress onto prepositions before certain nouns and numerals, for example нá день, зá сорок, and onto the negative particles не and ни before the past forms of certain verbs, for example нé дан, нѝ бьіло, and variability in these phenomena. After a detailed survey of literature in the field, a new approach to the treatment of mobile stress in Russian is proposed, called the 'distinctive approach'. This approach takes as its basis not the movement of stress between word-forms, from one morpheme, or one syllable, to another, but rather the patterns of contrasts made by stress between word-forms, and the resulting phonetic realisation of stems. This forms the basis of an original categorisation of the inflectional stress patterns found for nouns, verbs and adjectives, which are examined in detail. Areas of instability in the system are identified, as indicated by the existence of stress variants. Certain of these areas are then further investigated by means of a comparison of dictionary data from standard reference works of the last forty years with new research data provided by a survey of twenty-one Muscovites in the age-range 23 to 62; full tables are given containing the results of this investigation. Each word is then discussed in detail, and a summary given of the changes in stress identified for each word-class. This thesis concludes that there is widespread variation in patterns of mobile stress, and that developments of a varied and disparate nature are taking place in the different parts of the inflectional system. There is, in addition, some evidence that stress mobility, particularly within the sub-paradigm, is being abandoned in favour of fixed stem- or desinence-stress. A reduction in the incidence of stress mobility is also seen in the area of the 'retraction' of stress onto prepositions and negative particles.

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Yes / This article deals with a neglected dimension of Cold War history, namely the role of minor Communist secret services in subverting cultural relations with Britain. In particular, the article examines the efforts of Hungarian State Security to penetrate a university centre in London during the 1960s. Drawing on hitherto unexplored archival material, it documents the intensive attempts made to monitor or cultivate individuals at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies — notably the historian Dr László Péter — as part of a wide-ranging and ambitious intelligence offensive on the tenth anniversary of the 1956 Revolution. Paradoxically, this heightened espionage activity took place at a time of enhanced bilateral ties. The historical records analysed here provide new insight into the duplicity of Hungary’s foreign policy, and the hypocrisy of the post-revolutionary regime’s cultural ‘opening’ to the West, during a defining decade.

In the wake of the recent wave of interest in the ties between Early Rus and the Latin world, this dissertation investigates conceptions and depictions of Latin Christians in Early Rusian texts. Unlike previous smaller-scale studies, the present study takes into consideration all indigenous Early Rusian narrative sources which make reference to Latins or the Latin world. Its contribution is twofold. Firstly, it overturns the still prevalent assumption that Early Rusian writers tended to portray Latins as religious Others. There was certainly a place in Early Rusian writing for religious polemic against the Latin faith, but as I show, this place was very restricted. Secondly, having established the considerable diversity and complexity of rhetorical approaches to Latins, this study analyses and explains rhetorical patterns in Early Rusian portrayals of Latins and Latin Christendom. Scholars have tended to interpret these patterns as primarily influenced by extra-textual factors (most often, a text’s time of composition). This study, however, establishes that textual factors—specifically genre and theme—are the best predictors of a text’s portrayal of Latins, and explains the appearance and evolution of particular generic and thematic representations. It also demonstrates that a text’s place of composition tends to have a greater influence on its depictions of Latins than its time of composition. Through close engagement with the subtleties and ambiguities of Early Rusian depictions of Latins, this study furthers contemporary debate on questions of narrative, identity and difference in Rus and the medieval world.

Three ancient Church Slavonic Homilies (Tomáš Mikulka) Abstract The aim of this thesis is to offer an in-depth analysis of three ancient Old Church Slavonic (further only OCS) homilies which have not been appropriately recognised yet. These are three anonymous homilies on the Nativity of the Lord (25th December), on the Baptism of the Lord (6th January) and on the Annunciation (25th March). The first two aforementioned homilies were studied by A. N. Popov in 1880, whereas the homily on the Annunciation is in this study presented to the public for the very first time. The thesis objective is to characterize these texts by their linguistic features, then to offer their approximate dating and geographic localisation, as well as to address the question of their genuineness, mutual affinity and the relation to other OCS texts, in particular to the oldest OCS homilies. Each homily is analysed separately using the identical method so that the results can be finally compared. The conclusion is that these three homilies might have been written by the same author who cannot be simply identified with any already-known person. Before the linguistic analysis was carried out, all surviving manuscripts of each homily had been gathered. On the basis of this material, critical editions including indexes of biblical and...

The Apocryphal Gospel of Bartholomew in the Slavonic Tradition (Martina Chromá) Abstract The thesis deals with the Slavonic translation of the apocryphal Gospel of Bartholomew (Questions of Bartholomew), which is a literary monument written in Greek most likely in the 3rd century. The text of the monument has survived in two known Greek, two Latin and six Slavonic manuscripts. These Slavonic manuscripts are dated between the 14th - 18th centuries, with two of them pertaining to the Russian redaction of the Old Church Slavonic and the other two to the Serbian redaction. The objective of the thesis is to identify the most probable place and time assignment of the original Slavonic translation of the monument, and an outline of lines by which the manuscripts were spread in the Slavonic environment. By a detailed textological and lexical analysis we come to the conclusion that all the Slavonic manuscripts containing the text of the monument stemmed from one common archetype originated most likely in Bulgaria during the 10th century. The Slavonic translation was later moved from Bulgaria to Kievan Rusʼ, where the manuscripts were further spread and where the text of the monument was adjusted; this is how the manuscripts can be divided into two separate redactions. The manuscripts were also spread from Russia to...

The thesis paper is devoted to phonetic analysis of the Glagolitic Missal which was compiled by Vojtěch Tkadlčík. The attention is mainly paid to the differences between Glagolian sounding and the Latin transcription of the text. In the introduction of the paper the Czech type of the New Church Slavonic language is characterised and the structure of the Glagolitic Missal is presented. In the main part of the paper, which is based on the work with analysed texts, some phonetic phenomena and graphic specialities of the New Church Slavonic of the Czech type are described. Examples illustrate the places where Tkadlčík draw from the phonetics of South Slavonic languages or Eastern Slavonic languages and where he tried to make the text sound genuinely Czech. In the conclusion of the paper characteristic traits of the New Church Slavonic language of the Czech type are summarized.

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TITLE: Words of Old Church Slavonic Origin in Contemporary Russian Language AUTHOR: Jitka Peschel DEPARTMENT: Department of Russian studies and didactics SUPERVISOR: doc. PhDr. Lilia Nazarenko, CSc. ABSTRACT: This diploma thesis researches words of Old Church Slavonic origin in contemporary Russian language. The aim is to provide a comprehensive analysis of these words in the Russian language. The diploma thesis is divided into three parts. The first part describes the origin of the Old Church Slavonic language, its arrival in Russia, its influence on the Russian language, the penetration of the Old Church Slavonic words in the Russian language, as well as the development of the Russian standard language. The other two parts are dedicated to words of Old Church Slavonic origin in contemporary Russian language. The second part analyses the phonetic, morphological, semantic and stylistic aspects of these words. The third part is focused on the differences in meaning of Old Church Slavonic words having Russian equivalents and semantic processes by which words of Old Church Slavonic origin passed. The appendix includes a list of words occurring in the thesis. KEYWORDS: lexikology, loanword, Old Church Slavonic, Russian language

The Novgorod icon of Divine Wisdom is a great innovation of fifteenth-century Russian art. It represents the winged female Sophia flanked by the Theotokos and John the Baptist. Although the icon has a contemporaneous commentary and it exercised a profound influence on Russian cultural history (inspiring, among others, the sophiological theory of the turn of the twentieth century), its meaning, together with the dating and localisation of the first appearance of the iconography, has remained a great art-historical conundrum. This thesis sheds new light on this icon and explores the message, roots, function and historical context of the first, most emblematic and most enigmatic Russian allegorical iconography. In contrast to its recent interpretations as a Trinitarian image with Christ-Angel, it argues that the winged Sophia is the personification of the Orthodox Church. The Novgorod Wisdom icon represents the Church of Hagia Sophia, that is Orthodoxy, as it was perceived in fifteenth-century Rus’: the icon together with its commentary was a visual-textual response to the Florentine Union between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, signed in 1439 but rejected by the Russians in 1441. The thesis is based on detailed interdisciplinary research, utilising simultaneously the methodologies of philology, art history, theology and history. The combined analysis reveals that the great innovation of the Novgorod Sophia icon is that it amalgamates ecclesiological and sophiological iconographies in new ways. Hence the dissertation is also an innovative attempt to survey how Orthodoxy was perceived and visualized in medieval Rus’. It identifies the theological questions that constituted the basis of Russian Orthodox identity in the Middle Ages and reveals the significance of the polemics between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches for the history of Medieval Russian art.