The article summarizes the ideas of paradoxical correlation of absurdity, as a characteristic code of the Russian culture, and tragedy, which is not just a genre, but a mentally deterministic modus of being. The Russian absurdity is defined at two main levels: the personality of creator and the mechanism of artistic image creation. The psychological, philosophical and aesthetic facets of Russian absurdity actualize in relation to the creative and, most importantly in our case, social, political exis­tence of the Russian classics: A.S. Pushkin, N.V. Gogol, A.P. Chekhov, A.M. Gorky, I.S. Turgenev, I.A. Goncharov, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin and A.V. Sukhovo-Kobylin, A.I. Solzhenitsyn. The article proves that the “Russian tragedy” is not just a genre characteristic of literary and theatrical works, but a specific, accepted by mass consciousness concept and a way of understanding the world, bordering on the grotesque. In the context of the absurd and tragic beginnings of Russian culture, there is built a paradigm of a kind of “counter-revolutionary”, which could literally be expressed by Russian immigrants-writers. There are marked the concerns about riots and revolutions, selfish and ridiculous notion of progress, which resulted in a system of foresights and warnings, presented in the Russian classical literature, regarding social cataclysms and overthrowing. The author sees the reason for the modern, gullible and sometimes aggressive mass consciousness to take the pulse of Russian classics.

One of the most urgent tasks facing modern nations is to ensure the national peace and unity and to form the national social, spiritual and cultural bases of society. An important role in this process is played by national identity, considered in the article as a sociocultural phenomenon. It manifests itself as a complex multi-level system of mutual influences, connected with the method of identification of a person or socio-cultural group with a higher level community, determined by historical development of the state, its national interests, collective values and culture as a whole. Therefore, national identity has two interrelated aspects – socio-cultural and civil-political.

The problem of national identity requires a holistic approach, and so, it should be considered in conjunction with such phenomena as nation, ethnic group, cultural and civic values, cultural and civil identity, negative identity, national culture, and national idea. According to the author, the most promising directions in this area are believed to be the study of mutual influence of ethnic, civil and national identities, as well as the practical refraction of this theme in the development of collective identity formation me­chanisms, in the context of target objectives of the state cultural policy of Russia.

he article takes on the problem of wellbeing as a phenomenon of culture. Before turning to the disclosure of the essence of wellbeing from the viewpoint of the cultural and philosophical approach, the article reveals the advantages and weaknesses of the linguistic and econo­mic approaches to the analysis of well­being. Therefore, the linguistic approach allows us to keep in the research focus the twofold essence of wellbeing, reflected in the two root linguistic nature of the word. Another strong point of the linguistic approach is the opportunity of retaining in the research focus the welfare not as an abstract idea, but as a phenomenon connec-
ted with the subject — the carrier of wellbeing. The weakness of linguistics is manifes­ted when it becomes necessary to interpret the wellbeing as a cultural phenomenon, i.e. when the wellbeing carrier is not an abstract subject, but a subject of culture. The posi­tive side of the economic approach is its concreteness, though expressed through pragmatism. The welfare, as an object of desire by a certain subject, appears for the economist only as a benefit. This circumstance becomes, within the framework of the economic approach, the watershed between beneficial and “unbeneficial” welfares, understanding by the former ones the income and profit — the value in economic terms. However, when it comes to the welfares whose value is determined by beyond-pragmatic cultural reasons, the econo­mic approach appears less adequate. Hence, the article states that to study the well­being as a universal and generic phenomenon from the field of culture, the most appropriate approach is the cultural and philosophical one. This approach considers the well­being as a state that shows perfection, ontological status, social character and universality. Its subject — the well­being carrier — is characterized by a person free from jealousy, desiring for order and morality. In the case of characterizing the elite through the wellbeing as a cultural phenomenon, the elite must be preoccupied not with its own wellbeing but with the wellbeing of the people it is destined to lead.

Cultural industries are a subject of lively discussion in the social and human sciences, which indicates the expansion of theoretical tools in the interpretation of the concept. In understanding the concept of “cultural industries”, two major humanitarian trends are the most expressive. The article offers to define the boundaries of these trends within cultural studies and cultural economy. Through a comparative analysis, there are identified and formulated the distinctive features of the trends. This research results in conclusion that each approach focuses on coverage of different aspects of the cultural industries and on solving different research tasks.

In culturology, the cultural industries represent one of the forms of reproduction and dissemination of cultural mea­nings, determined by historical development and involving the study through the analysis of connections between the mea­nings and cultural context. In cultural economy, the cultural industries are a way to intensify the cultural life of a territory, through engaging cultural employees in creative economy and issuing a competitive final cultural pro­duct. The article concludes that comprehensive researches are the most pro­mising. They represent the cultural industries both as a certain form of economic organization of cultural employees and as a regulatory system of cultural meanings reproduction.

The article shows the dynamics of innovative development of the Cultural Forum of Russian Regions since 2015, displays the innovations in the content and organizational structure of this Forum in 2017, which expanded the event’s spatial boundaries and temporal parameters. There are reflected the topical issues of interaction between education and culture, participation of non-profit organizations in the promotion of a culture of civic solidarity, preservation of Russian regions’ cultural heritage and development of their creative industries, strengthening of the unified sociocultural space, and formation of expert culturological communities. Six main areas, whose events have taken place in four federal districts, are identified as crucial. The article presents the key problems of the most important areas and provides practical recommendations for joint actions and strengthening both public and non-profit sector.

The aim of this article is to identify the basic methodological principles of professional concertmaster’s activities. The article examines a number of publications spanning the consideration of this subject in methodological and applied perspective. The author reveals main stages of the work of concertmaster — a fully-fledged ensemble artist. This differentiates them from accompanists, who perform the function of harmonic support for the soloist (soloists). With this approach, the concertmaster should possess all the quality characteristics of a professional musician, having developed the ear for tone and texture, possessing the competence in editing the musical text, being able to navigate instantly in emergency situations on stage. An important role is played by the ability of the concertmaster to find the general conception of the composition’s interpretation, without which it does not seem possible to form the complete artistic image.

The article is carried out within the framework of semiotic approach to the town study. Its purpose is to substantiate the idea thatPokrovskayaMountainis a semantic element of theBryansktext and most fully and systematically expresses its main idea — the ancient history of the town, which determined its fate, image and destination. As a result of the study, the following conclusions were made. Firstly, the semiotic system ofPokrovskayaMountainis characterized by a rich content and, in many ways, nourishes and determines the uniqueness of theBryansktext itself. Secondly, these historical and cultural objects, in the aggregate of their meanings, representBryanskas an ancient and sacred topos, a symbol of courage, military and peaceful labor, literary fame. Thirdly, the example ofPokrovskayaMountainin theBryansktext highlights the metaphorical significance of the town’s location at the highest point of the terrestrial space and the associated with it idea of a special mission of the town as a center for the spread of Orthodoxy and the defender of Russian lands. Fourthly,PokrovskayaMountainis the semantic constant of theBryansktext and is actively used to determine the cultural identity of the territory, plays a special role in the construction of the identity ofBryanskand the creation of its mythological image. 

The article focuses on the ideological, theoretical and experimental foundations of the work of one of the most radical composers of the American musical avant-garde of the 20th century, John Milton Cage (1912—1992), covering the embodiment field of the idea of free musical composition, where sound and noise, as well as sound and silence, are in equal position. There are also revealed Cage’s experiments, which influenced the world of dance, fine arts, theater, opera, alternative rock, as well as his relationship with one of the leaders of the French musical avant-garde, Pierre Boulez, and with representatives of the American avant-garde — the artist R. Rauschenberg, the choreographer M. Cunningham, and others. The composer’s creativity opened the innovative key of new stylistic changes that paved the way for the modern art of postmodernity, the artistic demands that arose in the late 1960s, when the very life of John Cage was determined by numerous and intense friendships with the artists of the avant-garde community. The composer also radically changed the perception of music. His musical ideas largely determined the development not only of new tendencies in music, but also of the culture of the postwar avant-garde, while the experimental musical creativity contributed to destruction of the barriers between various spheres of artistic production — such as music, painting, dance performance — allowing for a new interdisciplinary work between different arts. Cage sought to view all kinds of sounds as potentially musical, urging the audience to accept all sound phenomena as equal. He carried out a revolution in music, in such a way as to make it possible to compose and perform any imaginable music, and claimed that it was necessary to strive for the music in which sounds would not just sound. 

Nowadays, the Chinese advertising graphics of its early development stage is increasingly attracting collectors, completists and researchers. It reflects the significant period in the history ofChinaof the beginning of the 20th century — the era of change, affecting all aspects of the country’s life, not only the political and economic spheres thereof, but also the social and cultural aspects. This kind of creative activity demonstrates those significant changes that occurred in the artistic praxis of Chinese early advertising posters, changing them from the traditional forms of Chinese national graphics to the modern commercial posters, which had adapted the achievements of the advertising graphics typical for the Western culture. Along with that, this kind of graphics most vividly and authentically demonstrates the modified and unique features of the fashionable costume and image of the Chinese women contemporary to that period. 

The article reveals the main milestones of the life and work of Ella Moiseyevna Shapiro (1938—2017), a remarkable woman who had three main professional passions in her life — poetry, translation work, and library. Basing on generalization and systematization of E.M. Shapiro’s creative work, the authors of the article give the opportunity to acquaint with her brilliant translations into Russian of the works by H. Longfellow, L. Labe, M. Desbordes-Valmore, L. de Lisle, G. de Nerval and many other poets from different countries and eras. In addition, due to her extensive knowledge in the field of library science, bibliography and informatics, working in the Russian State Library, E.M. Shapiro wrote numerous reviews of foreign materials on the development of art and culture, which are now available to readers of the main library of the country. The depth of her creativity is revealed in her poetic opuses, which, after the first opportunity to see them, extend the poetic space of cultural life, contributing to inclusion of the works of the poetess in research practices. Among these works, there are poems, full of philosophical understanding of the world, high lyricism, sense of belonging to the world, a wonderful children’s series, and the main book is the poetry collection “Strange Roaming”. The poetic transcriptions of psalms, made equirhythmically (i.e. they can be set to music), are unique. Due to this study, the poetry of E.M. Shapiro, little known during her lifetime, becomes an important part of the Russian and world cultural heritage. 

The article examines the phenomenon of contextual dependence of culture and the primary reasons for its interpretation in the social practice of history and modernity. It is identified that different social types of culture are dependent on different contexts. One of the most universal contexts that determine the interpretation of cultural artifacts is mythology. For ordinary folk culture, this context is ethnographic mythology, well studied by academic science. The interpretation of cultural artifacts within the framework of this mythology is connected with correlation of the meanings of the artifacts under consideration with the prevailing worldviews in this community. For elite specialized culture, the actual context is the mythology of power — ideology. The interpretation of artifacts of this culture is carried out mainly by determining the degree of their political utility. For mass culture, the main context is the mythology of social prestige — fashion. The interpretation of artifacts of this culture is carried out mainly by determining the scale of social demand for these artifacts, i. e. their place in the market of cultural products. The scientific relevance of the article is in deepening the views of specialists about the grounds and processes of interpreting cultural artifacts in the social practice of history and modernity.

The article reveals the author’s position that there is a difference between classical and post-modern literary studies from the point of view of cultural-philosophical analysis of the deepest artistic meanings and purposes of literary works, as well as the change in the philosophy of literary education and teaching practices. Classical Russian and foreign literature is characterized by penetration inside the subtext of a literary work, and the process of literary interiorization is associated with the author’s attitude to the depicted events. In postmodernism, there is a rethinking of the principles of classical literary studies, associated with the impact of the rapidly changing world on the humans, and the dependence of perception of these changes on the condition and mood of the reader, their personal problems. Here comes the question of relationship between literature, culture and the surrounding world, the question of artistic exteriorization — the transformation of images, their analysis and evaluation in external forms, outside of which the artwork does not exist. The development of the “screen culture”, the resulting visualization of images and verbal dominant decay lead to formation of new relationships between the word and the visual image, enriching the perception and revealing additional shades of meaning. Their study becomes the subject of a new scientific direction — “perceptive cultural studies”, which increasingly influence the educational space. The comprehension of literature as an educational process in general requires collective cooperation of the teacher and the student, and their mutual relation and relation with the reality determine the type of education and the direction of educational technology upgrade, including the training of teachers. The teaching methods should be directed to the search for artistic meanings from the point of view of their ability to humanize the society and the world in general. 

The article reports the significance of the letters of V.V. Rozanov’s correspondents for the thinker’s literary creativity. The extensive use of the letters from his archive became one of the main principles of the philosopher’s literary method. The principles of formation of V.V. Rozanov’s epistolary archive are disclosed in detail, from the time when the owner himself transferred it to theRumyantsevMuseumto the latest entries from his children and collectors. The main stages of the letters archive’s content publication, both by the writer himself and by modern researchers, are identified. The publications chronology of different layers of the archive is traced, starting from the publications of the letters written by V.V. Rozanov to himself. There are also the letters of the philosopher V.S. Solovyov, the publisher A.S. Suvorin, and the prominent representatives of the conservative camp of literature N.N. Strakhov, S.A. Rachinsky and K.N. Leontyev. The article describes how V.V. Rozanov used the letters of the clergy to reform the Church and modify the civil law. He also began to publish them during his lifetime. There are considered the contemporary publications, which reflect the modification of public interest in different life aspects of the writer. The study of the book publications of the letters to V.V. Rozanov, conducted on the basis of the Manuscripts Department of the Russian State Library, allows to note a displacement of the reader’s interest: from the longstanding global values in culture (the artist M.V. Nesterov, the writer F.M. Dostoevsky and the philosopher S.N. Bulgakov), through the long concealed creators of art modernism, to the continuation of the series of letters of conservative writers “The Literary Exiles”, conceived by V.V. Rozanov during his lifetime. 

For the first time, the article attempts to identify the cultural aspect of V.I. Alekseev’s creative legacy and to introduce the fictional prose of this author into the scientific discourse. This will allow to better represent the complex scope of Russian literature abroad and to deepen its analysis as a cultural phenomenon. V.I. Alekseev (1906—2002) was a writer of the second wave of Russian emigration, who is nowadays almost unknown in his motherland. Meanwhile, his works are a significant part of our national culture, which deserve the attention of Russian readers and researchers for a number of reasons. First of all, this is a specific perspective in which the writer sees and reflects the reality. Alekseev views the national history through an unbreakable bond of the Russian national idea and Orthodoxy. Secondly, it is the complexity and significance of the period of Russian history Alekseev writes about. The action in his works, reflecting primarily the author’s personal life experience, takes place in the USSR during the interwar years, as well as on the both opposing sides on the front line during the Great Patriotic War and in the West (mainly in Germany) soon after the end of the Second World War. The article describes the peculiarities of the individual style of the author, who, undoubtedly, had great literary skills. There are identified and represented Alekseev’s three main ways of central idea developing in his main work of fiction — the dilogy “Invisible Russia” (1952) and “Soldierly Russia” (1954). The genre nature of this work is revealed. The complex analysis of the creative legacy of Alekseev is given in the article in correlation with his biography. The writer’s life journey, also almost unknown to the average Russian reader, is exposed to light, partly on the basis of resources difficult to access (introductions to the emigrant editions of the middle of the 20th century, emigrant press of the same period), partly through the reconstruction made by the author of the article, basing on the autobiographic works of Alekseev. The list of sources includes rare, hardly accessible materials and may serve as an additional characteristic of the writer’s creative legacy.

Prince G.G. Gagarin, famous for his illustrations for the novel by V.A. Sollogub “Tarantas”, devoted his life to embodiment of the novel’s idea of “settling the folk art” in Russia. The artist found the “folk art” in ancient Byzantium and began the realization of its “settling” in Russia from the Caucasus — first trying (though unsuccessfully) to establish a “special art school” there and then frescoing the Tiflis Sioni Cathedral in the Byzantine style. In developing the mural project, the artist abandoned his initial version, finding it, probably, nonconforming to the “pure Byzantine origins”, and followed the classical Byzantine church decoration system, aligning at the same time with the Sophia of Constantinople. Into the middle register of the altarpiece, the artist put the composition “Sending the Apostles to Preach”, which had a special significance forGeorgia surrounded by pagan peoples. In the Byzantine style of mural compositions, the artist sought to combine the “Greek Christian thought” with the “Greek pagan form”, translating the idea of ancient art Christianization, borrowed from French artists of the Romano-Byzantine direction. The artist called his method of Byzantine models treatment “free imitation”. While frescoing the Sioni Cathedral, he used, in particular, the miniatures of Byzantine manuscripts. This article is of interest because of the modern issue of religious art rebirth inRussia.