Article / interview
Spojrzenie z ukosa ... Russian Culture and Literature in Polish Magazines 1918-1939 (http://rossica.ibl.waw.pl)
Posted on the server of the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the database Spojrzenie z ukosa ... Russian Culture and Literature in Polish Magazines 1918-1939 (http://rossica.ibl.waw.pl) contains an issue-based bibliography of texts published in Polish magazines of the interwar period devoted to Russian issues in the broad sense: mutual cultural relations and the Polish view of Russia and its culture.
The database provides data on the contents of many magazines that are now forgotten or poorly accessible, but above all it attempts to reconstruct the paradigms of narration on Polish-Russian relations that dominated in the interwar period. It also allows for a review of the current state of knowledge about both the causes of Polish-Russian conflicts, the determinants of Russophobia or Polish Russophilia, which has been pushed out of consciousness, and the processes of shaping Polish national identity of that period. It allows us to find an answer to the question to what extent Russian issues were present in the Polish culture of the time, both high and popular, and how the image of Russia, Russian people and Russian culture functioned in the consciousness of the time.
The periodicals studied included magazines, newspapers, and Polish weeklies of the interwar period, containing information on Russian culture, literature, art, and Polish-Russian cultural contacts. More than fifty national and regional literary, socio-literary, and political-social periodicals - weeklies, biweeklies, monthlies, and quarterlies - have been fully autopsied. Among the periodicals studied, one can find the largest national magazines, such as "Wiadomości Literackie", "Skamander" or "Tygodnik Ilustrowany", but also much smaller ones, containing a lot of interesting material. These would include, among others. These include the weekly magazines "Czarno na białem", "Marchołt", "Czerwona Róża", the Katowice monthly "Fantana", "Kuźnica", the Warsaw biweekly "Głos Literacki", the Lvov weekly "Nurt", and "Nowe Czasy"; Problemy Europy Wschodniej" ("Problems of Eastern Europe") by Włodzimierz Bączkowski; "Zet" ("Zet") by Jerzy Braun; "Wschód-Orient" ("East-Orient") by Jerzy Giedroyc; the Poznan radical-nationalist "Głos" ("Voice") by Jan Wyganowski, "Myśl Narodowa" ("National Thought") by Józef Wierzejski, "Państwo Pracy" ("Workers' State") - the organ of the Legion of Youth, "Kultura Słowiańska" ("Slavic Culture") - a Warsaw biweekly devoted to the problems of the Slavic nations, and "Natio" ("Natio") - a periodical devoted to national issues in Poland. Among the dailies, several titles were fully analyzed, such as "Ilustrowany Kurier Codzienny", "Echo Wieczorne" from Łódź, "Gazeta Lwowska", "Goniec Krakowski", "Rzeczpospolita", "Robotnik", "Czas".
The importance of the Russian subject matter in the interwar Polish press is evidenced by the names of the authors dealing with the subject matter. At that time such great authors as Józef Czechowicz, Teodor Parnicki and Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Teodor Bujnicki, Witold Wandurski, Józef Łobodowski wrote about Russian culture; the founders of pre-war Polish humanities, to mention only the outstanding Slavist Aleksander Brückner, rector of Vilnius University, philosopher Marian Zdziechowski, Franciszek Siedlecki, Bogumił Jasinowski, or such ambassadors of Russian culture as Karol Wiktor Zawodziński, Wacław Lednicki, Sergiusz Kułakowski, Kazimierz Andrzej Jaworski, Rafał Blüth, Paweł Ettinger. The Russian issues were written about by the activists of various political groups, artists of extremely different world views, e.g: Antoni Ferdynand Ossendowski, Ferdynand Goetel, Stefan Żeromski, Antoni Słonimski, Władysław Broniewski, Mieczysław Bohdan Lepecki, Melchior Wańkowicz, Stanisław Mackiewicz-Cat, Jerzy Stempowski, Jan Kucharzewski, Anatol Stern, Jan Parandowski, Andrzej Niemojewski, Wincenty Lutosławski, Stanisław Grabski.
The database contains over 13,000 entries. It contains information on critical, polemical and review articles, also those of minor importance; information on reviews, press and publishing notes, on mentions of Russian literature, science, culture and art; information on cultural events and initiatives undertaken by Polish (and Russian) society, on their course, popularity and audience reactions; as well as notes on Russian literary texts (originals and translations). Also included are major articles on social issues, history, and Polish-Russian political relations. Iconographic materials are also indexed if the publications were accompanied by illustrative material (this applies in particular to satirical writings, but also to reportages enriched with photographs or reviews of theatrical performances, films and exhibitions dealing with Russian themes).
The database is supplemented by full-text materials published in Lectorium.
The database has been created as part of the project Sideways reflections... funded by the National Science Center in 2013-2019. Russian culture and literature through the eyes of Poles (on the material of Polish periodicals of the interwar period). Development of bibliographic online database with a collection of selected full-text publications (No. 2012/07/E/HS2/03861).
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