Birthday Collections — Pro et Contra

What are the ideological and artistic peculiarities of collections of articles published in connection with a scholar’s birthday and how are they different from high-ranking academic journals? In this article, the reviewers analyse two collections of articles on philology issued to commemorate scholars’ birthdays and try to answer these questions. Except for expressing respect, such collections are manifestations of the cultural and academic views and achievements of the scholar, their followers, and students. Such collections aim to draw attention to the personality of a scholar who has established a school and is developing their field of knowledge; also, it is an opportunity to evaluate their achievements and the achievements of their school, which has its own methods and followers. The reviewers analyse materials of both collections and conclude that they can be characterised by a diversity of views and methods from literary criticism on Russian literature compared with precedent texts of world literature. On the other hand, the disadvantage of such collections is the fact that they contain many articles authored by people willing to express their gratitude to the scholar but failing to comply with the theme and concept of the collection. The reviewers conclude that, overall, such collections are meant as an attempt at a collective search for scholarly truth. Together with high-ranking journals indexed in Russian and international databases, such collections are a valuable fund, accumulating scholarly research works as they focus on the new discoveries of different schools of knowledge.