“Slavic World: Commonality and Diversity” Young Scholars Conference 13–14 October 2020. Session “Linguistics”

The Young Scholars Conference at the Institute of Slavic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, has been held since 2014. In 2020, the organisers had to change the previous timing of the event –it had previously been timed to correspond with the Day of Slavic Writing and Culture (May 24th), but for the first time it was not held in May but in October. The format of the Conference was also changed: the participants made their presentations remotely on the ZOOM platform. As usual, there were three broad topic areas: “History”, “Linguistics”, and “Literary Studies. The History of Culture”. The wide geographical coverage of the participants should be mentioned. This year, young scholars from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Kaliningrad, Kirov, Rostov-on-don, Chisinau (Moldova), Ljubljana (Slovenia), Macerata (Italy), and Minsk (Belarus) presented their research. Historians discussed many issues, including the problems of governance and modernisation in multinational states, memory policy in Slavic countries, and the role of parties and public organisations in overcoming crises. The section “Literary Studies. The History of Culture” focused on the reception and translation of works in Slavic languages and the problems of poetics in literature and cinema. Linguists paid attention to issues surrounding the grammar of modern Slavic languages, dialectology, and paleoslavistics. Moderators’ comments made the Conference, as usual, a kind of “school” for the young researchers. The conference proceedings have been published.