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The events of 2014 in Ukraine triggered a wave of discussions and narratives rewriting history and reexamining allegiances and cultural affinities. Material for the study was drawn from Facebook, blogs and internet discussion forums, folk humor disseminated online, personal correspondence and participant observation. This essay discusses how opinions are formed in the diaspora and how they are affected by different sources of information. The attitude to events in Ukraine has turned into a litmus test in personal relations, sometimes leading to a break up of friendships and family relations. Our analyses will disclose ambivalences in the perception of Ukrainian crisis in the diaspora. Those who support Ukraine do not necessarily come from that country or have cultural affinities with it and not all Ukrainian supporters identify with democratic values. Critics of the current Ukrainian government do not always support the actions of Putin's Russia. Among them there are also people from Ukraine and able to speak Ukrainian. Like many political conflicts this one fueled nationalism not only in the participating countries but also in the Russian-speaking diaspora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses social antecedents, patterns of reproduction and innovation, and the communicative function of the comic lists which use the pattern "You've lived in X too long, when…" Originally borrowed from the English-language web sites, the idea of describing peculiarities of life in different countries has become popular on Ru.net among Russian-speaking expatriates and residents of Russia. The comic list format serves as a convenient template for individual or collaborative portrayal of those features of various countries that seem strange or weird to outsiders. While teasing the ways and habits of the other, writers of the lists reflect about their own culture, revealing ambivalent attitudes and a conflict of allegiances. Collaborative creation of the lists and heated discussions of their content point to the interactive nature of Internet folklore. Moreover, the users' comments indicate that the lists do not only serve for entertainment, but are valued as a source of information about the world outside the country of origin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research problems that were censored in the USSR have now come to light, among them the influence of Soviet ideology on the Russian language and the mentality of the speakers. The work reviewed in this essay analyses the role of the Soviet ideological jargon in the creation of a 'new type' of personality. The author discusses why the language preventing straightforward expression survived the Soviet political system and still affects communication in post-Soviet Russia. Numerous examples from formal and informal discourse illustrate how the Russian language turned into a reservoir of units charged with ideological meaning that function on all linguistic levels, from a letter or an accent to an entire text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]