This article discusses the rise of TikTok, a relatively young but extremely popular Chinese social network for sharing short-form original videos (mostly entertaining). By the end of 2021, TikTok had surpassed the American search engine Google as the most visited website on the Internet. With its billion unique visitors each month, it is the only top 10 website whose parent company (ByteDance) is located outside the U.S. In the article, I analyze the specifics of TikTok’s presence in the Russian segment of the Internet, its gradual politicization, and the problems the platform has faced over the last two years. In 2021, TikTok surpassed VKontakte, the most popular social network in Russia, in terms of time spent using the app. And, although the service had some friction with the Russian authorities, there is still no full-fledged replacement for it. So far, Yappy—the Russian analog for TikTok—does not look like its serious competitor at all. The article covers what concerns the authorities of other countries have about this social network, and how TikTok in general affects Internet culture. I look into the values propagated by TikTok among young people. In the conclusion, I put forward a hypothesis, which requires further study, that TikTok is now a super effective world-scale soft power tool of the People’s Republic of China.

use of its terminology, concepts, definitions as well as analytical tools. The theoretical framework provided in the article is designed as a modest proposal for musicologists and film specialists alike, as well as all those interested in musical and sonic aspects of TV shows, who can also develop their own, methodological approaches to music in TV shows.

The article is devoted to a specific socio-cultural phenomenon, called by the author “Napoleonic” Petersburg, and its reflection in Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment (1866). In the late 1830s — 1860s the Napoleonic myth manifested itself in several aspects of the cultural life of the capital of the Russian Empire: the names of public institutions, restaurant menus, apartment decorations, museum rarities, monuments, street shows, theatrical productions, literary works, psychological imitation of Napoleon, etc. The article presents an attempt to reconstruct how the “Napoleonic” Petersburg was formed and looked like during the time when Fyodor Dostoevsky, who dedicated several works to the life of people in Petersburg, fascinated by Napoleon (“Mr. Prokharchin,” White Nights, Notes from the Underground, etc.), lived and worked in it, before the creation of Crime and Punishment. The author’s research focuses on the novel Crime and Punishment and Rodion Raskolnikov, trying to become a new Napoleon and talking about the transformation of St. Petersburg and the greatness of historical figures as “living monuments” on which there is “not a body, but bronze.” It is shown how the realities of St. Petersburg (the Egyptian Bridge, the Alexander Column, the Kazan Cathedral, etc.) relate to the Napoleonic myth and are indirectly reflected in the text of Dostoevsky’s novel.

The review analysis the main theses contained in the monograph by Lewis Bagby, American slavicist, Professor Emeritus of Russian literature and language at the University of Wyoming, First Words: On Dostoevsky’s Introductions, that researches the functions of prefaces/introductions in Dostoevsky’s literary works. Bagby identifies ten Dostoevsky’s texts (The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants, Notes from the House of the Dead, Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, Notes from the Underground, “Bobok”, The Devils, “The Beggar Boy at Christ’s Christmas Tree”, “The Peasant Marey”, “A Gentle Creature”, and The Brothers Karamazov) and attempts to analyze the introductions using Gérard Genette’s typology. This classification seems ill-suited to the task of describing and studying the introductions in Dostoevsky’s work. The review points out inconsistencies and controversial moments in the book.