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In the decades prior to the Revolution of 1917, the Russian intelligencija was strongly influenced by Western European intellectuals, including Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche was one of the European philosophers who played a prominent role in shaping Russian perceptions of reality in this period, although his thought was interpreted by Russians in contrasing ways. The article examines the case of Dmitrij Merežkovskij, reassessing the extent of Nietzsche's influence on his oeuvre. In our view, Nietzsche did not only influence Merežkovskij's early poetry, where aesthetic and anti-Christian views prevail, but also contributed to the sensual and individualist nature of his later prose.

This essay explores the cultural meaning and social significance of oil in Soviet and post-Soviet Russian culture through the analysis of two literary case studies. The first is a story written by I. Babel in 1934; the second is authored by D. Bykov and was published in 2017. Both are entitled Neft' (Oil). The analysis follows the notion expressed in Bruno Latour's Politics of nature (1999) which regards oil as a "miracleproduct" of our time with potentially nefarious consequences. From the anthropocentric optimism of the Soviet era to the present-day sense that oil has become an uncontrollable "object", this hybrid of nature and culture holds a significant and diverse place in Russian literature.