‘In the middle of nowhere’: what we know about a Moscow legend

The Russian expression ‘u chyorta na kulichkakh’ means a remote, inaccessible or unknown place. Moscow’s Kulishki is a real place name, and a story about a demon was being offered as an explanation of the phrase as early as the 19th century. Yet lexicographical and historical sources do not prove that the saying originated in this particular urban legend. Literary examples from the 19th century and heritage protection documents help distinguish the history of the phrase from the history of the place.

Two publications by Vladimir Dal offer different kinds of evidence. In his dictionary, he included the expression ‘u cherta na kulizhkakh’, meaning ‘who knows where’; in his collection of proverbs, the same expression and a humorous list of Moscow places beginning with All Saints on Kulizhki appear in the same section. Dal did not derive the saying from the church’s name.

What does the expression mean, and how is it spelt?

In modern usage, this phrase conveys great remoteness rather than the address of a Moscow neighbourhood. The Comprehensive Explanatory Dictionary on the Gramota.ru portal lists the variants ‘k chyortu na kulichki’ and ‘u chyorta na kulichkakh’, marking them as humorous and defining them as ‘very far away’; the construction with ‘u’ answers the question ‘where?’, while the one with ‘k’ answers ‘where to?’.

The modern form of this fixed expression should not be mechanically corrected on the basis of a 19th-century lexicographer’s judgement. In explaining the expression’s older spelling, Dal called the variant with ‘ch’ incorrect in relation to ‘kulizhki’. The modern dictionary describes usage that has since become established. The history of the word and the current language standard address different questions here.

In her study ‘The Semantics of the Idiom u cherta na kulichkakh in Dictionaries and Texts’, researcher A. E. Sadretdinova distinguishes two expressions: one with ‘u’, describing location, and one with ‘k’, indicating direction. Both can occur in variants using ‘horns’, while the construction expressing movement also occurs with the plural ‘k chertyam’ (‘to the devils’). This observation puts an appealing interpretation to the test: if ‘kulichki’ is replaced with ‘horns’, the reference to a particular Moscow neighbourhood disappears, while the sense of remoteness remains. The substitution does not establish the age of each variant, but it shows how the phrase functions in the language.

In the same study, Sadretdinova identifies two shades of meaning: ‘very far away’ and ‘who knows where’. The first emphasises the journey, the second the uncertainty of the location. Dal’s definition ‘who knows where’ corresponds to the latter. The expression therefore cannot simply be replaced with the name of a place that can be found on a map: doing so would erase an essential part of its meaning.

The spelling resource of the V. V. Vinogradov Russian Language Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences records ‘na kulichkakh’ and ‘na kulichki’ as two-word forms and states that the noun in these combinations is not used independently. The dictionary entry neither proves a connection between the expression and ‘kulich’, the Easter cake, nor dates the shift from ‘zh’ to ‘ch’.

Variant spellings also appear within Dal’s collection. In the section ‘Faith — Sin’, he printed ‘U cherta na kulizhkakh (or: na kulichkakh)’ and explained: ‘from kuliga, a clearing’. Both variants were known to the compiler by the time the collection was published in 1862. The label ‘incorrect’ in his dictionary reflects Dal’s etymological preference; the modern spelling standard recognises the form with ‘ch’.

What did Dal mean by ‘kuliga’ and ‘kulizhka’?

In Dal’s dictionary, ‘kuliga’ is a word with several regional meanings. These include a clearing or small hay meadow amid woodland and arable fields, a patch of forest cleared for cultivation, a meadow beside a river backwater and, in some dialects, even an outlying settlement or a village in the forest. Dal gives ‘kulizhka’ as a variant of the same word. Such variety rules out a single definitive landscape, whether necessarily a marsh or necessarily a dry clearing. A feature shared by many of the meanings is more useful: they refer to a distinct patch of land beyond the familiar inhabited surroundings.

Dal distinguished between geographical and agricultural uses of ‘kuliga’. A forest clearing is the result of human work with axe and fire, whereas a backwater or river bend is a natural feature of the landscape. Calling every ‘kuliga’ a marsh obscures these distinctions. The image of a faraway place is better explained by a combination of the patch of land’s distance from a settlement and its unfamiliarity to the inhabitants than by any single dictionary definition. This is a reconstruction of meaning based on the definitions cited, rather than a description of a precisely identified clearing.

In her ‘Toponymic Dictionary of Central Russia’, published in Russkaya Rech, G. P. Smolitskaya lists the names ‘Kuliga’, ‘Kulichki’ and ‘Kulizhki’ in various parts of Central Russia. She associates the geographical term with a forest clearing, a wet meadow, a wedge-shaped tract of land and a river bend. This places a significant limitation on our enquiry: the Moscow place name was one example among similar names, so its mere existence does not establish where the expression originated.

Smolitskaya also mentions suggestions that the word ‘kuliga’ itself has Finno-Ugric connections. Even if the origin of this stem is eventually proved, its etymology and the history of the saying as a whole will remain separate questions. To move from the origin of the word to the origin of the phrase, we need evidence of the fixed combination with ‘the devil’, its earliest written records and the circumstances of its spread. A similarity between roots cannot replace any of this evidence.

The diminutive form presents another trap. ‘Kulizhka’ appears to derive from ‘kuliga’, but ‘kulichki’ sounds similar to ‘kulich’ (Easter cake) or ‘kulik’ (sandpiper); Maksimov discussed the resemblance between these words in ‘Winged Words’ and rejected this explanation of the expression. The article’s priority is to show the surviving spellings and the limits of what they prove, rather than devise a single chain of phonetic changes. Dal recorded both forms in his collection and preferred ‘kulizhki’ in his dictionary, the modern spelling resource records ‘kulichki’, and ‘Kulishki’ became established as the Moscow place name. These records do not constitute a dated sequence showing one word turning into another.

Where was Moscow’s Kulishki?

Kulishki is an old name for an area in central Moscow; it survives, notably, in the name of the Church of All Saints on Kulishki on Slavyanskaya Square. A state historical and cultural expert assessment report explains this reference through the area’s old name, while researchers have offered various explanations for the place name’s origin: the character of the land, the river landscape, the sandpiper (‘kulik’) and a local trade. The document records this disagreement, so no single explanation can be treated as conclusively established.

In 21st-century Moscow, the church stands in the historic centre, which can easily puzzle readers: how could ‘kulichki’ have meant somewhere far away? The geography of an idiom need not match a street’s present-day location. As the city grew, former outlying areas became part of it. The heritage study of Kulishki illustrates precisely this change in scale: on plans from the turn of the 17th century, the church is already surrounded by urban buildings. Its present proximity to the centre does not disprove the expression’s old meaning, but neither does that old meaning prove that the expression took its name from this neighbourhood.

The place name extends beyond a single building

A heritage protection report for a neighbouring site on Ivanovskaya Gorka describes Kulishki as an area beside the old Vladimir road and lists several churches whose names retain ‘on Kulishki’: All Saints, the Three Holy Hierarchs, the Nativity of the Mother of God, and Saints Peter and Paul. This list reveals the meaning of the place name more clearly than the familiar photograph of a single building. ‘On Kulishki’ accompanied several church names and primarily designated an area; not every mention of Kulishki can be taken as a reference to the Church of All Saints.

A scholarly historical page on the HSE University website provides a verifiable example from the history of another parish. A wooden church is recorded from 1626, its stone replacement was built in 1669–1674, and documents from 1677 still name it after Saint Florus, ‘in the Gardens’; the name of the Three Holy Hierarchs is recorded in 1688. Such changes in church names explain why researchers must check the date and full context of a record before drawing the boundaries of an old locality on a modern map.

The Ivanovskaya Gorka report also cites the descriptive register of 1638: it mentions properties in the Kulishki area belonging to the Kasimov prince Seid-Burkhan Araslanovich, the boyars F. I. Sheremetev and Yu. Ya. Sushelev, as well as princely estates. This was already an inhabited part of Moscow, rather than an empty clearing on its outskirts. The register does not tell us what the area was like when the name first appeared, but it rules out treating it as an uninhabited wilderness throughout the 17th century.

The assessment report for the Church of All Saints itself provides similar evidence: a 1632 entry in the records of the Patriarchal Treasury Office lists 54 parish households for the church, which was still wooden. The ‘Survey Book of Church Lands’ of 1657 is the first to describe the building as stone. Both the church and its urban surroundings changed between these dates. When discussing the phrase’s origins, it is best to avoid using the square’s present appearance to illustrate the supposed landscape in which it was first uttered.

What plans of Moscow can show us

The experts described the church’s depiction on ‘Peter’s Plan’ of 1597–1599: it stands near the Varvarskaya Gate, at the pointed end of a small block between winding lanes. To the east lay the churchyard, with the homes of church staff beyond it. Merian’s plan of 1638–1643 already shows a stone church, but the stylised drawings do not allow every detail of the early building to be reconstructed. Maps help locate the church among the surrounding buildings; they do not capture the sound of a towns-person uttering the saying.

The 2025 report specifically compares ‘Peter’s Plan’, ‘Godunov’s Plan’, ‘Sigismund’s Plan’, Merian’s depiction and Meyerberg’s plan of 1661. The church’s outline changes from one sheet to another because the cartographers depicted an ordinary church in different ways. This series offers a useful lesson in reading sources: even when a building is depicted, the image is not a photograph and does not date the origin of its byname. Conclusions about a place name require labels and written records, rather than a recognisable silhouette.

What exactly links the saying to the Church of All Saints?

The connection exists in the written tradition, but it is easy to read more into it than the source supports. In the ‘Where’ section of his collection ‘Proverbs of the Russian People’, Dal placed ‘U cherta na kulizhkakh’ on a line of its own; further down, he recorded a humorous list of Moscow landmarks beginning with ‘At All Saints on Kulizhki’ and glossed it as ‘nowhere’. The compiler separately labelled the next entry as a joke at Moscow’s expense. The two sayings appear close together on the page. Dal did not write that the expression originated in the church’s name or that the capital’s inhabitants coined it after a particular event.

The difference between the lines matters even at the level of wording. The first mentions the devil and some unspecified ‘kulizhki’; the second names a particular church’s dedication and numerous places. A play on similar sounds or a Moscow reinterpretation of an already familiar expression is conceivable. But the direction of influence and the timing of this association must be established through separate early evidence, which Dal’s selection itself does not provide.

‘Proverbs of the Russian People’ was first published in 1862, while the second edition of the dictionary volume containing ‘kuliga’ appeared in 1881. These dates tell us when Dal’s evidence appeared in print, but not when the saying originated. The spoken expression may have developed earlier; the publication year does not allow us to determine the century of its birth. Conversely, it cannot be traced to a Moscow event in the 17th century simply because that event was retold in the 19th.

The dictionary and the collection serve different purposes. The dictionary entry explains the word’s meanings and gives the author’s assessment of the form ‘kulichki’; in the collection of proverbs, Dal places two similar sayings close together. Combining them into a single sentence and presenting it as a direct quotation from Dal about the saying’s origin would create a false attribution. Researchers must distinguish the source text from the explanation they themselves have constructed from it.

Verification is particularly important because of the church’s name. ‘All Saints’ is a church dedication, while ‘the devil’ is a figure in a figurative expression. Dal did not write that the former had ever been replaced by the latter; the adjacent lines are separate entries. Any possible play on the contrast between saints and evil spirits remains a reader’s conjecture until a text is found in which the speaker explains such a substitution.

What do 19th-century literary uses reveal?

Printed examples from the 19th century show that the expression was used for various imagined and real remote places. They help trace its meaning and form, but do not indicate where it first originated. Particularly telling is the fact that a recorded use of ‘kulichki’ predates the publication of Dal’s collection.

In Gavriil Derzhavin’s comic opera ‘The Foolish Girl Is Cleverer than the Clever’, the steward Pivkin cannot find a travelling detective and says that he has disappeared ‘u semi chertei na kulichkakh’ (‘out in the back of beyond with seven devils’). The scene takes place in Tetyushi on the Volga; the line contains no Moscow address. The added ‘seven’ shows that the writer could freely intensify a familiar image. A single literary text, however, cannot establish whether this form was a variant in everyday speech or the author’s own adaptation.

The play offers a particularly useful lesson in dating evidence. A stage direction states that the action takes place between 1775 and 1780, but those are the dates of the story. The philologist Anatoly Razzhivin tentatively dates the opera’s composition to after 1808 and no later than 1812: by 1812, Derzhavin had mentioned it in his ‘Memoirs’. Dating the expression to the 1770s solely on the basis of the play’s setting would be a mistake. The verified early occurrence belongs to a text written in the early 19th century; whether the expression circulated in speech before then remains an open question.

On 21 August 1840, Literaturnaya Gazeta published a satirical piece entitled ‘Important News’. The author presents an imaginary theatrical trilogy: the first part takes place on Bolotnaya Street, the second on Nevsky Prospekt, and the third, described as fantastical, ‘in the back of beyond’. Here, the phrase is a literary stage direction for a scene that does not exist, rather than the address of a church. The editors of the scholarly edition of Nekrasov’s collected works placed the piece among works of uncertain authorship: they attribute it to the poet on the basis of similarities to other texts, but explicitly state that no manuscript in his hand has been found.

This qualification about authorship is not caution for caution’s sake. The newspaper publication date is confirmed by the editorial commentary, while the author’s identity remains a scholarly attribution. The accurate wording here is therefore ‘in a piece published in 1840’, rather than an unqualified ‘Nekrasov coined the expression’. Nor does this source justify claiming that its author was the first to use a phrase already recognisable to readers.

Anton Chekhov applied the expression to entertainment venues in ‘Fragments of Moscow Life’: in an 1883 feuilleton, he contrasted the popular Hermitage Garden with other places situated ‘somewhere in the back of beyond’. The context determines the meaning: these places are inconvenient or of little interest to the public, and the author describes them as far removed from the usual entertainment circuit. Chekhov gives no coordinates for the imaginary ‘kulichki’, nor does he suggest that readers should look for them near All Saints’ Church.

In a feuilleton dated 9 June 1884, the writer complained about transporting patients to the municipal hospitals beyond the Kaluga Gate. The journey took hours, prompting him to describe the hospitals as being ‘in the back of beyond’. Unlike the stage direction of 1840, this refers to a real place in a known direction; the figurative expression conveys his assessment of the journey. The Kaluga Gate belongs to a different part of the city’s geography, and the text does not link the hospitals to Moscow’s Kulishki district.

The smaller scale is even clearer in Chekhov’s short story ‘After the Benefit Performance’, first published on 23 September 1885. The character speaks of spectators sitting ‘in the gallery, in the back of beyond’. The theatre gallery is in the same auditorium as the stage; no actual long journey is involved. For the performer, the expression conveys the distance to the audience. Here, it cannot possibly be read as a reference to a district of Moscow, although the Russian wording ‘na kulichkakh’ is retained.

These examples differ in genre and point of reference: the imaginary setting of a parody, Moscow entertainment venues, hospitals beyond a city gate, and the upper seats in a theatre. What they share is an image of an inconveniently or indefinitely distant place. This supports the view that the expression already had an abstract meaning in the 19th century; it does not settle the question of its earlier origins. Even if the Moscow legend once influenced someone’s associations with the word ‘kulichki’, an isolated literary use does not prove such a shift.

What is the legend of the demon in Kulishki?

In his book ‘Winged Words’, Sergei Maksimov retold a hagiographic account concerning a women’s almshouse near Ivanovsky Convent. According to this story, a demon tormented the women living there, and the elder Ilarion prayed for their deliverance. Maksimov describes him as having come ‘from the town of Suzdal’, while Moskovsky Zhurnal says he was summoned from Florishcheva Hermitage. According to the Orthodox Encyclopaedia, Ilarion only became Metropolitan of Suzdal in 1682. Maksimov also gives the name Ignaty, which the evil spirit supposedly used to identify itself. This is the substance of a religious narrative, rather than a record of observations: the demon’s actions cannot be presented as an established historical event.

Maksimov’s use of the legend is particularly revealing. After retelling it, he explicitly notes that some people are willing to base an explanation of the expression on it, yet he himself returns to the word ‘kuliga’ and the image of a remote forest clearing. This means that the well-known reteller of the legend did not present it as the proven moment when the saying originated. Omitting this qualification would give a misleading impression of Maksimov’s own position.

Even if the story is regarded as valuable evidence of urban folklore, it does not establish a linguistic chronology. It shows that people associated evil spirits with a particular place in Moscow. To claim that the idiom originated in this episode would require dated records of the phrase itself from before and after the legend spread, along with evidence that speakers first used it specifically in reference to the almshouse. Neither Dahl nor Maksimov provides such a chain of evidence.

The legend concerns the almshouse

Maksimov identifies the setting as precisely as the old account allows: the patriarchal women’s almshouse near Ivanovsky Convent. This is not a description of a service inside All Saints’ Church. To place the sounds described in the legend beneath that building’s dome would be to change the setting. Kulishki had several religious sites; their proximity within the same area does not justify treating the almshouse, the convent and the church on Slavyanskaya Square as one and the same.

In an article about the Convent of St John the Baptist, Moskovsky Zhurnal gives a version of the legend that dates the story to 1666 and states that Ilarion prayed for seven weeks. This text is useful as evidence of a modern retelling of the story. However, its statement that the saying has existed ‘ever since’ is not accompanied by an early, 17th-century record of the expression. Accepting the date and duration as elements of the story does not mean accepting the conclusion about the idiom’s origins as proven.

The Orthodox Encyclopaedia’s article on Ilarion shows why a saint’s life cannot be treated as a modern factual report. Short and extended versions are known; the extended version was compiled in the mid-18th century from earlier works that could no longer be found when the monastery’s collection was later catalogued. Maksimov and Moskovsky Zhurnal recount the legend; when reading them, it is important to distinguish the time of the event described, the time when the saint’s life was compiled, and the date of the later retelling. To support a claim about the saying’s origins, it would be important to find it in an early, datable layer of the story, rather than only in a 19th- or 21st-century account.

The historical figure of Ilarion and the demon of folklore have different evidential status. The encyclopaedia and biographical research identify the future Metropolitan of Suzdal and the written tradition associated with him; they present the episode from his saint’s life as part of a religious narrative. The existence of a real monk does not confirm a supernatural event or turn a possible mention of Kulishki into etymological evidence. For the history of language, what matters is a documented sequence of uses, rather than proof that every character in the legend existed.

What does Kulikovo Field have to do with it?

Kulikovo Field is a separate story, concerned with explaining the district’s name and the founding of the church, rather than directly with the origins of the expression ‘in the back of beyond’. The heritage protection document records a tradition that had emerged by the end of the 17th century, linking the church to the commemoration of those who fell at the Battle of Kulikovo. However, experts regard the identification of the church mentioned in a chronicle entry for 1365 as tentative: the entry gives no precise location. The document allows for different accounts of the church’s early history and does not unequivocally derive the name Kulishki from ‘Kulikovo’.

Why 1380 in the heritage site’s official name does not settle the debate

In the heritage site’s official name, All Saints’ Church is accompanied by the date ‘1380’ and a reference to alterations in the 16th–17th centuries. This catalogue wording is convenient for recording the monument, but it cannot be read as an eyewitness account of its first building season. The same heritage protection document clarifies that the fire recorded in the chronicle for 1365 began at All Saints’ Church, but that the chronicle gives no precise location for it. The identification of this report with the church in Kulishki remains tentative.

The document also allows for another possibility: the burnt building may have been rebuilt in 1380 to commemorate those who fell on Kulikovo Field. The wording ‘cannot be ruled out’ indicates a possibility, rather than a discovered order from Dmitry Donskoy. The document then provides firmer evidence for the church’s subsequent history: a fire in the wooden church in 1488 and references to a masonry building in the mid-17th century. Jumping straight from the catalogue date ‘1380’ to a confident date for the origin of the local name would erase all the intervening questions that the specialists themselves left open.

In 2018, experts recorded that the tradition of commemorating warriors at this site had emerged by the end of the 17th century and linked the old place name to the battlefield. The direction of the explanation matters here: a later story may have reinterpreted a name already in use. This does not prove that the place name was deliberately coined after the battle, still less that the expression about the devil arose from the same story.

The church’s masonry structure also has its own chronology. According to the 2025 document, parts of the galleries and the north entrance portal date from the 1630s, while the main walls date from the period between the 1630s and the 1680s. A side chapel dedicated to the Prophet Nahum was added to the south in 1662; following the fire of 1687–1689, the vaults were rebuilt and the upper part of the main body of the church was remodelled. The bell tower may have been built at the same time or later. The building visible today dates from several periods and therefore does not show what the site looked like in 1365 or in the proposed year of 1380.

Nor can the similarity in sound between ‘Kulishki’ and ‘Kulikovo’ be treated as proof. In the heritage protection document, specialists list several explanations for the Moscow place name, including the natural terrain, a bird and a local trade. Choosing between them would require early forms of the place name and independent written evidence of how it was named. The battle is an established historical fact; its connection with the name of the Moscow locality remains a hypothesis in the documents examined.

Can the saying’s Moscow origins be proved?

Not on the basis of the sources examined. We have a documented place name, a Moscow legend and old records of the expression, but no evidence establishing a causal link between them. Dahl explained the expression through the word ‘kulizhka’; Maksimov knew the legend of the demon, yet did not consider it a sufficient explanation. The modern dictionary definition likewise points to an unspecified distant place, rather than a particular location in the city.

In a 2012 article, the linguist Valery Mokienko places ‘in the back of beyond’ among idioms whose history still needs to be unravelled through evidence. He cautions that an ethnographically plausible story does not in itself explain how an expression is formed: early forms, variants and meanings must be compared. This matters for the Moscow hypothesis. The legend of the demon may explain a local association, but without a linguistic chain linking old records to the modern expression, it does not establish its origins.

What documents could change the conclusion?

Another late retelling would not be enough to prove a Moscow origin. What is needed is early texts linking the established phrase, a particular place and the occasion for its use. Ideally, there would be a dated contemporary account explaining that people began using the expression after the incident at the almshouse. No such record appears among the dictionaries, heritage protection documents and published retellings examined.

More modest discoveries would also be important. A record of the expression predating the supposed event would rule out the idea that it first arose afterwards, but would not rule out later Moscow wordplay. Written usage found only after the incident would not prove causation either: surviving texts preserve only a fraction of spoken language. Even a discovery of the phrase ‘in Kulishki’ would require examination to establish whether it refers to a place, forms part of the saying or is an author’s joke.

Documents about churches answer a different question. A chronicle, cadastral register, plan or restoration report can confirm a building’s location, layout, fire damage and alterations. On their own, they cannot tell us when the image of being ‘at the devil’s’ took shape in speech. A dictionary, by contrast, records an expression’s form and meaning, but does not automatically establish where it originated. A firm conclusion is possible only where the two sets of sources intersect; for now, their connection rests mainly on a similarity in sound.

The Moscow story shows how a place name and a legend became associated with a familiar saying. Kulishki did exist in Moscow, its appearance in the church’s name is documented, but the claim that the expression originated in the story of the demon remains unproven.

You can see the place around which the Moscow retelling developed on the ‘Ghost Hunters’ tour: the route leads from Manezhnaya Square through Lubyanka to the historic locality and Ivanovskaya Hill. Experiencing the city’s living context helps distinguish the place name and the legend from the question of the saying’s origins.

Sources

1. V. I. Dahl, ‘Proverbs of the Russian People’, ‘Where’ section
2. V. I. Dahl, ‘Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language’, entry ‘Kuliga’
3. S. V. Maximov, ‘Winged Words’, ‘In the middle of nowhere’ section
4. State Historical and Cultural Assessment Report on the Church of All Saints at Kulishki, 2018
5. ‘Russian Speech’, 1996, No. 4, ‘Toponymy’ section, article ‘Kuliga’
6. Gramota.ru, Comprehensive Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language, entry ‘devil’
7. A. E. Sadretdinova, ‘The semantics of the idiom “in the middle of nowhere” in dictionaries and texts’, 2018
8. Russian Language Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, spelling commentary ‘na kulichkakh / na kulichki’
9. Historical and Cultural Assessment Report on a site in Ivanovskaya Gorka: the Kulishki area and church names
10. HSE University, ‘Church of the Three Holy Hierarchs in Kulishki’
11. State Historical and Cultural Expert Assessment Report on the Church of All Saints in Kulishki, 2025
12. ‘Moscow Journal’, ‘The Convent of St John the Baptist in Moscow’
13. Orthodox Encyclopaedia, ‘Hilarion’, history of the versions of his Life
14. ‘Important News’, ‘Literary Gazette’, 21 August 1840; scholarly edition in the collected works of N. A. Nekrasov
15. A. P. Chekhov, ‘Fragments of Moscow Life’ (1883–1885)
16. A. P. Chekhov, ‘After the Benefit Performance’ (1885)
17. G. R. Derzhavin, ‘The Foolish Girl Is Wiser than the Wise’, electronic edition published by Petrozavodsk State University
18. A. I. Razzhivin (Klyuchevsky), ‘G. R. Derzhavin’s Comic Folk Opera: The Origins of the Genre’ (2021)
19. V. M. Mokienko, ‘The Life of Russian Phraseology in Contemporary Speech’ (2012)
20. V. I. Dahl, ‘Proverbs of the Russian People’, section ‘Faith — Sin’
21. Radius Tour Bureau, ‘Ghost Hunters’ tour