Rus - Russia - USSR ... In this semantic triangle, the thought of emigrants revolved, sometimes reviving the glorious past of their lost Homeland (Rus), then referring to the pre-War period and filling the heart with longing (Russia), then evoking feelings of hopelessness and despondency (USSR). The latter, perhaps, is well illustrated by the words of M. Tsvetaeva: "If I were in Russia, everything would be different, but there is no Russia (sound), there are letters: USSR, I can't go to the deaf, without vowels, in the whistling thick" (What is in your name?..). What associations and ideas appeared in the minds of emigrants of the first and second "waves" when pronouncing and writing the name ("sound") Russia - as opposed to the "voiceless" ("whistling thick of letters") USSR? The special position of a proper name in the language is dictated by the fact that its nominative capabilities focus on denoting a single reality, and not a class of objects. So the proper name doesn't matter, but it does make sense. Because of this, the proper name names, names, it naturally always correlates with one subject (denotation). N. V. Krushevsky pointed out this difference between proper names and common names at the end of the XIX century (Essays on the science of language. Kazan, 1883); and half a century later it was proved by a Polish linguist page 77 E. Kurilovich: proper names have a narrow sphere of use and have "extremely rich linguistic content" (Essays on Linguistics, Moscow, 1962). The German philosopher and logician of the late 19th century, G. Frege, in his article "Meaning and Denotation" (1898), gave an exact description of the meaning of a proper name: this is "a way of representing a denotation in a sign". The name Rus has always attracted the attention of etymologists (more than a dozen articles have been published in recent years alone), since it is not just a geographical name (toponym), but also plays an important pragmatic and ideological role in the Russian l ... Read more