Moscow and Petersburg texts in Russian literary studies at the turn of the centuries

The article deals with the problem of studying Moscow and Petersburg texts in Russian literary criticism at the turn of the 21st century. By foregrounding the receptive methodological approach, we make an attempt to trace the changes in the representation of Moscow’s and St. Petersburg’s space in the scientific discourse of that period. The study focuses on the structural semiotic works by V. N. Toporov, Yu. M. Lotman, Z. G. Mintz and others, included in the collection “Semiotics of the City and Urban Culture. St. Petersburg. Works on Sign Systems” (1984). It was these works that laid the tradition of perceiving St. Petersburg as a code space that generates special cultural meanings. It is noted that Moscow had been long existed on the periphery of this theory, existing exclusively in the context of Petersburg text, and came to literary criticism as a text only a decade later, as evidenced by the publication of the collection “Moscow and the “Moscow Text” of Russian Culture” (1998). It is emphasized that in modern literary studies based on these theories both texts have their own historical and cultural resources for existence, and the national significance of each of them is separately asserted. Based on this we have come to the conclusion about the relative independence and great research potential of the texts under consideration.