Article outline

• The absence of Russia in postcolonial discourse and its reasons
• The attempts to orientalize Russia: A mysterious “Russian soul”
• The absence of Polish literature in postcolonial discourse
• Polish-Russian relations and the image of Russia and Russian people
• Exoticization
• Exoticization strategies
  • Selection of information to stress the country’s intellectual and cultural backwardness
• Hyperbolization in the description of reality
• Using the locus horridus (terrible place) topos
• Notes