“Twilight of Russian life” in Russian journalism of the 1880s-1890s

The article considers the peculiarities of the language of Russian journalism of the late 19^th early 20^th centuries on the basis of one verbal formula “Twilight of Russian life”. Relying on interdisciplinary analysis (linguistic methods, analysis of historical social psychology, methods of literary criticism, etc.), it is shown that there are not fixed in dictionaries meanings of words and expressions in the language of journalism, they are understandable to contemporaries, but as soon as the epoch and the emotional and psychological content of these formulas goes away, for subsequent generations they become empty and clichéd. Meanwhile, without understanding the meanings that are concentrated in them, it is impossible to read the journalistic texts of a certain era.