The article presents the field ethnocultural material, collected by the author during his scholarly tours to the Ben Hadduga literary conferences, which are annually held in the administrative capital of the Algerian wilaya (province) Burdj Bu Arririgj, situated in the eastern part of the country. The visits were carried out in December 2009 and December 2010. At both conferences the author observed a strong interest exercised by Algerian and other Arab participants to the Russian literature and Russian culture of Imperial and Soviet periods. The article testifi es to the existence of strong traditional elements in the present-day Algerian culture which do play an important role in spite of all the modernizing changes that underwent the Algerian society in the last decades.