Russian Folk Belief

A scholarly work that aims to be both broad enough in scope to satisfy upper-division undergraduates studying folk belief and narrative and detailed enough to meet the needs of graduate students in the field. Each of the seven chapters in Part 1 focuses on one aspect of Russian folk belief, such as the pagan background, Christian personages, devils and various other logical categories of the topic. The author's thesis - that Russian folk belief represents a "double faith" whereby Slavic pagan beliefs are overlaid with popular Christianity - is persuasive and has analogies in other cultures. The folk narratives constituting Part 2 are translated and include a wide range of tales, from the briefly anecdotal to the more fully developed narrative, covering the various folk personages and motifs explored in Part 1.

...the characters and symbolism in Russian fairy tales could be called Origin of the Russian Psyche. ...masterly and extremely readable...

The resurgence of national and historical awareness among the people of what was once the USSR has been nowhere stronger than among the Russians themselves. Some of the larger projects of rediscovery amount to a reinterpretation of traditional culture. This carefully annotated collection of recent studies of Russian folk religion, village organization and family life, including the rituals associated with childbirth, special attention to women's roles and to the specificity of Siberia in Russian culture, will be a revelation to a wide array of readers. It is intended for use not only in anthropology departments but more widely interdisciplinary courses in Russian studies, peasant studies and women's studies.

This is an annotated collection of recent studies of Russian folk religion, village organization and family life, including the rituals associated with childbirth, and paying special attention to women's roles and to the specificity of Siberia in Russian culture.

The principal source for Russian folk-tales is the great collection of Afanáśev, a coeval of Rybnikov, Kirěyevski, Sakharov, Bezsonov, and others who all from about 1850 to 1870 laboriously took down from the lips of the peasants of all parts of Russia what they could of the endless store of traditional song, ballad, and folk-tale. These great collectors were actuated only by the desire for accuracy; they appended laboriously erudite notes; but they were not literary men and did not sophisticate, or improve on their material. But, before venturing on a brief account of the tales, something must be premised as to the position occupied by folk-tales in the cultural development of a people. In Pagan times, there always existed a double religion, the ceremonial worship of the gods of nature and the tribal deities,—a realm of thought in which all current philosophy and idealism entered into a set form that symbolized the State,—and also local cults and superstitions, the adoration of the spirits of streams, wells, hills, etc. To all Aryan peoples, Nature has always been alive, but never universalized, or romanticized, as in modern days; wherever you were, the brook, the wind, the knoll, the stream were all inhabited by agencies, which could be propitiated, cajoled, threatened, but, under all conditions, were personal forces, who could not be disregarded. When Christianity transformed the face of the world, it necessarily left much below the surface unaffected. The great national divinities were proscribed and submerged; some of their features reappearing in the legendary feats of the saints. The local cults continued, with this difference, that they were now condemned by the Church and became clandestine magic; or else they were adopted by the Church, and the rites and sanctuaries transferred. The memory of them subsisted; the fear of these local gods degenerated into superstition; the magic of the folk-tales becomes half-fantastic, half-conventional, belief in which is surreptitious, usual, and optional. At this stage of disorganization of local custom, folk-tales arise, and into them, transmitted as they are orally and under the ban of the Church, contaminations of all sorts creep, such as mistaken etymologies, faint memories of real history, reminiscences of lost folk-songs, Christian legend and morals, etc. The Russian people have handed down three categories of records. First of all, the Chronicles, which are very full, very accurate, and, within the limits of the temporary concepts of possibility and science, absolutely true. Secondly, the ballads or bylíny; epic songs in an ancient metre, narrating historical episodes as they occur; and also comprising a cycle of heroic romance, comparable with the chansons de geste of Charlemagne, the cycles of Finn and Cuchúlain of the Irish, and possibly with the little minor epics out of which it is supposed that some supreme Greek genius built up the artistic epics of the Iliad and the Odyssey. These bylíny may be ranked as fiction: i.e. as facts of real life (as then understood), applied to non-existent, unvouched, or legendary individuals. They are not bare records of fact, like the Chronicles; imagination enters into their scope; non-human, miraculous incidents are allowable; their content is not a matter for faith or factual record; they may be called historical fiction, which, broadly taken, corresponded to actual events, and typified the national strivings and ideals. The traditional ceremonial songs, magical incantations and popular melodies are of the same date and in the same style.

Propp's essay in Russian Folk Lyrics extends beyond the formalistic analysis of folklore outlined in his classic The Morphology of the Folktale. In this study, newly translated by Roberta Reeder, Propp considers the Russian folk lyric in the social and historical context in which it was produced. Reeder supplements Propp's theoretical presentation with a comprehensive anthology of examples. Some songs were imitated by or appear in the works of Russia's major writers, such as Pushkin and Nekrasov. Here we find the customs of Russian peasant life expressed through the ritual of song. Whether the songs are about love, labor, or children's games; whether they are sad, humorous, or satiric in tone, Russian folk lyrics are rich in metaphor and symbolic meaning. In addition to the editor's notes to the text and songs, Reeder supplies a bibliography of Propp's sources as well as an extensive selected bibliography.

Presented in a brand new translation, this most comprehensive collection of classic Russian tales will enchant readers for their raw beauty and constant ability to surprise and excite. Towards the middle of the nineteenth century, following the example of the Brothers Grimm in Germany, Alexander Afanasyev embarked on the ambitious task of sifting through the huge repository of tales from Russian folklore and selecting the very best from written and oral sources. The result, an eight-volume collection comprising around 600 stories, is one of the most influential and enduringly popular books in Russian literature. This large selection from Afanasyev's work, presented in a new translation by Stephen Pimenoff, will give English readers the opportunity to discover one of the founding texts of the European folkloristic tradition. Displaying a vast array of unforgettable characters, such as the Baba-Yaga, Ivan the Fool, Vasilisa the Fair and the Firebird, these tales--by turns adventurous, comical and downright madcap--will enchant readers for their raw beauty and constant ability to surprise and excite.