A Russian fairy tale or folktale (; ''skazka''; plural ) is a

fairy tale A fairy tale (alternative names include fairytale, fairy story, household tale, magic tale, or wonder tale) is a short story that belongs to the folklore genre. Such stories typically feature magic, enchantments, and mythical or fanciful bei ...

Russian culture Russian culture ( rus, Культура России, Kul'tura Rossii, kʊlʲˈturə rɐˈsʲiɪ) has been formed by the nation's history, its geographical location and its vast expanse, religious and social traditions, and both Eastern cultu ...

. Various sub-genres of ''skazka'' exist. A ''volshebnaya skazka'' �олше́бная ска́зка(literally "magical tale") is considered a magical tale. ''Skazki o zhivotnykh'' are tales about animals and ''bytovye skazki'' are tales about household life. These variations of ''skazki'' give the term more depth and detail different types of folktales. Similarly to Western European traditions, especially the German-language collection published by the

Brothers Grimm The Brothers Grimm ( or ), Jacob Grimm, Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Grimm, Wilhelm (1786–1859), were Germans, German academics who together collected and published folklore. The brothers are among the best-known storytellers of Oral tradit ...

, Russian folklore was first collected by scholars and systematically studied in the 19th century. Russian

s and folk tales were cataloged (compiled, grouped, numbered and published) by

Alexander Afanasyev Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev (; – ) was a Russian Slavist and ethnographer best known for publishing nearly 600 East Slavic and Russian fairy and folk tales, one of the largest collections of folklore in the world. This collection was ...

in his 1850s ''

Narodnye russkie skazki ''Russian Fairy Tales'' (, variously translated; English titles include also ''Russian Folk Tales'') is a collection of nearly 600 fairy tale, fairy and Fable, folktales, collected and published by Alexander Afanasyev between 1855 and 1863. T ...

''. Scholars of folklore still refer to his collected texts when citing the number of a ''skazka'' plot. An exhaustive analysis of the stories, describing the stages of their plots and the classification of the characters based on their functions, was developed later, in the first half of the 20th century, by

Vladimir Propp Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp (; – 22 August 1970) was a Soviet folklorist and scholar who analysed the basic structural elements of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible structural units. Biography Vladimir Propp was ...

(1895-1970).

History

Appearing in the latter half of the eighteenth century, fairy tales became widely popular as they spread throughout the country. Literature was considered an important factor in the education of Russian children who were meant to grow from the moral lessons in the tales. During the 18th Century

Romanticism Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. The purpose of the movement was to advocate for the importance of subjec ...

period, poets such as

Alexander Pushkin Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin () was a Russian poet, playwright, and novelist of the Romantic era.Basker, Michael. Pushkin and Romanticism. In Ferber, Michael, ed., ''A Companion to European Romanticism''. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. He is consid ...

and Pyotr Yershov began to define the Russian folk spirit with their stories. Throughout the 1860s, despite the rise of Realism, fairy tales still remained a beloved source of literature which drew inspiration from writers such as

Hans Christian Andersen Hans Christian Andersen ( , ; 2 April 1805 – 4 August 1875) was a Danish author. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogue (literature), travelogues, novels, and poems, he is best remembered for his literary fairy tales. Andersen's fai ...

Effects of Communism

The messages in the fairy tales began to take a different shape once

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...

rose to power under the Communist movement. Fairy tales were thought to have a strong influence over children which is why Joseph Stalin decided to place restrictions upon the literature distributed under his rule. The tales created in the mid 1900s were used to impose

Socialist Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...

beliefs and values as seen in numerous popular stories. In comparison to stories from past centuries, fairy tales in the

USSR The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

had taken a more modern spin as seen in tales such as in Anatoliy Mityaev's ''Grishka and the Astronaut''. ''Grishka and the Astronaut'', examines modern Russian's passion to travel through space as seen in reality with the

Space Race The Space Race (, ) was a 20th-century competition between the Cold War rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union, to achieve superior spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the ballistic missile-based nuclear arms race between t ...

between Russia and the United States. The new tales included a focus on innovations and inventions that could help characters in place of magic which was often used as a device in past stories.

Influences

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

, the

is one sub-genre of

folklore Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as Narrative, tales, myths, legends, proverbs, Poetry, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also ...

and is usually told in the form of a

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction. It can typically be read in a single sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the old ...

. They are used to express different aspects of the

. In Russia, fairy tales were propagated almost exclusively orally, until the 17th century, as written literature was reserved for

religious Religion is a range of social- cultural systems, including designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relate humanity to supernatural ...

purposes. In their oral form, fairy tales allowed the freedom to explore the different methods of

narration Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience. Narration is conveyed by a narrator: a specific person, or unspecified literary voice, developed by the creator of the story to deliver information to the ...

. The separation from written forms led Russians to develop techniques that were effective at creating dramatic and interesting stories. Such techniques have developed into consistent elements now found in popular literary works; They distinguish the genre of Russian fairy tales. Fairy tales were not confined to a particular

socio-economic class A social class or social stratum is a grouping of people into a set of hierarchical social categories, the most common being the working class and the capitalist class. Membership of a social class can for example be dependent on education, wea ...

and appealed to mass audiences, which resulted in them becoming a trademark of Russian culture. Cultural influences on Russian fairy tales have been unique and based on imagination.

Isaac Bashevis Singer Isaac Bashevis Singer (; 1903 – July 24, 1991) was a Poland, Polish-born Jews, Jewish novelist, short-story writer, memoirist, essayist, and translator in the United States. Some of his works were adapted for the theater. He wrote and publish ...

, a Polish-American author and Nobel Prize winner, claims that, “You don't ask questions about a tale, and this is true for the folktales of all nations. They were not told as fact or history but as a means to entertain the listener, whether he was a child or an adult. Some contain a moral, others seem amoral or even antimoral, Some constitute fables on man's follies and mistakes, others appear pointless." They were created to entertain the reader. Russian fairy tales are extremely popular and are still used to inspire artistic works today. '' The Sleeping Beauty'' is still played in New York at the American Ballet Theatre and has roots to original Russian fairy tales from 1890. Mr. Ratmansky’s, the

artist-in-residence Artist-in-residence (also Writer-in-residence), or artist residencies, encompass a wide spectrum of artistic programs that involve a collaboration between artists and hosting organisations, institutions, or communities. They are programs that pr ...

for the play, gained inspiration for the play's choreography from its Russian background.

Formalism

From the 1910s through the 1930s, a wave of literary criticism emerged in Russia, called

Russian formalism Russian formalism was a school of literary theory in Russia from the 1910s to the 1930s. It includes the work of a number of highly influential Russian and Soviet scholars, such as Viktor Shklovsky, Yuri Tynianov, Vladimir Propp, Boris Eikhenbaum ...

by critics of the new school of thought.

Analysis

Many different approaches of analyzing the

morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines *Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts *Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies, ...

of the fairy tale have appeared in scholarly works. Differences in analyses can arise between synchronic and diachronic approaches. Other differences can come from the relationship between story elements. After elements are identified, a

structuralist Structuralism is an intellectual current and methodological approach, primarily in the social sciences, that interprets elements of human culture by way of their relationship to a broader system. It works to uncover the structural patterns tha ...

can propose relationships between those elements. A paradigmatic relationship between elements is associative in nature whereas a

syntagmatic In linguistics, a syntagma is an elementary constituent segment within a text. Such a segment can be a phoneme, a word, a grammatical phrase, a sentence, or an event within a larger narrative structure, depending on the level of analysis. Synta ...

relationship refers to the order and position of the elements relative to the other elements.

Motif

Before the period of Russian formalism, beginning in 1910, Alexander Veselovksky called the motif the "simplest narrative unit." Veselovsky proposed that the different plots of a folktale arise from the unique combinations of motifs. Motif analysis was also part of Stith Thompson's approach to

folkloristics Folklore studies (also known as folkloristics, tradition studies or folk life studies in the UK) is the academic discipline devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, gained currency in the 1950s to distinguish the ac ...

. Thompson's research into the motifs of folklore culminated in the publication of the Motif-Index of Folk Literature.

Structural

In 1919,

Viktor Shklovsky Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky ( rus, Ви́ктор Бори́сович Шкло́вский, p=ˈʂklofskʲɪj; – 6 December 1984) was a Russian and Soviet literary theorist, critic, writer, and pamphleteer. He is one of the major figures asso ...

published his essay titled "The Relationship Between Devices of Plot Construction and General Devices of Style". As a major proponent during Russian formalism, Shklovsky was one of the first scholars to criticize the failing methods of literary analysis and report on a syntagmatic approach to folktales. In his essay he claims, "It is my purpose to stress not so much the similarity of motifs, which I consider of little significance, as the similarity in the plot schemata."

Syntagmatic analysis In semiotics, syntagmatic analysis is analysis of syntax or surface structure (syntagmatic structure) as opposed to paradigms (paradigmatic analysis). This is often achieved using commutation tests. "Syntagmatic" means that one element selects t ...

, championed by

, is the approach in which the elements of the fairy tale are analyzed in the order that they appear in the story. Wanting to overcome what he thought was arbitrary and subjective analysis of folklore by motif, Propp published his book '' Morphology of the Folktale'' in 1928. The book specifically states that Propp finds a dilemma in Veselovsky's definition of a motif; it fails because it can be broken down into smaller units, contradicting its definition. In response, Propp pioneered a specific breakdown that can be applied to most Aarne-Thompson type tales classified with numbers 300-749. This methodology gives rise to Propp's 31 functions, or actions, of the fairy tale. Propp proposes that the functions are the fundamental units the story and that there are exactly 31 distinct functions. He observed in his analysis of 100 Russian fairy tales that tales almost always adhere to the order of the functions. The traits of the characters, or

dramatis personae Dramatis personae (Latin: 'persons of the drama') are the main characters in a dramatic work written in a list. Such lists are commonly employed in various forms of theatre, and also on screen. Typically, off-stage characters are not consider ...

, involved in the actions are second to the action actually being carried out. This also follows his finding that while some functions may be missing between different stories, the order is kept the same for all the Russian fairy tales he analyzed. Alexander Nikiforov, like Shklovsky and Propp, was a folklorist in 1920s Soviet Russia. His early work also identified the benefits of a syntagmatic analysis of fairy tale elements. In his 1926 paper titled "The Morphological Study of Folklore", Nikiforov states that "Only the functions of the character, which constitute his dramatic role in the folk tale, are invariable." Since Nikiforov's essay was written almost 2 years before Propp's publication of '' Morphology of the Folktale'', scholars have speculated that the idea of the function, widely attributed to Propp, could have first been recognized by Nikiforov. One source claims that Nikiforov's work was "not developed into a systematic analysis of syntagmatics" and failed to "keep apart structural principles and atomistic concepts". Nikiforov's work on folklore morphology was never pursued beyond his paper.

Writers and collectors

Alexander Afanasyev

began collecting fairy tales at a time when folklore was viewed as simple entertainment. His interest in folklore stemmed from his interest in ancient

Slavic mythology Slavic paganism, Slavic mythology, or Slavic religion refer to the Religion, religious beliefs, myths, and ritual practices of the Slavs before Christianisation of the Slavs, Christianisation, which occurred at various stages between the 8th and ...

. During the 1850s, Afanasyev began to record part of his collection from tales dating to

Boguchar Boguchar () is a town and the administrative center of Bogucharsky District in Voronezh Oblast, Russia, located on the Boguchar River (a tributary of the Don River), south of Voronezh, the administrative center of the oblast. Population: H ...

, his birthplace. More of his collection came from the work of Vladimir Dhal and the

Russian Geographical Society The Russian Geographical Society (), or RGO, is a learned society based in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It promotes geography, exploration and nature protection with research programs in fields including oceanography, ethnography, ecology and stati ...

who collected tales from all around the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

. Afanasyev was a part of the few who attempted to create a written collection of Russian folklore. This lack in collections of folklore was due to the control that the

Church Slavonic Church Slavonic is the conservative Slavic liturgical language used by the Eastern Orthodox Church in Belarus, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Serbia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Slovenia and Croatia. The ...

had on printed literature in Russia, which allowed for only religious texts to be spread. To this, Afanasyev replied, “There is a million times more morality, truth and human love in my folk legends than in the sanctimonious sermons delivered by Your Holiness!” Between 1855 and 1863, Afanasyev edited '' Popular Russian Tales arodnye russkie skazki', which had been modeled after the Grimm's Tales. This publication had a vast cultural impact over Russian scholars by establishing a desire for folklore studies in Russia. The rediscovery of Russian folklore through written text led to a generation of great Russian authors to come forth. Some of these authors include

Leo Tolstoy Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy Tolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; ,Throughout Tolstoy's whole life, his name was written as using Reforms of Russian orthography#The post-revolution re ...

and

Fyodor Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. () was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. He is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in both Russian and world literature, and many of his works are considered highly influent ...

. Folktales were quickly produced in written text and adapted. Since the production of this collection, Russian tales remain understood and recognized all over Russia.

Alexander Pushkin

is known as one of Russia’s leading writers and poets. He is known for popularizing fairy tales in

and changed Russian literature by writing stories no one before him could. Pushkin is considered Russia’s

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

as, during a time when most of the Russian population was illiterate, he gave Russian’s the ability to desire in a less-strict Christian and a more pagan way through his fairy tales. Pushkin gained his love for Russian fairy tales from his childhood nurse, Ariana Rodionovna, who told him stories from her village when he was young. His stories served importance to Russians past his death in 1837, especially during times political turmoil during the start of the 20th century, in which, “Pushkin’s verses gave children the Russian language in its most perfect magnificence, a language which they may never hear or speak again, but which will remain with them as an eternal treasure.” The value of his fairy tales was established a hundred years after Pushkin’s death when the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

declared him a national poet. Pushkin’s work was previously banned during the Czarist rule. During the Soviet Union, his tales were seen acceptable for education, since Pushkin’s fairy tales spoke of the poor class and had

anti-clerical Anti-clericalism is opposition to religious authority, typically in social or political matters. Historically, anti-clericalism in Christian traditions has been opposed to the influence of Catholicism. Anti-clericalism is related to secularism, ...

tones.

Corpus

According to scholarship, some of "most popular or most significant" types of Russian Magic Tales (or Wonder Tales) are the following:Anglickienė, Laima. ''Slavic Folklore: DIDACTICAL GUIDELINES''. Kaunas: Vytautas Magnus University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Cultural Studies and Ethnology. 2013. p. 125. .

Footnotes

References

External links

Collection of Russian folk tales in Russian.
{{Russia topics Russian literature