Folklore for Stalin: Russian Folklore and Pseudo-folklore of the Stalin Era by Frank J. Miller

Author:Frank J. Miller [Miller, Frank J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History
ISBN: 9781000161236
Google: gJ_5DwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 3497219
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1990-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Later, in police headquarters, the wife is beaten so severely that she lies senseless for several hours before she can go home. Korguev’s negative portrayal of the Serbs and the English at police headquarters and at the prison camp in Siberia is calculated to encourage hatred toward foreigners. The sympathy of the prison guards for the revolutionaries makes the point that people throughout the country supported the Revolution.

The heroes of the Soviet tales are many. Both Kovalev and Sorokovikov depict Lenin’s and Stalin’s struggle against tsarist oppression. Stalin, the younger hero, rescues Lenin from tsarist prisons and later drives the White enemy from the country. Chkalov surmounts the obstacles set for him by the Tsar of the North and flies to America, while Russian aviatrixes explore their own country. Kovalev’s polar explorers (cheliuskintsy) subdue the Tsar of the Sea and perform scientific tasks for the benefit of the people. The heroes of Bespalikov, Kovalev, and Sorokovikov protect their country from enemy attack. The dauntlessness of collective farm leaders is recognized in Bespalikov’s “The Scarlet Flower” and Kovalev’s “Ivan the Unfortunate.” Ordinary people, searchers for truth, demonstrate that the Revolution had brought happiness to everyone. Chapaev, the hero of several prewar tales, appears in the war tales of Sychev and leads the Russians to victory over the invading Germans. The past Russian military heroes Platov, Suvorov, and Nekrasov are resurrected in the tales of Sychev and Gospodarev.

Authors of Soviet tales, like the composers of noviny, described contemporary life in a pseudofolklore genre. One of the most prolific authors of new tales, Kovalev, used the narrative ceremonialism of the traditional folktale most consistently in his new tales. Formulas, magic objects and helpers, various three-fold repetitions, as well as numerous folklore motifs recur constantly, but the language of Kovalev’s new tales is an artificial mixture of colloquial and literary styles. By combining numerous dialecticisms and incorrect grammatical constructions with bookish words and the syntactical phraseology of the literary language, Kovalev created his own linguistic style, neither that of the traditional folktale nor that of the literary tale. There are also many examples of bookish speech in the Soviet tales of Sorokovikov, but they lack the many dialecticisms of Kovalev’s tales. Nevertheless, combinations of the literary language with the colloquial and at times archaic language of the traditional folktale are distracting stylistic inconsistencies in Sorokovikov’s new works. They have little narrative ceremonialism, lack the expanded introductory and concluding formulas of Kovalev’s tales, and give a much lesser role to magical objects.

Magical objects are also scarce in the tales of other narrators. Bespalikov’s heroes use living water to revive their brother; Pavel Zhukov, the chairman of the kolkhoz, is saved by the Order of Lenin which turns into a red flower on his grave. Konashkov’s collective farmers, Mar’ia, Fedor, and Aleksei, are led to Moscow by a rolling ball of yarn, and Korguev’s Chapaev is protected from enemy bullets by a magic ring effective only on land. In Buzaev’s tale “Chapai”, an old Kirghiz gives the hero a horse which can carry him away from all harm.

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