FEATURES OF THE FIXATION OF TEXTS OF THE PROSAIC FOLKLORE OF RUSSIAN OLDTIMERS OF YAKUTIA IN THE ARCTIC ZONE IN THE 1940S

Abstract

The article considers some features of collecting the Russian folklore within the Northern expedition of 1939-1941 organized by A. A. Savvin and S. I. Bolo, and also the ethnographic and linguistic expedition on studying the Russian oldtimers population in lower reaches of the Indigirka River of 1946 under the leadership of T. A. Shub. The study is based on the materials on the Russian folklore stored in thehand-written fund of the Yakut Scientific Center, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences.

In folklore studies in general and within our project “Song and Narrative Folklore of the Russian Oldtimers of Yakutia in the context of Methodology and Reception of Vilyui Expedition”, we considered it relevant to study ways of recording folklore in the Russian villages: village of Pokhodsk, village of Russkoe Ustie of Allaikhovsky District in the period of its living existence. For the short period of 1939-1946, various materials were collected: lyrics, bylinas, fairy tales, small genres of folklore.

The research objective is to study the nature of recording the texts of folklore made during S. I. Bolo’s expedition, and stationary expedition under the leadership of T. A. Shub, which laid a basis for two important academic collections: “Folklore of Russkoe Ustie”, 1986, and “Russian Epic Poetry of Siberia and the Far East”, 1991. It is important that these collections used almost completely the texts that were written down by S. I. Bolo; T. A. Shub, N. M. Alekseev, and N. A. Gabyshev.

The methods. A comparison of the activities of the expeditions, as well as the ways of recording folklore texts is carried out. Thus, S. I. Bolo made records in Russkoe Ustie and on the Kolyma within the route expedition: in the fall of 1940 – in Pokhodsk, spring of 1941 – in Russkoe Ustie. T. A. Shub and his companions fixed texts of folklore in the spring of 1946 in the field conditions of stationary expedition.

On the basis of the comparative analysis, some features of the existence of the folklore epic works which were written down in the mid-20th century are considered. So, the fairy tales having a literary basis is studied “The Poor Maid”; the variants of the epic about the battle of Dobrynia and the snake are considered.

Conclusions. Records of the expeditions of the 1940s in the places of residence of the Russian oldtimers are essential as the Russian folklore of various genres was recorded in the period of its active circulation.

References

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