Crucial to the world history of folkloristics is this key study, first published in 1992, of the development of folklore study in the Soviet Union. Nowhere else has political ideology been so heavily involved with folklore scholarship. Professor Howell has examined in depth the institutional development of folkloristics in the Soviet Union in the first half of the twentieth century, concentrating especially upon the transition from pre-revolutionary Russian to Soviet Marxist folkloristics. The study of folklore moved from narrator studies to the description of the relationship of lore to larger contexts of social groups and social classes. Showing an exceptional knowledge of Russian, political theory and folkloristics, Dana Howell provides a valuable window into the rise of folkloristics in a country undergoing almost unprecedented changes in social and political conditions.

Crucial to the world history of folkloristics is this key study, first published in 1992, of the development of folklore study in the Soviet Union. Nowhere else has political ideology been so heavily involved with folklore scholarship. Professor Howell has examined in depth the institutional development of folkloristics in the Soviet Union in the first half of the twentieth century, concentrating especially upon the transition from pre-revolutionary Russian to Soviet Marxist folkloristics. The study of folklore moved from narrator studies to the description of the relationship of lore to larger contexts of social groups and social classes. Showing an exceptional knowledge of Russian, political theory and folkloristics, Dana Howell provides a valuable window into the rise of folkloristics in a country undergoing almost unprecedented changes in social and political conditions.

Folklore in the Baltic History: Resistance and Resurgence is about the role of folklore, folklore archives, and folklore studies in the contemporary history of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—together called the Baltic countries. They were occupied by Russia, by Germany, and lastly by the USSR at the end of the Second World War. They regained freedom in 1991. The period under the rule of the USSR brought several changes to their societies and cultures. Individuals and institutions dealing with folklore—archives, university departments, and folklorists—came under special control, attack, and surveillance. Some of the pioneer folklorists escaped to other countries, but many others witnessed their institutions and the meaning of folklore studies transformed. The USSR did not stop folklore studies but led the field to new methods. In spite of all the pressure, folklore continued to be a matter of identity, and folksongs became the marching songs of crowds resisting Soviet control in the late 1980s. Since independence in 1991, folklore scholars and institutions revamped and reconstituted folkloristics. Today all three countries have many active scholars and institutions. Sadhana Naithani recounts this resilient arc through an intermedial and interdisciplinary methodology of research. She combines the study of written works, archival documents, life-stories, and conversations with folklorists, ethnologists, archivists, and historians in Tartu, Riga, and Vilnius. She recorded conversations on video, creating current reflections on issues of the recent past. Based on the study of life-stories and oral history projects, Naithani juxtaposes the history of folkloristics and the life of the folk in the Soviet period of the Baltic countries. The result is this dramatic, first-ever history of Baltic folkloristics.

When the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, they set themselves the task of building socialism in the vast landscape of the former Russian Empire, a territory populated by hundreds of different peoples belonging to a multitude of linguistic, religious, and ethnic groups. Before 1917, the Bolsheviks had called for the national self-determination of all peoples and had condemned all forms of colonization as exploitative. After attaining power, however, they began to express concern that it would not be possible for Soviet Russia to survive without the cotton of Turkestan and the oil of the Caucasus. In an effort to reconcile their anti-imperialist position with their desire to hold on to as much territory as possible, the Bolsheviks integrated the national idea into the administrative-territorial structure of the new Soviet state. In Empire of Nations, Francine Hirsch examines the ways in which former imperial ethnographers and local elites provided the Bolsheviks with ethnographic knowledge that shaped the very formation of the new Soviet Union. The ethnographers—who drew inspiration from the Western European colonial context—produced all-union censuses, assisted government commissions charged with delimiting the USSR's internal borders, led expeditions to study "the human being as a productive force," and created ethnographic exhibits about the "Peoples of the USSR." In the 1930s, they would lead the Soviet campaign against Nazi race theories . Hirsch illuminates the pervasive tension between the colonial-economic and ethnographic definitions of Soviet territory; this tension informed Soviet social, economic, and administrative structures. A major contribution to the history of Russia and the Soviet Union, Empire of Nations also offers new insights into the connection between ethnography and empire.

Key issues surrounding the composition and recording of folklore include its frequently intensely political aspect and it preoccupation with chimerical cultural authority. These issues are dramatically displayed in Soviet epic compositions of the 1930s and 1940s, the so-called noviny (“new songs”), which took their formal inspiration to a great extent from traditional Russian epic songs, byliny (“songs of the past"), and their narrative content from contemporary political and other events in Stalinist Russia. The story of the noviny is at once complex and comprehensible. While it may be tempting to interpret the excrescences of Stalinism as unique aberrations, the reality was often more complicated. The noviny were not simply the result of political fiat, an episode in an ideological vacuum. Their emergence occurred in part because of specific trends and controversies that marked European folklore collection and publication from at least the late eighteenth century on, as well as because of developments in Russian folkloristics from the mid-nineteenth century on that assumed perhaps exaggerated proportions. The demise of the noviny was equally mediated by a host of political and theoretical considerations. This study tells the story of the rise and fall of the noviny in all its cultural richness and pathos, an instructive tale of the interaction of aesthetics and ideology.

No detailed description available for "The Study of Russian Folklore".

After the First Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934, folklore, like literature, became an instrument of the political propagandist. Folklorists devoted considerable efforts to attending to what purported to be a rebirth of the Russian epic tradition, producing works of pseudofolklore that as often as not featured Joseph Stalin in the hero's role. Miller's account of this curious episode in the history of popular culture and totalitarian politics, and his synopses and translations of "classic" examples of folklore for Stalin, seek to serve as a resource not only for the study of contemporary folklore but also for the political scientist.

This collection of articles provides rich and diverse insights into the historical dynamics of folkloristic thought with its shifting geographies, shared spaces, centres and borderlands. By focusing on intellectual collaboration and sharing, the volume also reveals the limitations, barriers and boundaries inherent in scholarship and scholarly communities. Folklore scholars from Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, and the USA reflect upon a range of related questions, including: To what extent and in what sense can folklore studies be regarded as a shared field of knowledge? Which lines of authority have held it together and what forces have led to segmentation? How have the hierarchies of intellectual centres and peripheries shifted over time? Do national or regional styles of scholarly practice exist in folkloristics? The contributors here pay attention to individual personalities, the politics and economics of scholarship, and forms of communication as meaningful contexts for discussing the dynamics of folklore theory and methods.

An extensive introduction provides basic information about Russian epics, their historical background, their poetics, the history of their collection, their performance context, and their main interpretations. In addition, their is a short introduction to each song, explaining its plot, allusions, and interpretations. A glossary of common terms and a selected bibliography of studies about the Russian epic in English and Russian are also included in the volume.