Download or read book Russian Myths written by Elizabeth Warner and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2002-07-01 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The coming of Christianity to the state of Kievan Rus' at the end of the tenth century had an enormous impact on the development of Russian civilization. Despite the abandonment of the pagan gods, both Christian and pagan practices and beliefs continued to coexist for centuries, producing a system known as "dual faith." Russian Myths deals with mythic beliefs, notions, and customs—concerning the veneration of earth, water, fire, and air, demons and spirit-beings in the world of nature, the cult of the dead, and witchcraft—many of which have their roots in the pre-Christian past but still survive to the present day. To illuminate the evolution of major themes and motifs and set Russian myths in the context of mythology the world over, Elizabeth Warner draws upon a rich variety of sources, including anecdotal narrative forms and religious legends, epic songs, funeral laments and folk religion, and, of course, the folktales where the sacred gives way to pure imagination in the depiction of mythic themes and characters.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Russian and Slavic Myth and Legend written by Mike Dixon-Kennedy and published by ABC-CLIO. This book was released on 1998-12-08 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Summary: Covers the myths and legends of the Russian Empire at its greatest extent as well as other Slavic people and countries. Includes historical, geographical, and biographical background information
Download or read book Mother Russia written by Joanna Hubbs and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1993-09-22 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Joanna Hubbs has found the trace of Baba Yaga and the rusalki and Moist Mother Earth and other fascinating feminine myths in Russian culture, and has added richly to the growing interest in popular culture." -- New York Times Book Review "... brave... fascinating... immensely enjoyable... " -- Times Higher Education Supplement "... a stimulating and original study... vivid and readable." -- Russian Review "An immensely stimulating, beautifully written work of scholarship." -- Francine du Plessix Gray "Joanna Hubbs has provided scholars... with a wealth of significant interpretive material to inform if not reform views of both Russian and women's cultures." -- Journal of American Folklore A ground-breaking interpretation of Russian culture from prehistory to the present, dealing with the feminine myth as a central cultural force.
Download or read book The Russian Folktale by Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp written by Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2012-09-12 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vladimir Propp is the Russian folklore specialist most widely known outside Russia thanks to the impact of his 1928 book Morphology of the Folktale-but Morphology is only the first of Propp's contributions to scholarship. This volume translates into English for the first time his book The Russian Folktale, which was based on a seminar on Russian folktales that Propp taught at Leningrad State University late in his life. Edited and translated by Sibelan Forrester, this English edition contains Propp's own text and is supplemented by notes from his students. The Russian Folktale begins with Propp's description of the folktale's aesthetic qualities and the history of the term; the history of folklore studies, first in Western Europe and then in Russia and the USSR; and the place of the folktale in the matrix of folk culture and folk oral creativity. The book presents Propp's key insight into the formulaic structure of Russian wonder tales (and less schematically than in Morphology, though in abbreviated form), and it devotes one chapter to each of the main types of Russian folktales: the wonder tale, the "novellistic" or everyday tale, the animal tale, and the cumulative tale. Even Propp's bibliography, included here, gives useful insight into the sources accessible to and used by Soviet scholars in the third quarter of the twentieth century. Propp's scholarly authority and his human warmth both emerge from this well-balanced and carefully structured series of lectures. An accessible introduction to the Russian folktale, it will serve readers interested in folklore and fairy-tale studies in addition to Russian history and cultural studies.
Download or read book Yeltsin s Russia written by Lilii︠a︡ Shevt︠s︡ova and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yeltsin's Russia: Myths and Reality is the most current and comprehensive account of the achievements - and failures - of Boris Yeltsin's Russia. Combining keen political analysis with the unique perspective of a native observer, Shevtsova's book also offers a valuable assessment of the forces that will shape the post-Yeltsin era.
Download or read book Deathless written by Catherynne M. Valente and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2011-03-29 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A glorious retelling of the Russian folktale Marya Morevna and Koschei the Deathless from Catherynne M. Valente, set in a mysterious version of St. Petersburg during the first half of the 20th century Koschei the Deathless is to Russian folklore what devils or wicked witches are to European culture: a menacing, evil figure; the villain of countless stories which have been passed on through story and text for generations. But Koschei has never before been seen through the eyes of Catherynne Valente, whose modernized and transformed take on the legend brings the action to modern times, spanning many of the great developments of Russian history in the twentieth century. Deathless, however, is no dry, historical tome: it lights up like fire as the young Marya Morevna transforms from a clever child of the revolution, to Koschei's beautiful bride, to his eventual undoing. Along the way there are Stalinist house elves, magical quests, secrecy and bureaucracy, and games of lust and power. All told, Deathless is a collision of magical history and actual history, of revolution and mythology, of love and death, which will bring Russian myth back to life in a stunning new incarnation. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Download or read book Terror and Greatness written by Kevin M. F. Platt and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-05-15 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this ambitious book, Kevin M. F. Platt focuses on a cruel paradox central to Russian history: that the price of progress has so often been the traumatic suffering of society at the hands of the state. The reigns of Ivan IV (the Terrible) and Peter the Great are the most vivid exemplars of this phenomenon in the pre-Soviet period. Both rulers have been alternately lionized for great achievements and despised for the extraordinary violence of their reigns. In many accounts, the balance of praise and condemnation remains unresolved; often the violence is simply repressed. Platt explores historical and cultural representations of the two rulers from the early nineteenth century to the present, as they shaped and served the changing dictates of Russian political life. Throughout, he shows how past representations exerted pressure on subsequent attempts to evaluate these liminal figures. In ever-changing and often counterposed treatments of the two, Russians have debated the relationship between greatness and terror in Russian political practice, while wrestling with the fact that the nation’s collective selfhood has seemingly been forged only through shared, often self-inflicted trauma. Platt investigates the work of all the major historians, from Karamzin to the present, who wrote on Ivan and Peter. Yet he casts his net widely, and "historians" of the two tsars include poets, novelists, composers, and painters, giants of the opera stage, Party hacks, filmmakers, and Stalin himself. To this day the contradictory legacies of Ivan and Peter burden any attempt to come to terms with the nature of political power—past, present, future—in Russia.
Download or read book Myths and Folk tales of the Russians Western Slavs and Magyars written by Jeremiah Curtin and published by Library of Alexandria. This book was released on 2020-09-28 with total page 595 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ÊI remember well the feelings roused in my mind at mention or sight of the name Lucifer during the earlier years of my life. It stood for me as the name of a being stupendous, dreadful in moral deformity, lurid, hideous, and mighty. I remember also the surprise with which when I had grown somewhat older and begun to study Latin, I came upon the name in Virgil, where it means the Light-bringer, or Morning-star,Ñthe herald of the sun. Many years after I had found the name in Virgil, I spent a night at the house of a friend in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, right at the shore of Lake Michigan. The night was clear but without a moon,Ña night of stars, which is the most impressive of all nights, vast, brooding, majestic. At three oÕclock in the morning I woke, and being near an uncurtained window, rose and looked out. Rather low in the east was the Morning-star, shining like silver, with a bluish tinge of steel. I looked towards the west; the great infinity was filled with the hosts of heaven, ranged behind this Morning-star. I saw at once the origin of the myth which grew to have such tremendous moral meaning, because the Morning-star was not in this case the usher of the day but the chieftain of night, the Prince of Darkness, the mortal enemy of the Lord of Light. I returned to bed knowing that the battle in heaven would soon begin. I rose when the sun was high next morning. All the world was bright, shining and active, gladsome and fresh, from the rays of the sun; the kingdom of light was established; but the Prince of Darkness and all his confederates had vanished, cast down from the sky, and to the endless eternity of God their places will know them no more in that night again. They are lost beyond hope or redemption, beyond penance or prayer. I have in mind at this moment two Indian stories of the Morning-star,Ñone Modoc, the other Delaware. The Modoc story is very long, and contains much valuable matter; but the group of incidents that I wish to refer to here are the daily adventures and exploits of a personage who seems to be no other than the sky with the sun in it. This personage is destroyed every evening. He always gets into trouble, and is burned up; but in his back is a golden disk, which neither fire nor anything in the world can destroy. From this disk his body is reconstituted every morning; and all that is needed for the resurrection is the summons of the Morning-star, who calls out, ÒIt is time to rise, old man; you have slept long enough.Ó Then the old man springs new again from his ashes through virtue of the immortal disk and the compelling word of the star. Now, the Morning-star is the attendant spirit or ÒmedicineÓ of the personage with the disk, and cannot escape the performance of his office; he has to work at it forever. So the old man cannot fail to rise every morning. As the golden disk is no other than the sun, the Morning-star of the Modocs is the same character as the Lucifer of the Latins.
Download or read book Russia Without Putin written by Tony Wood and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the West’s obsession with Vladimir Putin prevents it from understanding Russia It is impossible to think of Russia today without thinking of Vladimir Putin. More than any other major national leader, he personifies his country in the eyes of the world, and dominates Western media coverage. In Russia itself, he is likewise the centre of attention both for his supporters and his detractors. But, as Tony Wood argues, this focus on Russia’s president gets in the way of any real understanding of the country. The West needs to shake off its obsession with Putin and look beyond the Kremlin walls. In this timely and provocative analysis, Wood explores the profound changes Russia has undergone since 1991. In the process, he challenges several common assumptions made about contemporary Russia. Against the idea that Putin represents a return to Soviet authoritarianism, Wood argues that his rule should be seen as a continuation of Yeltsin’s in the 1990s. The core features of Putinism—a predatory elite presiding over a vastly unequal society—are in fact integral to the system set in place after the fall of Communism. Wood also overturns the standard view of Russia’s foreign policy, identifying the fundamental loss of power and influence that has underpinned recent clashes with the West. Russia without Putin concludes by assessing the current regime’s prospects, and looks ahead to what the future may hold for the country.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Russian and Slavic Myth and Legend written by Mike Dixon-Kennedy and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 1998-12-08 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers the first comprehensive guide in English to the myth and legend of the Russian Empire and other Slavic countries and peoples. There are few stories more stirring than those of ancient Russia. Russian and other Slavic beliefs weave a rich tapestry in which real-world elements coexist with those from fantasy, such as dragons, monsters, and shape-changing wolves. Though Russia adopted Christianity as the state religion in A.D. 988, paganism remained popular through the end of the 19th century and survives in isolated pockets even today. In Russian myth and legend, Christian themes are interwoven with pagan ideas: dragons fight priests, saints encounter nymphs, and witches enter the kingdom of heaven. Encyclopedia of Russian and Slavic Myth and Legend includes extensive historical, geographical, and biographical background to deepen the reader's understanding of the myth and legend. Numerous illustrations are included in this fascinating volume, which will be of great interest to students, scholars, and everyone who wishes to explore the cultural heritage of ancient Russia.
Download or read book Tsar and People written by Michael Cherniavsky and published by New Haven, Yale U.P. This book was released on 1961 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author traces the ruler cult from its tenth-century origins to its demise late in the nineteenth century, pointing out that the princes of Russian history are seen as saints both through their actions and through their function as mediator between God and people.
Download or read book The Soviet Myth of World War II written by Jonathan Brunstedt and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-15 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a bold new interpretation of the Soviet myth of World War II from its Stalinist origins to its emergence as arguably the supreme myth of state under Brezhnev. Jonathan Brunstedt offers a timely historical investigation into the roots of the revival of the war's memory in Russia today.
Download or read book Russian Folk tales written by and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2000 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Russian winter, in the depths of the forest, a whole village gathers together by the blazing fire. Then the storyteller arrives and the whole audience listens with bated breath. The award-winning novelist, James Riordan, has collected and translated some of these stories from original sources and retold them for children. Here are stories about flying ships, snow maidens, fire birds, frog princesses, Misha the Bear, Ivan the Fool, and Baba Yaga, the fearsome witch. With evocative pictures by Andrew Breakspeare, this is a book that will transport you into the world of Russian myths and magic.
Download or read book In a Certain Kingdom written by Nicholas Kotar and published by Waystone Press. This book was released on 2021-12-21 with total page 79 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Giants larger than mountains, shapeshifting warrior mages, outlaws who can whistle you to death ... Welcome to the wild world of Russian epic poetry! The traditional epic heroic tales of Russia have been told and retold for centuries. They tell of a half-legendary Russia where princes and dragons, warriors and magicians coexist. But they are more than a glimpse into Russia's past. These are tales that excite and move, that give courage and resilience to anyone, no matter what your age or your background. These are rousing tales of battles won and lost, of loves succeeding over impossible odds, of ancient demons and dragons finding their match in simple men and women of unexpected strength. Ilya Muromets, Nikita the Tanner, Dobrynia the dragon-killer... Russian readers have known and loved these characters for centuries. It's time for you to join them! Epic Heroes of the Rus is a collection of tales retold by Nicholas Kotar, author of the Raven Son epic fantasy series. Filled with whimsy, humor, and adventure, they are sure to delight lovers of classic fairy tales and readers of fantasy the world over. Buy In a Certain Kingdom: Epic Heroes of the Rus today to be transported to a world you may never want to leave!
Download or read book Nationalism Myth and the State in Russia and Serbia written by Veljko Vujačić and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-26 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the role of Russian and Serbian nationalism in dissolution of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in 1991.
Download or read book Russian Tales and Legends written by Charles Downing and published by Hassell Street Press. This book was released on 2021-09-09 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Download or read book From the Shadow of Empire written by Olga Maiorova and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 2010-08-17 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As nationalism spread across nineteenth-century Europe, Russia’s national identity remained murky: there was no clear distinction between the Russian nation and the expanding multiethnic empire that called itself “Russian.” When Tsar Alexander II’s Great Reforms (1855–1870s) allowed some freedom for public debate, Russian nationalist intellectuals embarked on a major project—which they undertook in daily press, popular historiography, and works of fiction—of finding the Russian nation within the empire and rendering the empire in nationalistic terms. From the Shadow of Empire traces how these nationalist writers refashioned key historical myths—the legend of the nation’s spiritual birth, the tale of the founding of Russia, stories of Cossack independence—to portray the Russian people as the ruling nationality, whose character would define the empire. In an effort to press the government to alter its traditional imperial policies, writers from across the political spectrum made the cult of military victories into the dominant form of national myth-making: in the absence of popular political participation, wars allowed for the people’s involvement in public affairs and conjured an image of unity between ruler and nation. With their increasing reliance on the war metaphor, Reform-era thinkers prepared the ground for the brutal Russification policies of the late nineteenth century and contributed to the aggressive character of twentieth-century Russian nationalism.
