- Suguna Pradhan
Russia is a vast country filled with ethnically diverse cultures speaking many different languages. The harshness of its land is often one of the factors that bring these people together, surviving year after year of harsh winters and tragically short summers. So what is a Russian to do on these days of seemingly eternal winter? Why, huddle around the family hearth and tell stories, of course! Fairy tales reflect the beliefs of a people, their moral values, and often their incredible imagination. Russians are no strangers to fairy tales, and reading fairy tales to children is part of the journey of raising them. Most Russian folktales are precursors to many well-known tales and all of them bring with them a vivid imagination of a Russia where ice giants roam the land, and beautiful tsarinas are cursed by witches.
Perhaps the most well-known figure in Russian folklore, Baba Yaga, is an old crone who lives in a house in the woods that stands on chicken legs.
She is often characterized as a witch, used to scare children into not wandering out in the dangerous woods in the dark. She rides in the air with a cauldron steered by a pestle and is the witch in one of the earlier tales of Hansel and Gretel. She is also present in the tale of Vasilisa the beautiful, who was sent to Baba Yaga by her evil stepmother.
Another famous figure in Russian folklore is Koschei the deathless, a classic antagonist who is described as a skeletal man, old and ugly looking. In the tale of the frog princess, he kidnaps the young maiden, and the only way for the hero to kill him is to find his soul and destroy it.
However, Kocechi is clever, and he has kept his soul hidden inside a needle, which is in an egg, which is in a duck, which is in a hare, which is in an iron chest (sometimes the chest is considered to be crystal and/or gold), buried under a green oak tree on an unnamed island in the ocean.
As long as his soul is safe, he cannot die.
The firebird is a beautiful bird often likened to a phoenix. Surprisingly, the firebird hardly has a part in her own story, the main character is instead the youngest son of a king. Every night, the firebird steals a precious golden apple from the king's garden. The frustrated king orders his sons to find this thief, and after a long journey, the youngest stumbles upon a golden cage containing the firebird in the garden of a rival king. A helpful wolf had warned him not to touch the golden cage when taking the bird, but the youngest son did so anyway, causing many bells to ring and catching the attention of the king. The king demanded that the youngest son bring him Helena, the beautiful princess as a gift in exchange for the phoenix, but during his adventures, Helena fell in love with him. In the end, it was the wolf who sacrificed his life to save the couple. And the firebird? It lives its life happily ever after with the newly-married couple.
Russian folk tales are only one side of the multicultural dice that is this vast country. From the architecture to the stories, there is something about this land that evokes creativity and defiance in the face of injustice.
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