How Vladimir Vladimirovich was Affected by a Russian Fairy Tale
During his recent “Straight Line”, Vladimir Putin called Tolstoy “War and Peace” Tchaikovsky and the fairy tale “Kolobok”. I dare say that the first two masterpieces are nothing but a tribute to fashion. As for Kolobok, the fairy tale has no roots only in the president's system of values. And this is not about instructing officials at all.
Photo: Alexey Merinov
Fable
The story of Kolobok is well known in detail to many in Russia, and not only in Russia.
There was once an old man with an old woman. The old man asks, “Bake, old man, bun.” – “What to bake from? It's not flour. “-” Eh-eh, old woman! Scrape the box, mark the bottom; maybe it'll have some flour. “Knead the sour cream, fry in oil and put on the window to cool.
The gingerbread man lay, lay, and suddenly rolled over – from window to bench, from bench to floor, from floor to door, jumped over the threshold to the entrance, from the entrance to the porch, from the porch to the courtyard, from the courtyard to the gate, and so on.
This is followed by an encounter with a Hare, a wolf and a bear, from which the gingerbread man escaped with a funny song – a conspiracy. And only with Lisa the musical magic didn't work.
“Kolobok” is one of the oldest pre-Christian fairy tales that have come to our day: look at the name- “Kolo-bok”. “Round” – rotation, circle, or rather the axis of the circle, the basis of the round dance and “side” – the edge. The “wheel”, the “circle”, the “round dance” return to the pagan Sun god Khors, borrowed from the Persians. Hence the adverb “good” (sunny).
There are about 40 variants of “Kolobok” in the world. However, foreign counterparts do not have similar connotations (typically Russian poverty and at the same time the atypical absence of children, as well as the advanced age of the creators-parents), just as there is no hidden mental meaning that we will soon reveal.
Version
One of the most common explanations for Koloboka's metamorphosis is his credibility. Followers of this variation state that the cheerful Kolobok, who happily bypassed the troubles of the cowardly weak Hare, the cruel greedy Wolf, the domineering, powerful Bear, came across the cunning, insidious Fox. She cheated and cheated on our Kolobok with tricks and flattery. According to the reviewers, too much trust and a tendency to flatter can destroy a Russian, as our wise ancestors warn us.
But Englishman Johnny Donut, American gingerbread, Norwegian pancake and even our related Belarusian pie were naive and simple. What turns out – the whole world, moreover not only Slavic, is helpless in front of some red vipers? Proverbs like “The dog boasted, but the wolves ate” or “What are you arrogant, you stop there”?
Adepts of mystical theory offer their own version. They are sure that Kolobok is a bearer of the Christian-pagan double faith. The gingerbread man knew the amulet song (conspiracy prayer), which, I repeat, did not save him from a fatal collision with the Fox. So is the point of the story really just to run away from your parents and go through the satiety? Of course not.
Much less often, researchers classify Kolobok as a scratch, the last unexpected children (an old woman scratched the bottom of a barrel: “Scratch along the box, mark the bottom of the barrel”). Such children were considered a heavenly gift and supervised with special magical power.
Scrubber
Gingerbread is undoubtedly a scraper (last, scraper, peeler, scraper), a swan song of parents. Scratching allegorically obtained from the “tails” of former health, happiness, power. Such children were often born weak, unhealthy. A natural compensation was the fact that scrapers often had the gift of a wizard, who sees, was able to resist divination and shamanism, was predisposed to the irrational.
Poskrebysh is not just a Russian phraseological phenomenon: similar lexemes can be found in French, Swedish, Danish, Croatian, Polish and other languages. In Russian, comparing a person to bread is not so rare: take, for example, the term “freshly baked.” They can be both bread and, for example, an expert (university graduate). And phraseological units “in the heat of the heat” or “someone will burn out”?
Scratches, in a broader sense – later children, always enjoyed special attention, not in vain in Russian fairy tales from various tests came the victorious youngest son. The scrapers are not alone here: the reputation has been endowed not only by late children or those born in a shirt (in the bladder membrane) with natural “anomalies”, but also by first-born, bastards (illegitimate), posthumous children. after the sudden death of their father, as well as twins and twins. And those born before the deadline, fighting hard for their lives from the first breath?
As already mentioned, according to the prevailing opinion among Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian peasants, scrapers are often endowed with a healer. They are said to have “good, clean blood” that cannot harm the patient. Previously, the latter were thought to be the best in the treatment of dislocations, hernias, barley, rashes, toothache and even epilepsy.
Thus – a version that has a right to life about the human envy of relatives endowed with special talents, about jealousy of those whose natural abilities are favorably comparable to the average (“To whom is given more – from those who demand more”). Another of our national features that is hidden there.
In life, scrapers are usually responsible, eager and respected workers, who are characterized by high and especially productive efficiency. Unlike their surroundings, they have developed an intuition, a supernatural feeling that allows them to capture both social processes and waves emanating from specific people. Scratching is a kind of psychological litmus with which a smart leader and only an attentive partner will be able to calculate prospects, the near future, what ideas, what individual, what institution.
Essence
So what is the lesson of this story? Let's go back to the beginning: parents are not only old, but also poor – “there is no flour”. The dialogue between the old man and the old woman may have taken place in the spring, when grain supplies ran out, but what's the difference? More or less well-managed peasants always had grain, in extreme cases they could shoot at neighbors. But either pride or a hungry year – the old woman did not apply for a loan. Note that poverty here is not the same as poverty: the older couple still had a cow (“kneaded in sour cream, fried in butter”), but that also means nothing.
The wonderful message of “Kolobok” is that scrapers, younger children, and even more so only one child, are personally responsible for the care of older parents, such children who grew up always stayed in their father's house. The way of life was unchanged: the only children of older, sick parents, both in the Tsarist era and in Soviet times, were not even accepted into the army. And even if it did, it would not be in abstract Afghanistan.
Most readers don't even know about Russia's primary obligation for the youngest child, rooted in national consciousness, to stay with their parents until their last breath. And if the son is alone, then even more. One of Ilya Muromets' claims was that once he left his old people and did not return.
“Kolobok” is a story about children's responsibility to their parents that no matter how smart, rich and not a talented child, his first duty is to be close to his elderly, and not to run, to try destiny, through fields and forests. So Lisa treated Kolobok fairly at most.
Call your parents if they are alive. Call so that later on you don't subconsciously identify with a fairy-tale thing for nothing.