Russian Secret Tales (Afanasyev)

The collection "Russian Fairy Tales" and its fate

The main work of Alexander Afanasyev's life, which immortalized his name, was the collection "Russian Fairy Tales." It is the most complete, definitive collection of Russian fairy tale plots, published between 1855 and 1863 in eight separate volumes. In addition to Russian tales, this collection included Ukrainian and Belarusian tales, carefully printed by the compiler in the original language without changes.

Afanasyev did not simply publish the tales; he conducted the first systematization of fairy tale plots in the history of science and provided them with a rich comparative commentary. The collection became the starting point for international recognition of Russian folklore studies. Decades later, it was based on one hundred tales from this collection that the prominent Soviet scholar Vladimir Propp wrote his famous work "Morphology of the Folktale" (1928), which revolutionized world structural linguistics and anthropology.

The publication of the tales was accompanied by a difficult struggle with censorship and the church. In 1860, Afanasyev released the collection "Russian Folk Legends" (stories about Christ and saints in the folk understanding), but at the insistence of the Holy Synod, the book was immediately withdrawn from sale for non-compliance with church canons. Censorship completely banned fairy tales of a religious-satirical and erotic nature from being printed. Afanasyev was forced to secretly smuggle their manuscript to Europe, where they were published in Geneva at the end of the 19th century under the title "Russian Secret Tales" (Russkie zavetnye skazki) with fictitious publication data; they were only legally released in Russia in 1992.

Wishing to make folklore accessible to children, Afanasyev prepared a simplified illustrated collection, "Russian Children's Tales," which included 61 tales about animals, magical, and everyday stories. But even here, the censorship committee headed by Platon Vakar saw "outrageous ideas," accusing the book of celebrating cunning, and noting that the tale "Truth and Falsehood" claimed one could end up in Siberia for the truth. The collection was finally published with great difficulty only in 1870, and its second edition was delayed until 1886.

The second edition of the main body of "Russian Fairy Tales," completely revised and strictly classified by genre (magical, everyday, animal), was published in four volumes in 1873, after the death of the great collector.

Afanasyev's contributions to culture are immeasurable. His children's tales entered the golden fund of world children's literature. The collection became an inexhaustible source of inspiration for great Russian artists: illustrations for Afanasyev's tales were created by Ivan Bilibin, Yuri Vasnetsov, Elena Polenova, Georgy Narbut, and Tatyana Mavrina, turning the folk book into a true visual treasure.