Antropologicheskij forum, 2016, no. 31

EAST SLAVIC FOLKLORE IN THE EUROPEAN AND EURASIAN CONTEXT (RESULTS OF THE STATISTICAL PROCESSING OF DATA)

Yuri Berezkin

European University at St Petersburg
3 Gagarinskaya Str., St Petersburg, Russia
Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), Russian Academy of Sciences
3 Universitetskaya Emb., St Petersburg, Russia
berezkin1()gmail.com

Abstract: Statistical processing of data on the spread of folklore motifs across Europe and the Caucasus supports an earlier hypothesis of the existence of the Western and Eastern complexes. The Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Eastern Baltic traditions belong to the Western complex, while the Volga Tatar, Bashkir and Caucasian ones belong to the Eastern complex. Among the Volga-Permian Finno-Ugric peoples, the Western component is more pronounced than among the Russians, who occupy an intermediate position between the two complexes. The Eastern complex originated in Southern Siberia and Mongolia and Turkic and Mongolian groups brought it to the more Western regions. Its spread correlates with the spread of the name Cholpan, Tsolbon, and the like for Venus. Before the 1st millennium A.D., the Caucasus belonged not to the Eastern, but to the Western spheres of cultural interaction, which is evidenced by the tendencies in the spread of cosmological and etiological motifs. The set of such motifs among the Ukrainians has Caucasian links, whereas the set of motifs among the Russians and Belarusians has Baltic and Finno-Ugric links, probably due to the corresponding substratum.

Keywords: folklore databases, International folktales, Russian folktales, Ukrainian folktales, mythology, cultural borders, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus.

To cite: Berezkin Yu., 'Vostochnoslavyanskiy folklor v evropeyskom i evraziyskom kontekste (rezultaty statisticheskoy obrabotki dannykh)' [East Slavic Folklore in the European and Eurasian Context (Results of the Statistical Processing of Data)], Antropologicheskij forum, 2016, no. 31, pp. 9–24.

URL: http://anthropologie.kunstkamera.ru/files/pdf/031/berezkin1.pdf