Epic tradition of the Russkoe Ustye
Authors:   Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Tatiana IVANOVA 
Published: December 2023

Russian epic tradition of the village Russkoe Ustye, standing on the Indigirka River, is the subject of the study. The relevance of the research lies in the need to describe one of the regional epic traditions of Siberia at the modern stage in connection with the work of the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences on the series “Bylinas” of the Russian Folklore Code. Accordingly, the purpose and objectives of the study are determined by a systematic approach to material, meaningful in connection with the history of inhabiting the region, the history of the recording epics in the region, and the consistent characteristics of each recorded epic plot. The article reviews the history of inhabiting the Russian Estuary: the discovery of the mouth of the Indigirka by the Cossack Ivan Rebrov in 1638, the construction of the town of Zashiversk in the middle reaches of the Indigirka, inhabiting the mouth of the river from Zashiversk and from the sea. The oral family traditions of the Russkoustians are given. The article also describes the history of the recording epics in Russkoe Ustye and from its inhabitants: political exile I. A. Khudyakov (1867–1869); V. M. Zenzinov (1912); graduate of the ethnographic department of Leningrad State University D. D. Travin (1928); Yakut local historian M. A. Krotov (1931–1932); Yakut writer, member of the ethnographic and linguistic expedition of the Institute of Language, Literature and History of the Yakut branch of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences N. A. Gabyshev (1946); major Moscow bylinologist Yu. I. Smirnov (1982) and famous ethnomusicologist T. S. Shentalinskaya (1985). The main content of the article is the characteristics of local epics (25 texts). There is an almost complete absence of epics about Ilya Muromets (the only text is “Ilya Muromets and the Idolishche”). The popularity of the plot “Dobrynya and the Serpent” (six variants) is indicated, in which the name of Maria Izyaslavna, absent in European Russia, appears (instead of the traditional Zabava Putjatichna), linking (through the patronymic Izyaslavna) the epics of Russkoe Ustye with the onomasticon of Ancient Russia. The epic “Mikhail Danilovich – the minor hero” (six variants) is analyzed, in which the enemy Titus appears, unknown in the Russian North. It is assumed that this name in Russkoe Ustye was borrowed from the “History of the Jewish War” by Josephus Flavij, a monument of late Antique literature (75–79 A.D.), known in Russia in translation and very popular in the manuscript tradition. Probably one of the lists was brought to Russkoe Ustye. Josephus' Titus is the son of Emperor Vespasian, an enemy of Judea. In the “Arrival of the Lithuanians” (three variants), the names of “our” heroes – Tsar Elizar and his sister Maria Elizarovna (names that are absent in the Russian North) – may also be echoe of the “History of the Jewish War”, where several characters with the name Eleazar are called among the Jews. Other epic plots are also considered – “Surovets”, “Duke Stepanovich”, “Sadko”.