Stalin Jasne Słoneczko, czyli folklor w rękach propagandy

Abstract

The article is an attempt to analyse the phenomenon of using folklore by the Bolshevik authority with the aim of spreading propaganda. Immediately after the Great October Socialist Revolution, there was no indication whatsoever that folklore could be a form of spreading the Communist ideology. On the contrary, it was severely criticised as a relic of the former epoch, and there was even a call for total eradication of this form of art. With time, however, when its propaganda potential was noticed by the authorities, folklore became subject to direct control in terms of the process of how it was created and studied. Folklorists gave in to the pressure of the party authority and spared no effort to make advocates of folklore bards favouring the new times. All the same, at the end of the 1930s, some folklorists came to question the value of new folklore, and, in particular, the very purpose of bringing aid to its creators. True debate about the cases of distorting folklore flared up only after the death of Stalin and, at shorter or longer intervals, it has lasted to this day. Moreover, researchers into folklore are not so much interested in the problem of its authenticity; they rather address the use of some defined conventions by folklore creators. These conventions concern outlook on the world, style or genre. The folklore of the Stalinist era studied in this way is becoming a kind of key to understanding the essence of the cultural processes that developed in a rather disreputable period in Russian history.