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Idle: Fairytale Character Map Raises Ire In Russia and Ukraine

Posted by timothy on from the hate-to-borscht-yore-bubble dept.

The downside of not having ones base of children's stories crafted and maintained by trained storytime engineers from the Disney Corporation has reared its warty head in Russia and Ukraine. A map of purportedly Russian folktale characters' haunts has drawn fire from Ukrainians, who object to what they see as the appropriation (from Ukraine) of such famous characters as miraculously strong Ilya Muromets, the gold-producing Speckled Hen, and Kolobok ("a cheerful talking cake who flees animals eager to eat him"). This seems like nothing that couldn't be cleared up with some artfully mis-pointed highway signs and a few tons of papier-mâché.

7 of 146 comments (clear)

  1. Here's the actual map by moonbender · · Score: 4, Informative

    Flash warning: http://www.themoscownews.com/infographics/20110427/188619593.html

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  2. No shit by SquirrelDeth · · Score: 3, Informative

    Russia always steals from the Ukraine (I'm a Ukrainian). At least this time it's just fairy tales. Last time they tried to starve us to death http://www.holodomorsurvivors.ca/
    And Stalin's grandson excuses it saying genocide was not illegal in 1930's and is trying to sue the Ukraine http://www.kyivpost.com/news/nation/detail/58247/.
    Screw the fairy tales I want justice for a genocide.

    1. Re:No shit by tetromino · · Score: 3, Informative

      they tried to starve us to death

      Who's "they"? Do you mean Stalin (a Georgian)? Or maybe you are talking about the (ethnic Ukrainian) communist functionaries who sent Stalin fake statistics to try to convince him that his economic policies were working well and that there was no starvation in Ukraine? And who is "us"? Because the entire grain belt of the Soviet Union (covering parts of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan) was starving in 1932-1933. Millions of ethnic Russians starved to death too, yet today the Ukrainian authorities are cynically trying to appropriate the tragedy for themselves and portraying the event as an Ukrainian genocide by the evil Russians.

    2. Re:No shit by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 2, Informative

      Dude. The notion that Ilya Muromets is "stolen" from Ukraine is pure BS, because when the real-world prototype of that folk hero actually lived, our ancestors lived in a single country called Kievan Rus, spanning most of today's European Russia and Ukraine. In a similar vein, The Tale of Igor's Campaign is equally a "great work of Russian literature" and "a great work of Ukrainian literature" - well, for sure, because it was written in a language that was an ancestor to ours both!

      Both Russia and Ukraine (and also Belarus) are equally successors to the history and culture of Kievan Rus. You can't steal something that you share, unless you deny the other country their rightful claim. I don't see that here.

      Last time they tried to starve us to death

      Oh, and Russia didn't "starve you to death". Bolsheviks did, at the same time when several million Russians were also killed. And they were very much internationalist folk - led by a Georgian at the time, with many ethnicities from all over ex-Russian Empire in their ranks, with Russians - yes! - but also Poles, Jews, Latvians, and for sure plenty Ukrainians as well. Most people who implemented prodrazdverstka on Ukraine were Ukrainians, too. If you're so eager to get someone to pay, maybe you should look in your own country first?

    3. Re:No shit by tetromino · · Score: 2, Informative

      15 times that farm's quota

      Not quite. The law that you are referring to (passed by the Politburo of the Ukrainian Communist Party, which at the time was led by an ethnic Pole) stated that if a farm failed to meet its quota, the farm could be subject to fines of up to 15 monthly quotas of meat. Even if government agents decided to apply the maximum penalty and to seize the fine immediately, in theory the farm would still be left with grain and vegetables.

    4. Re:No shit by JAlexoi · · Score: 3, Informative

      Hitler executed genocide of jews. The massacre in Rwanda was a genocide. The orchestrated famine of 1933 was not a genocide, by definition. Because it was not targeting an ethnic group. Purely cynically, when 37.5%(3/8) of deaths are not of the target ethnic group(s) it's not genocide.
      And every time I hear that, I am reminded that a few people in my family died in that famine. On both sides! One is Ukrainian and the other one is Russian. And I have the graves in Ukraine and Russia to prove it.
      So those nationalists in Ukraine, that paint the picture of Russians(and they truly mean ethnicity, not citizenship) being bloodsuckers, are the usual variety nutjobs. And they have their academics that try to prove that Russians are actually slavinised finns, that the treaty of Pereslavl was not what it was, etc...

  3. The Ukrainian complaints are utterly ridiculous by tetromino · · Score: 4, Informative

    Back in the middle ages, when these fairy tales were created, Russians and Ukrainians were one, united ethnic group speaking one language (it took many centuries for the languages and cultures to drift apart, and Ukrainians didn't really start to develop a separate national identity until the 19th century); so claiming that an ancient fairy tale character is exclusively Ukrainian or exclusively Russian is utterly ridiculous. Unless, of course, that character is somehow firmly tied to a particular geographic location. One such example is Ilya Muromets, who (as you can guess from the name) is from the town of Murom, located in Russia, 400 miles north-west of the Ukrainian border. The insane people claiming Ilya Muromets exclusively for Ukrainian folklore have clearly failed both history and geography.