Idle: Fairytale Character Map Raises Ire In Russia and Ukraine

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.

Comments

Here's the actual map

[moonbender]

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

Unfortunately

[mgiuca]

"Unfortunately, folkloric heritage is not regulated by international norms or by intellectual property rights," Marina Primenko, the creator of the Ukrainian map, said.

Yes, very unfortunate. Because we need more historical culture to be tied up in intellectual property rights so rich people can sue other people who reference it.

Re:Unfortunately

[Belial6]

You must have been to different ren-faires than I have. The ones I've been to have had the majority of people dressed as peasents. Perticularly the women who take particular pleasure in being dirty whorish peasants. It's fun for all.

Don't Believe It!

[The Wild Norseman]

Kolobok ("a cheerful talking cake who flees animals eager to eat him").

The cake is a liar.

No shit

[SquirrelDeth]

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.

Re:No shit

[oldhack]

Stalin was a Georgian, though.

Re:No shit

[Black Parrot]

And Napoleon was a Corsican.

...Is there a pattern here?

Re:No shit

[tetromino]

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.

Re:No shit

[shutdown -p now]

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?

Re:No shit

[tetromino]

And to expand on my point: the 1932-1933 Soviet famine wasn't genocide. It was a horrific man-made accidental disaster that affected the entire Soviet grain belt with no regard for ethnicity, and was caused by a combination of poorly thought-out and brutally implemented collectivization, habitual use of fake statistics, and a bureaucratic culture where underlings were afraid to tell their higher-ups that the higher-ups' "wise policies" were rapidly leading to disaster. Thirty years later, the same scenario was played out on an even grander scale, and with even more victims, during China's Great Leap Forward.

Re:No shit

[Lloyd_Bryant]

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?

While there may have been general starvation as a result of Stalin's failed policies, there were special policies put in place that applied *only* to areas where Ukrainians were dominant. Such as the law that if a collective farm failed to meet its quota, agents of the government would move in and seize 15 times that farm's quota, leaving that farm with no food at all.

Exact numbers are hard to come by, but the best estimates are that around 8 million people died in that famine, about 5 million of whom just happened to be ethnic Ukrainians. So others *were* dying. Just not as many.

Re:No shit

[shutdown -p now]

One other thing worth keeping in mind while visiting the links provided.

While a major famine with very high death toll did happen, and it is quite likely that it was, at least in part, orchestrated by communist authorities, there has been a great deal of falsified materials in various articles on the subject, especially photos. For example, there is an information stand in Kiev describing Holodomor, but the most prominent photo - the one with the actual pile of corpses - is actually of a village near Saratov, during the Russian famine of 1921. Another popular photo set is from the US Great Depression - both have been prominently features as "horrors of Holodomor" in various official Holodomor-related thematic expositions in Ukraine and abroad.

In other words, same business as usual - when you see someone paint you a picture with angels on one side being tormented by fiery demons on the other, make sure to check your sources. The gist of it may well be true, but the representation is often exaggerated, and there's plenty of distorted information from both sides. If you want solid information, you should read books written by professional historians on the matter (and, preferably, from a "neutral" country, not either side to the conflict), rather than websites set up those with an ax to grind.

Re:No shit

[tetromino]

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.

Re:No shit

[Hognoxious]

People who come in from other countries and end up ruling, tend to fuck things up.

Oh, come on. The country was already in a mess when Obama took office.

Re:No shit

[JAlexoi]

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...

Re:No shit

[moortak]

The is a much better reason than Alger Hiss that Stalin wasn't tried at Nuremburg. He was the sitting head of one of the countries holding the trials.

Re:Cry me a river.

[theArtificial]

Would you say that to a Jew? Remember according to the Russians genocide was not illegal till the 90's.

I'll bite. Jews weren't the only ones who were slaughtered nor were they the majority. I assume you're referring to WWII which was responsible for many more Russians deaths at the hand of the Nazis. Hitler was bad but Stalin was much worse. Your view point seems very American. In Poland the Holocaust has more Catholic undertones due to the purge of the clergy (among others).

The Ukrainian complaints are utterly ridiculous

[tetromino]

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.

Idiot

[Digital Vomit]

"Unfortunately, folkloric heritage is not regulated by international norms or by intellectual property rights," Marina Primenko, the creator of the Ukrainian map, said.

No, that's actually a very, very good thing.

Re:Just regular Russian behavior.

[shutdown -p now]

My wife is from Tbilisi, Georgia and she has told me this is nothing new. Russia has a long history of taking credit for everything in the caucus, from regional foods, to traditions, to even attempt the world to think actors and singers are of Russian origin.

Yes, we even take credit for that 30 million (or what's the purported count these days?) murdered by Stalin - who, coincidentally, was a Georgian. Damn Russians, always stealing them great achievements of poor and oppressed caucasian people. ~