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Abstract:

The article is devoted to mythological stories about the supernatural, recorded from the descendants of Stolypin’s settlers in Eastern Siberia. The peasants from the European part of the Russian Empire possessed both prose and musical folklore traditions in full volume. Their children, who were born in the new Siberian territory, began to reinterpret their parents’ narratives in their own folklore practices, leading to the creation of new plots and sometimes even new genre forms. The multi-stage process of forming a new, migratory tradition continued in the creativity of grandchildren, our contemporary informants. The dynamics of changing the “mother” tradition were determined by such factors as the place of the migrants’ exodus, the presence of old fellow villagers in the new settlement, and the proximity of a non-ethnic population. Mythological stories proved to be the most productive genre, making up a significant part of the corpus of family narratives of the contemporary descendants of the Stolypin migrants.