Liberation in the Epistles and Folk Hymns of Vasilii Stepanov

• In Event: Folklore and Tradition: Small Encounters, Broader Meanings

Abstract

In 1745, the legendary bandit and police informant Van’ka Kain (Ivan Osipov) denounced a secret society to his handlers in the Investigative Chancellery [Sysknoi prikaz] in Moscow. In the inquisition that followed, the Russian government arrested hundreds of defendants across the empire, sentencing dozens to death. In their raids, the police confiscated two letters and a manuscript containing 28 folk hymns from Vasilii Stepanov, one of those condemned to death for blasphemy. Published only in 1915, the letters and hymns draw from folkloric imagery to depict a heavenly homeland, free from sin and persecution. Some of the poems show striking similarities with the roughly contemporaneous collection of Kirsha Danilov. Building on the work of Aleksandr A. Panchenko and Kseniia Sergazina, this paper analyzes the themes of salvation and liberation in Stepanov’s manuscripts.

Author

• J. Eugene Clay, Arizona State U