From the history of collecting and studying folklore of the Bashkirs of the Russian Federation

Sharapova Ilsiuiar Ramzisovna ORCID: 0000-0001-6733-269X PhD in Philosophy Candidate of Philosophical Sciences, Researcher of the Order of the Badge of Honor of the Institute of History, Language and Literature of the Ufa Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences 450054, Russia, Republic of Bashkortostan, Ufa, Prospekt Oktyabrya str., 71, room 505 zs15@list.ru

Khusainova Gul'nur Ravilovna ORCID: 0000-0002-0290-1844 Doctor of Philology Head of the Department of Folklore, Order of the Badge of Honour Institute of History, Language and Literature – Subdivision of the Ufa Federal Research Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences 450054, Russia, Republic of Bashkortostan, Ufa, Prospekt Oktyabrya str., 71, room 526b bashfolk@yandex.ru

Bashkir folklore is an important component of the spiritual culture of the people. Despite the fact that it was not properly collected and studied in a timely manner, currently the works of Bashkir folklore are presented in four multi-volume collections of the scientific publication Bashkir Folk Art in Bashkir and Russian languages. Each time, the next set was replenished with new samples of folk art, however, a fairly large amount of material continues to be stored in the Scientific Archive of the Ufa Federal Research Center, which is gradually selected, published and introduced into scientific circulation.

There are a number of special articles on the history of collecting and studying Bashkir folklore, however, there is no separate integral study on the history of collecting and studying Bashkir folklore of the Russian Federation, although there are observations on the historiography of Bashkir folklore when studying materials by region ^{[1; 19; 20; 21]}.

The history of collecting Bashkir folklore outside the Republic of Bashkortostan, where Bashkirs live compactly, begins in the early 19th century. By the 1830s, a number of representatives of the democratic intelligentsia, who paid great attention to the folklore of the local population, concentrated in the Orenburg Region, which included the ancestral possessions of Bashkirs. Orenburg and Ufa were cultural centers of the region at that time. The exiles, the best representatives of the Russian advanced intelligentsia, who showed interest in folk art, including the works of Bashkir folklore, brought a great revival to cultural and social life. For example, in the early nineteenth century, the revolutionary poet P.M. Kudryashev (1797-1827), a native of Verkhneuralsk, lived and worked in Orenburg, who was one of the first in Russia to publish two Bashkir historical songs in Russian in the journal Vestnik Evropy, later - the work "Prejudices and Superstitions of Bashkirs", emphasizing at the same time the fact that various superstitions are strong among Bashkirs [10. p. 122]. What attracted P.M. Kudryashev in the song and music of Bashkirs was close to the famous Russian composer A.A. Alyabyev (1787-1851), who was also exiled in the early 1830s to the Orenburg province. In 1836, the texts of four Bashkir songs in free translation into Russian were published in the magazine “Library for Reading” (vol. 17. Ed. 1. Pp. 199-201), published in St. Petersburg, and their melodies were recorded and processed by A.A. Alyabyev, and it is with his name that the beginning of the musical notation of Bashkir musical folklore.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the interest of Russian scientists in collecting and studying Bashkir folklore increased significantly. In 1857, the revolutionary writer M.L. Mikhailov (1829-1865), in his letter to his pen colleague N.V. Shelgunov, reported that the Orenburg province was full of Bashkir legends; there was no such river, there was no such mountain about which legends and songs did not exist [2. P. 341]. Local historian V.S. Yumatov (?-1848) also confirmed his words with a quote that Bashkirs have their own special legend about almost every somewhat remarkable place [2. P. 250].

The above indicates that progressive Russian writers, composers, and historians who were in exile in the Orenburg region not only drew attention to the wealth of Bashkir folk art, but began to record, publish and explore them. Even under the conditions of the Tsarist colonial policy, they expressed their support by studying the life and culture of the Bashkir people.

I.P. Pokrovsky (1832-1878), an employee of the Orenburg Department of the Russian Geographical Society, was engaged in the study of the poetic heritage of the Bashkir people. In 1870, his "Collection of Bashkir and Tatar Songs" was published.

The historian-local historian R.G. Ignatiev (1818-1886) in the article "Tales, fairy tales and songs preserved in the manuscripts of the Tatar script and in oral retellings among the non-native Mohammedans of the Orenburg Region" for the first time identified the main genres of Bashkir folk songs and gave them a characteristic. The researcher paid special attention to historical songs about batyr Salavat Yulaev. He emphasized the importance of Salavat as a national hero and poet, noted the great love of the people for their hero, the popularity of the image of Salavat in folk art. The local historian M.V. Lossievsky (1850-1884) recorded the importance of epic songs in creating images of batyrs [13. P. 375].

In 1893-1896, a member of the Russian Geographical Society, ethnographer, folklorist, musicologist S.G. Rybakov (1867-1921) collected rich ethnographic and folklore material in the Orenburg Region, which formed the basis of his fundamental work "Music and Songs of Ural Muslims with an outline of their way of life" ^[16]. In it, he was one of the first to give a detailed description of the musical folklore of Bashkirs, Tatars and Teptyars in connection with the peculiarities of their history and everyday life [1. p. 114]. In addition, the author presented his classification of Bashkir musical folklore, gave musical notes of Bashkir songs and tunes. They are still valuable today.

An interesting monument of musical collecting in the 1880s- 1890s are Bashkir and Tatar songs recorded by the teacher of the Russian-national school from Orenburg, G.H. Yenikeev (1864-1931) with the help of a physicist, meteorologist A.I. Ovodov, who had a good musical education [1. pp. 56-57]. A passionate lover of Bashkir and Tatar folk music, a subtle performer of long-drawn songs, he and his patron traveled around the Volga region, the Urals, Kazan, Orenburg, Samara and Ufa provinces in search of singers, kuraists, folk storytellers and by 1917 had collected about 500 folk Bashkir and Tatar songs, of which 114 recordings were included in 1929 by composer K.Y. Rakhimov (1900-1978) in a handwritten collection, which is kept in the folklore room of the Ufa Institute of Arts. Unfortunately, some of the materials in this collection have been lost [1. p. 57].

At the beginning of the twentieth century, two professional musicians emerged from among the "Ural Muslims" - Mansur Sultanov (1875-1919) and Sultan Gabyashi (1891-1942), who were actively engaged in collecting Bashkir and Tatar musical folklore. In 1916, in Saratov, the first of them published a part of the songs he recorded called "Bashkir and Tatar motifs. Recorded by the teacher of the Saratov Conservatory M. Sultanov", presenting a typical repertoire of instrumental folk music of his time [1. P. 144].

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Russian scientists carried out a lot of work on collecting and publishing the fabulous heritage of the Bashkir people. So, in 1877-1909, a major linguist, folklorist A.G. Bessonov (1848-1917) recorded hundreds of fairy tales and legends in Bashkir villages (in 1941, his materials were published in Russian by Professor N.K. Dmitriev (1898-1954) under the title "Bashkir Folk Tales"); Bashkir was engaged in collecting folk tales and wedding rites The Russian scientist D. K. Zelenin (1878-1954), who published a study on the customs of the Bashkirs of the Yekaterinburg district ^[6], later – in 1914 – he presented the texts of 12 Bashkir fairy tales in the section "Tales told by Bashkirs" of the book "Great Russian Tales of the Perm province" ^[7]; M. was also engaged in collecting and publishing Bashkir folk tales.P. Los (he published 8 Bashkir folk tales in Russian) ^[12].

At the beginning of the XX century, the collection and study of Bashkir folklore acquired a relatively noticeable scale and in Soviet times became a state matter from the case of individual amateur enthusiasts, put on a solid scientific basis [1. P. 183]. Folklore studies was one of the main directions in the activities of the Society for the Study of Everyday Life, Culture and History of Bashkiria at the NK Enlightenment (Akademtsentr), established in 1922. The head of the art section I. Saltykov was one of the first organizers and leaders of folklore expeditions in the Chelyabinsk, Sverdlovsk regions of the Russian Federation (1926-1931), the materials of which were included in the unfinished work "History and an analysis of Bashkir folk songs."

In July — August 1929, on the instructions of the Department of Language and Literature of the Bashkiria Scientific Research Society, a folklore and dialectological expedition led by Z. Shakirova to Argayash canton. Together with their student B. Almetov, they collected a huge amount of material in five volumes of 750 handwritten pages.

At the beginning of the XX century, the natives of the Chelyabinsk region, Fatkhelkadir Suleymanov, Salam Galimov recorded individual folklore works, in particular, in 1938, the latter recorded the epic "Kuzyykurpyas and Mayankhylu" from his mother, a new version of the famous Bashkir legend published by T.Belyaev in 1812, as well as popular among a number of Turkic peoples.

A new stage in the development of Bashkir folklore began in 1951 and was associated with the opening of the Bashkir branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Ufa. It is characterized not only by the intensification of the collection and publication of oral poetry, but also by the beginning of a purposeful collection and research of folklore of the Bashkirs of the Russian Federation at the academic level. Legendary folklore expeditions of 1959-1963 under the leadership of A.N. Kireev to Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, Kurgan, Orenburg, Samara, Saratov regions and Perm Krai made a significant contribution to the treasury of Bashkir folklore. Folklorists have collected a lot of material in seven regions of the Russian Federation (Perm Territory, Chelyabinsk, Kurgan, Sverdlovsk, Samara and Saratov, Orenburg regions). Eleven collections contain primary authentic material on folklore, ethnography, and beliefs of the Bashkirs, reflecting their ethical and historical beliefs. According to the fair remark of the famous Bashkir folklorist, one of the participants of the above expeditions, S.A. Galin, they were the newest stage of scientific study of Bashkir folklore [5. P. 3]. Another participant in the expeditions, the epicologist M.M. Sagitov wrote that during these expeditions epic monuments and significant variants of famous ones unknown to Bashkir science were found epic tales of the Bashkirs and that the revealed material on the epic will make it possible to conduct more thorough scientific research ^{[17, p. 27]}. As a result of this, in 1961, A.N. Kireev's monograph “Epic Monuments of the Bashkir people” in the Bashkir language was published.

From 1959 to 1963, 146 fairy tales, 37 epic works, many songs, legends, legends and samples of other genres of Bashkir folklore were recorded in these regions, which amounted to eleven voluminous volumes of almost four thousand typewritten sheets. Preliminary observations on the materials of each expedition are given in the introductory article of the head of the expedition to each volume, two popular science books were published: travel notes ^[9] by A.N. Kireev and information, memories, reflections, samples of folklore works by F.A. Nadrshina [14. pp. 4-171] in all regions where the folklore expedition worked from 1959 to 1962. The most striking examples of folk art were analyzed in the mentioned books, there are stories of recording one or another sample of folklore, information about individual informants, the spiritual life of the people of individual villages and much more.

In his monograph devoted to the study of the Bashkir heroic epic, A.N. Kireev emphasizes that the materials of expeditions outside the Republic of Bashkortostan gave a lot of new information about the Bashkir folk epic, that communication with living bearers of epic traditions, familiarization with the epic repertoire in their living poetic and musical embodiment immeasurably expanded the idea of the nature and forms of existence of epic genres and allowed us to make a number of significant additions and clarifications to the scientific interpretation of the Bashkir epic. Such a high assessment was given to the materials of the expeditions, in particular to epic monuments, by one of the first researchers of the Bashkir epic, the head of the expeditions of the second half of the twentieth century to the regions of the Russian Federation where Bashkirs compactly live, A.N. Kireev.

Folklore of the Chelyabinsk Bashkirs in the second half of the twentieth century was collected and studied by researchers originally from the Argayashsky district of the Chelyabinsk region, in particular, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Belarus D.J.Valeev. The songs recorded by him were published first in the Interuniversity scientific collection "Folklore of the Peoples of the RSFSR" ^[3], then in the book "The Spiritual Heritage of the Argayash Bashkirs" ^[4]; this is the folklorist N.M. Sirazhitdinova, collector and researcher of folklore of the Chelyabinsk Bashkirs ^[18], who defended her PhD thesis on songs of the Chelyabinsk Bashkirs (2009), ethnomusicologist L.K. Salmanova, who actively collected samples of musical folklore in 1976 — 1990 and devoted a number of scientific studies to this topic, philologist K.D. Murtazin ^[15].

Collecting folklore of the Bashkirs of the Russian Federation is one of the significant directions of the expeditionary activity of the Order of the Badge of Honor Institute of History, Language and Literature of the Ufa Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1997, a comprehensive expedition of the IIAL UNC RAS consisting of A.M. Suleymanov (head of the expedition), E.F. Ishberdin, M.G. Mullagulov, M.V. Murzabulatov, R.M. Yusupov, Z.I. Minibayeva took place in the Kurgan region. The results of this expedition are reflected in the collection of articles ^[11].  

At the beginning of the 21st century, folklore expeditions to the Bashkirs outside the Republic of Bashkortostan resumed. Since 2004, repeating the route folklorists, under the leadership of A. N. Kireeva in the years 1959-1962, the staff of the Institute G. R. Khusainova (coord.), G. V. Yuldybaev, F. F. Gaisin, A. M. Hakimjanov carried out field research in Sverdlovsk (2004, 2005), Orenburg (2011, 2012); Saratov and Samara (2005, 2022, 2023); Kurgan (2010, 2016, 2018); Chelyabinsk (2009) regions and Perm Krai (2013, 2019) During the expeditions, folklore material was collected reflecting the current state of the spiritual heritage of the people. Most of the materials of these expeditions have been processed and published in the form of collections in the Bashkir language.

At the same time, the folklore of the Chelyabinsk Bashkirs, under the guidance of their teacher, folklorist N.M. Sirazhitdinova, was collected by students of the Uchalinsky Faculty of the Bashkir State University (currently Ufa University of Science and Technology). The famous folklorist A.M. Suleymanova supervised the folklore practice of students of BSPU named after Miftakhitdin Akmulla, a teacher of G.N.Kaskinova — Birsky branch of BASHGU. Their materials were published in collections, accompanied by an introductory article and comments.

All of the above indicates that Bashkir folklore outside the Republic of Bashkortostan was periodically collected by both amateurs and professional researchers during numerous expeditions. Observations show that special attention was paid to the folklore of the Chelyabinsk, Kurgan, Orenburg Bashkirs, from whom, especially during the expeditions of the second half of the twentieth century, the richest material was collected and introduced into scientific circulation.

Research on Bashkir folklore in the regions of their compact residence consists of scientific articles published in numerous publications over the years. In our opinion, the folklore of the Chelyabinsk Bashkirs has been studied the most, largely thanks to their fellow scientists. A comprehensive study of the folklore of other regions is “waiting” for its researcher and a deeper systematic understanding of the accumulated material.

Of course, grant support for the Bashkir researchers' project “Folklore of the Bashkirs of the Russian Federation in the records of the mid-XX and early XXI centuries: a comparative study”, folklore expeditions conducted within its framework to the Samara (2022), Saratov, Orenburg (2023) regions, research, will make a significant contribution to the creation of a more holistic folklore picture of the Bashkir world in the regions their compact residence in the Russian Federation.