Russia still has an odd mixture of religion. Image Info.
In these Russian Folk Tales, there is still lots of magic and talking animals and transformations of people into geographical elements, but there all of these things are done because of or with permission of God. It almost feels like the stories were all taken and remade to be able to fit into a corrected version that is actually suitable for children.
A lot of the stories read like parables or a bad TV show that throws in a corny message somewhere in the end. In particular, "The Treasure," is a story about a poor man who finds a treasure and a horrible reverend who tries to steal the money from the man. The reverend dresses in goat skin posing as the devil and scares the old man into giving up the money. When he returns home and attempts to take off the goat skin costume, it has become his flesh. He is not a goat but some sort of horrible creature, and all this doing was accredited to God punishing him for his evil ways.
Another story, "The Three Copecks," features an orphan who is continually rewarded by trusting that God will lead him happiness if he is done what he is told. In the end, he ends up with a lovely life and a very comfortable living. This one, along with many others, does not overtly mention God, but it always throws in some "thank you, Lord" phrases and "praise be to God!" shouts and such. It is just interesting to see the difference in the origins of the people telling the stories. All the european folk tales talk about witches and evil, but the good magic all comes from pagan origins like the spirits of the forest or fairies, never religion. Even though the stories are identical to other folk tales, the small changes point out the differences in the people groups at the time of the story telling. Clearly, Russia has had many people groups and religions, but these stories seem to have come from only one of those groups.
Read the stories.
I actually read this unit too and I completely agree with what you are saying! I didn't catch it when I read through the unit but now that you mention it, I can definitely see it. I mostly picked up on and was curious about the obscene amount of corpses that were in the stories. I swear there was a walking corpse in every single story and I was really curious as to why that was.
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