TD64_Kuzmenko

ABSTRACT. The article presents the genesis and dynamics of the ethnostereotype of Russians in Ukrainian folklore from the 20^th and early 21^stcenturies. The object of the interdisciplinary research is texts from printed sources, archival collections, and texts recorded during the author’s latest fieldwork between 2013 and 2018. The subject of the article is the variability of the ethnostereotype and its features. The goal is the semantic-structural analysis of three main images (moskal, ‘executioner [kat]’, rashyst), the main meaning of which is ‘invader of Ukrainian land’. Based on materials of various genres and the contexts of their functioning, the author proves that the image of the moskal was the most common in the folklore of the First World War. It preserves the archaic semantics of ‘devil’ and ‘alien’ based on folklore models from the 19^th century. The image is ambivalent, mainly with negative connotations (uneducated, cunning, treacherous, thieving, rapacious, aggressive, cruel). The emphasis is placed on role changes in the semantics of the image of the enemy, the transition from ‘animal’ to human’. The change was fixed by the opposition in the formula ‘first’ (not) second moskal. The author examines the image of the ‘executioner’ based on the motifs of violence, cruelty and revenge highlighted in the insurgent and eviction folklore which formed during the Second World War. It is emphasised that in the folklore formula ‘Moscow executioner’, one should understand the superiority of the national over the social. The conclusions state that the semantics of the new images of Russians (rashyst, ork, rusnia) and their meaning are determined by the modern context of the Russian-Ukrainian war and the previously formed stereotypical meanings of moskal. Constant metaphorical epithets (‘scary’, ‘dark’ as uneducated, ‘wild’, ‘vile’, ‘lying’, ‘dirty’, ‘evil’, ‘fierce’, ‘Red’) verbalise these meanings.

KEY WORDS: folklore of the First World War, folklore of the Second World War and postwar period, Russian-Ukrainian war, Russians, stereotype, image, context.

Rusai XX a. – XXI a. pradžios ukrainiečių folklore: įvaizdžių ir kontekstų dinamika

SANTRAUKA. Straipsnyje pristatoma etninio rusų stereotipo XX a. – XXI a. pradžios ukrainiečių folklore kilmė ir raida. Tarpdisciplininio tyrimo objektas – tekstai iš spausdintų šaltinių, archyvinių rinkinių ir autorės tarp 2013 ir 2018 m. lauko tyrimų metu užrašyti kūriniai. Straipsnyje siekiama atskleisti etninio stereotipo varijavimą ir bruožus. Struktūrinė semantinė analizė telkiama į tris svarbiausius įvaizdžius (maskolis, budelis (kat), rašistas) – visi jie iš esmės reiškia ‘Ukrainos okupantasʼ. Remdamasi skirtingų žanrų kūriniais ir jų funkcionavimo kontekstais, autorė parodo, kad maskolio įvaizdis produktyviausias buvo Pirmojo pasaulinio karo laikų folklore. Jame išsaugota archajiškų „velnio“ ir „svetimojo“ semantinių bruožų, ateinančių dar iš XIX a. folkloro. Šis įvaizdis nevienareikšmis, bet vyrauja neigiamos konotacijos (neišprusęs, suktas, klastingas, vagis, prievartautojas, agresyvus, žiaurus). Ypač pabrėžiama vaidmenų kaita, siejama su priešo įvaizdžio semantika – perėjimas nuo „gyvulio“ prie „žmogaus“. Šis pokytis nusakomas priešpriešą atskleidžiančia formule: „pirmas – (ne) antras maskolis“. Budelio įvaizdį autorė tiria remdamasi prievartos ir žiaurumo motyvais, taip pat atpildo motyvu, ryškėjančiu rezistentų ir tremtinių folklore, sukurtame Antrojo pasaulinio karo metais. Svarbu pabrėžti, kad folklorinę formulę „Maskvos budelis“ reikia suprasti ne tiek socialiniu, kiek nacionaliniu požiūriu. Straipsnyje parodoma, kad naujųjų įvaizdžių (rašisto, orko, ruskio) semantiką ir reikšmę lemia ir dabartinio Rusijos karo prieš Ukrainą kontekstas, ir anksčiau susiklosčiusi stereotipinė maskolio įvaizdžio semantika. Šie įvaizdžiai nusakomi tolydžio pasikartojančiais metaforiniais epitetais (baisus, tamsus – t. y. neišprusęs, laukinis, niekšingas, melagis, purvinas, blogas, nuožmus, raudonas).

RAKTAŽODŽIAI: Pirmojo pasaulinio karo laikų folkloras, Antrojo pasaulinio karo ir pokario laikų folkloras, Rusijos karas prieš Ukrainą, rusai, stereotipas, įvaizdis, kontekstas.

INTRODUCTION

Modern Ukrainian folkloristics present folk creativity as an extensive palette of the living culture capable of reflecting every historical stage in the nation’s life. It is in line with European research trends, in particular with Lithuanian folkloristics (Būgienė 2021: 167). Ukrainian folklore is fully built into the political and historical process of the very dynamic and complex modern times. Research into its phenomena in the 20^th century¹ and modern contexts of functioning are significant to the social discourse. Folklore helps to understand Ukrainians and the foundations of their values. An important research aspect, on the basis of which it is possible to build the prospects of Ukraine’s integration into the European space, is a cognition of the Ukrainian spiritual heritage through stereotypes, which is a type of ‘everyday conceptualisation of reality’ (Bartmiński 2007: 108), connected with the context. Ethnic stereotypes function in the cultural context, the characteristics of which are highlighted by Oksana Mykytenko:

Ethnic stereotypes [...] are extremely stable categories that enter the consciousness of the nation and stay in the folklore memory for ever, becoming evidence of its challenging history (Микитенко 2019: 431).

Stereotypes are studied within the fields of anthropological research that focus on practices of social interaction or ‘cultural intimacy’ (Herzfeld 2016), which is important in the era of globalisation. Established forms of behaviour in international relations, features of ethno-stereotypes, have always been present in the interdisciplinary field of research (Berting, Villain-Gandossi 1995). Such studies are especially relevant in times of severe inter-ethnic contradictions and armed conflict, because the way out of wars is determined not only by the strongest prevailing, but also by the development of new dialogue criteria within the framework of the ‘discourse of equals’, as Jürgen Habermas sees it (Бистрицький et al. 2020: 65).

The exploration of neighbouring nations, ‘strangers’ and ‘others’, in the reception of folklore makes it possible to trace the mechanism of self-identification, to see better the nature of ethno-cultural frontiers between Slavs (Kępiński 1995; Белова 2005; Bartminski 2007; Лобач 2015). On this basis, a portrait of one’s own people emerges, including positive and negative aspects, as well as communication opportunities and the power of solidarity. The analysis of inter-ethnic relations and origin of nations based on the material of Ukrainian legends and tales (Булашев 1992; Качмар 2015), paremias (П’ятаченко 2006), jokes (Кирчів 2010; Грищенко 2015; Мельник 2017), and fairy tales (Демедюк 2020: 98–103), presents not only foreign ethnic images. Folklore in attitudes to different nations constructs, first and foremost, the image of Ukrainians who:

have always been and are open to communication, exchange of traditions, and creative cooperation. At the same time, they justly demand respect for themselves and their culture, they do not tolerate violence, arrogance, cunning or opportunism (Мельник 2017: 244).

The First World War and the Second World War, when the Ukrainian dimension of ‘history with divided memory’ manifested itself, enriched the folklore experience with new connotations of images of foreigners, in particular the Russian invaders. What semantic features of the ethno-stereotype of the Russian persist from the past, and what has disappeared or emerged in the presentation of the centuries-old character of the moskal during the new Russian-Ukrainian war? These are relevant questions that we will try to address in this paper.

‘BECAUSE MOSKALS ARE LIKE THOSE BEASTS, ALL WEAR BEARDS’: TRANSCODING THE MEANINGS OF THE BEAST AS (NON)HUMAN

The word forms katsap, moskal, moskalysko, moskali, Muscovites, Russians and bolshevist are a series of words traditionally used to describe Russians in Ukrainian folklore. The denomination moskal has become one of the most expressive ethical and aesthetic dominants in the folklore memory about the foreign and domestic enemy.

In historical works from the 15^th to the 19^th century, the lexeme moskal did not yet have an ethnically marked connotation and the sema of ‘enemy’, as it was a noun to signify the mixed army of the Tsar of Moscow. But it was the Russian army led by ‘Moscow generals’ that contributed to the destruction of one of the most famous formations of Medieval Europe, Zaporizhzhya Sich, the Cossack republic, which became a symbol of Ukrainian statehood. The folklorist Georgy Bulashev (1860 – ?) originated from this part of the country, and in his ‘Ukrainian People in their Legends, Religious Views and Beliefs’ (1909) he analysed the origin and particular features of the perception of some nations, in particular Russians:

Ukrainians, by custom, call velykorosy² moskals, lapotniks, and treat them with distrust, even with some apprehension, considering them greedy, brutal, insincere, cunning, lazy and vindictive. People avoid having any dealings with a moskal, let alone hiring him. A moskal [...] will invariably deceive, or one will have to fight with him because of his laziness and cunning, and then he will do something to one that one will regret for the rest of one’s life (Булашев 1992: 147).

A little earlier, Mykhailo Drahomanov, in his monograph ‘Political Songs of the Ukrainian People in the 18^th and 19^th Centuries’ (published in Geneva 1883; 1885), analysed works about the Pruth campaign of Peter the Great in 1711,³ in which the army is depicted through the image of a ‘cunning moskal’:

A hundred years later, other metonymic formulas, ‘Moscow corpse’, ‘Moscow bones’ (Драгоманов 1885: 192), were used in songs about the Russian-Prussian-French war (1806–1807). Thus the tsarist army was encoded through the image of the fallen, which included not only ‘Muscovites’ (ethnic Russians) and Kalmyks, but also Chuhuiv Cossacks for a certain period of time.

According to linguists, moskal is a multiple-meaning word, as it may be both an exonym of Russians (or a xeno-ethnonym), and an ethnonym of Ukrainians from the central, eastern and southern parts of Ukraine, which for centuries were under the rule of the Russian Empire. Instead, in folklore of various genres, the image of the Russian is contrasted with that of the Ukrainian within the one of us–stranger dichotomy (Лихограй 2012: 169). The connotation of ‘the stranger’ in Ukrainian folklore from the 19^thcentury is perceived through the sign of the negative, endowed with harmful magical powers, weird, unreasonable, immoral (П’ятаченко 2007: 236; Качмар 2015: 652). In Ukrainian folklore from the mid-20^th century, ‘strangers’ are those who own Ukraine, as it goes in the song chronicle about Carpathian Ukraine: ‘Oh, foreigners won’t any longer own us / Ukraine is our mother, and we are her children’ (Ой не будуть більш чужинці нами володіти / Україна – наша мати, а ми її діти) (МН: 71).

The development of the stereotype of the Russian is due to the long experience of Ukrainian settlers’ interaction with moskals the soldiers, and moskals the peasants, merchants and craftsmen (П’ятаченко 2006: 64). It is deepened through the traditional bias of the rural community towards military society. The modern ethno-stereotype is based on connotations of the folklore image of the moskal, which refers to the historic events of the 20^th and early 21^st centuries, which we shall analyse in more detail.

In the pieces that appeared during the First World War and spread in the western Ukrainian lands, the vision of the moskal as ‘a harmful stranger’ is reproduced (They came to Galicia and they are not welcome guests / Gunners and infantry – Moscow Cossacks) (Приїхали в Галичину та й не милі гості / Каноніри і піхота – козаки московські) (ІМ: 8), which is inherent in legends (Качмар 2015: 652). On the other hand, military folklore emphasises that the moskal is an enemy who has attacked the native land (occupied [...] the land, has gone loose) (край [...] зайняв, гойно розгулявси) (СХН: 189). Folksongs from the time compare Russians with an ‘unclean’ animal (beast, pig, dog):

For moskals are like those beasts, all wearing beards, so that they would not have power or authority over us (СП: 316);

‘Hurrah, riflemen, hurrah at once!’ – those are our alarms (СП: 319).⁶

The folkloric method of comparison with an animal reaches the depths of the archaic cult of the beast-warrior which circulated in military traditions in Ukraine (Бондаренко 2015: 5). It was established by the Ukrainian epic tradition, in particular the etiological legends depicting the evolution of public ideas about images of military society. But later, in the folklore from the time of the Ukrainian revolution of 1917–1921, we also discover a comparison with an animal (wolf, dog), which is associated with treacherous actions. An expressive description of manifestations of the destructive aggression of the Rusky (руського) identified with the concept of ‘the beast’ can be found in the narrative of a peasant from the village of Barakhty, now in the Kyiv oblast, which was recorded in 1922:

And who knows what kind of beasts they were? One would say a Chechen or a Tatar: they are beastly men, but that’s one of us, Rusky ... Jumps, you know, into the house like a wolf. You do this and that for him, you are good to him: he eats, drinks, steals whatever he finds, and you cannot say a word, or else he’ll beat you up like the worst dog, and turn the house upside down: he will break the pots and smash the windows. How many people have been wasted! [...] (ЛМ: 69).

The comparison of the invader with a dog became the most widely used metaphor in various folklore genres from the 20^th century⁷ where the space and violence of war are described. Notably, the comparison of a moskal with a dog or ‘wild hound’ is common in chronicles from the First World War where female characters are involved, for example:

In the first illustration from a riflemen’s song about Olena Stepaniv¹⁰ (1), it is the motif of a captured female officer in the First World War. In the second illustration from a song that was recorded in 1917, there is a motif of sexual harassment conveyed by means of the folkloric paraphrase of ‘losing one’s wreath’ (2).

The image of the deceitful moskal was anchored not only in the ballad tradition of stories about the pokrytka (a woman bearing a child out of wedlock) that was popular before the early 20^th century, but also in 19^th-century fiction which described the phenomenon of the socio-ethical conflict between Ukrainian village girls and recruits in the Imperial Russian army. This social problem, and the image of the pokrytka, was described in Taras Shevchenko’s poem ‘Kateryna’ (1839). The plot, where a Russian officer is the cause of the girl’s misfortune, contains the expression ‘Fall in love, the dark-browed, but not with moskals’. Based on the stories narrated by those liberated in September 2022 from the Russian occupation of the Ukrainian towns of Bucha and Izyum, this catchphrase of the prophet-poet inspired a song by the same name [6]. It is worth emphasising that the new military contexts turn out to be more violent and brutal [11]. They enhance the image of the Russian rapist, which has become established not only in Ukrainian folklore, but also in the Polish narrative tradition (Przybyła-Dumin 2013: 215).

The characteristic of ‘cruel’ inspired a comparison of Russians with wolves, which is one of the most common images in Ukrainian proverbs, sayings, fairy tales and songs. In addition to cruelty, the wolf also represents strength, dexterity and insatiability. The cumulative effect of these meanings is conveyed by the formula ‘Moscow wolves’ used in the riflemen’s song of literary origin ‘Whether it’s a storm or thunder’:¹¹

The portrait of Russian soldiers in prose non-fairy-tale folklore has mainly not allegorical but realistic and object forms of visualisation. In narratives about the First World War, it often gets caricaturistic features accentuating clothing and ammunition, and aspects of personal hygiene:

What kind of people were they? They were like those shmiraks.¹³ They were in tatters. That’s the army. An army like that. They only had fish to eat. Nothing more. Had a rifle with that long bayonet, and he did not even have a belt, he had it on a string. Such were those first soldiers. And then they had already got together in Germany, as then [...] the second ones came (К [2012], 102).¹⁴

Descriptive characterisations of the moskal as a ‘dirty’ stranger (‘with lice’, ‘with beards’, ‘in tatters’) may be reinforced by complex metaphorical phrases, such as ‘dirty feet’. Implementing the symbolism of an ‘unclean’ soul, such an image appears in the insurgent song ‘The Insurgent’s Grave Stands Sad by the Road’:

Typecasting the Russian as an ‘unclean stranger’ is in line with trends in global culture. At the beginning of the 21^st century, such a mythologised image is still part of the living folklore tradition (Белова 2005: 8). A comparison with songs from the second half of the 19^th century shows that the ‘unclean’ feature likens Russians with the Tatars or the French:

The depiction of Russians with beards is characteristic not only of Ukrainian and Belarusian folklore. The Koreans use mauchje as a nickname for Russians, which means ‘a bearded man’, and is associated with a tough character and a strong physique [4]. The appearance that caused fear prompted the mythologising of the image of the moskal as someone often endowed with evil, demonic powers. Older storytellers convey these semantics in modern folk narratives with the epithet ‘scary’:

My grandmother spoke about the Austrian war. As long as there were Austrians, they were very kind people. Very kind people. And when the moskals came, when Austria was at war with Moscow, those moskals were scary people. Scary. You can say whatever you like, but that’s what my granny told me (Кузьменко 2018: 697).

The mythopoeic perception of the Russian as a representative of the world beyond is expressed most vividly in the comparison with the devil. A common association in the Belarusian tradition (Лобач 2015: 4) has a broad paradigm of the relationship between the two characters:

[...] in Ukrainian folklore, the devil and the moskal often interact (‘The devil brewed beer with the moskal, and refused malt’) [Варив чорт з москалем пиво, та й солоду відрікся], they are identified with each other (‘When the devil and the moskal steal something, say goodbye to it’) [Коли чорт та москаль щось вкрали – то поминай як звали], they complement each other (‘Daddy, Daddy, a devil is breaking into the house. It’s OK, son, as long as it’s not a moskal’) [Тату, тату, лізе чорт в хату. Дармо, синку, аби не москаль], and they help each other (Лихограй 2012: 170).

This trend was actively manifested in folklore until the mid-20^th century. Russian soldiers who captured the strategic city of Przemyśl are depicted in a short song as devils:

The comparison of moskals with devils actualises the semantics of an ‘unclean’ soul in relation to the image of a moskal. It also functions in a local traditional story about a moskal who died an unnatural death, by drowning:

A deep meadow, where a moskal and his horse drowned during the First World War (ВПС: 297).

This short story explains the origin of the ‘Moskaliv Lug’ locus in the village of Horodyshche¹⁸ in Volyn’.¹⁹ The historical event, which could have happened in reality, is connected with Ukrainian beliefs, in particular about the impure or unquiet dead. In Ukrainian demonology, drowned people usually are people with a sinful nature who lived an unworthy life.

Other common features of the moskal, fraud and thievery, are also connected not only with routine, but also with military facts. During the First World War, Don Cossacks stole and destroyed the property of Galician peasants.²⁰ In folklore, the themes of ‘a moskal takes a cow away’ and ‘a moskal sets a house on fire’ convey the higher degree of the crime of destroying the means of living and a sacred place, which, in a traditionally patriarchal world, refers to the parental home:

It is not by chance that Russian robbers are worse than Tatars in folklore: ‘Tatars looted Rus, and moskals are worse / Oh merciful Lord, will it be better?’ (Зрабували Русь татари, а москалі гірше / Ой Господи милосердний, чи буде то ліпше?, БЄ, 17).

The theme ‘an enemy takes the bread away’ is a way of describing the essence of any war of aggression. That is why the allomotif ‘moskal robs’ as a structural component is repeated in pieces about the introduction of collective farms in western Ukraine. It was the same ‘hybrid’ war against the single Ukrainian peasant that Stalin launched in Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s. After the Second World War, it continued in another part, as is conveyed in a song from the Rivne region:

In 1915, during the occupation of Galicia by the tsarist army and the first acquaintance with Russian-speaking people, a large proportion of the local population started to develop the stereotype of the Russian ‘osvoboditel’.²⁴ This word was reinforced by contexts of Imperial colonial propaganda and the replacement of the concept of ‘occupation’ with ‘liberation’. The ironic word acquired a universal meaning, having anchored the historical experience of prolonged action:

One of the values of humor is that it transcends time and place to reveal the universality of the human experience, but there are also connections between the humor that a society creates and cherishes and what is occurring at the moment to affect living conditions and the cultural beliefs and values of the society (Nilsen, Nilsen 2018: 127).

The schematism of the character description through language oppositions forms the basis for the construction of another formula, ‘the first moskals’. In historical narratives, this phrase marks the Russians:

But the first moskals were good moskals. Because they said, ‘If there are moskals, there will be bread on the table.’ So they said. They were good at first. They were moskals from the Kuban. They were rich! They fed sugar to horses (К [2014], 165).

Based on additional characteristics, according to which the ‘first moskals’ were ‘rich’, ‘with bread’, and even ‘good’, the folklore antithesis of ‘first moskals – second moskals’ became apparent. The dynamics of the ethnocultural stereotype, its positive and negative semantics, manifested itself in the negative formula ‘the first ones are not the second’:

And the first moskals were also rich. They used to bring such large bread. Wow. While the second moskals had lice already [laughs]. But we must bear in mind that they had large bread from Ukraine, not from Russia (К [2013], 81).

The cliché was formed based on the experience of the mental and behavioural traits of Russian military groups of various origins. It is obvious that the invasion by troops of the tsarist army in 1914, against the contrasting background of the Red Army of 1939–1940, was perceived by the bourgeois community of west Ukrainian territories with a certain idealisation. The mythological traits of Russians were characteristic of benevolent heroes who bring order to chaos: the life and living space degraded by war. In the minds of Ukrainian peasants, such actions are accompanied by motifs of ‘planting land’, ‘showing mercy’:²⁵

The first moskals, they were in Austrian times, you see, in Austria ... They were absolutely different moskals. Those were people, as they say ... The moskals were here for a long time, soldiers even planted vegetable gardens. Made gardens. They planted cucumbers and tomatoes here, in the garden. And they stayed here for a long time, so ... Well, those second moskals, God forbid! (К [2014], 71–72).

The stereotyping of Russians after the First World War was based on features reflected through a number of motifs: the moskal shows excessively aggressive intentions (‘And Russian soldiers occupied the whole of Lviv’ [А вояки росіянські весь Львів обостали] [СХН: 194]; ‘As the moskal attacks us / The defeated one gives everything away’ [Як москаль нас нападає / То розбитий все вертає] [СП: 342]); shows strength and military power (‘As the moskal advanced, as the moskal advanced / it was hard for everyone’ [Як москаль наступав, як москаль наступав / всім було тяженько] [СП: 359]); does harm (‘The Russians retreated and poisoned the wine in barrels’ [Руські відступали і затрули вино в бочках] [К (2009), 55]); and intimidates with the size of their army:

A specific feature of the Great War in Europe was a change in outlook that conditioned the transition from the stereotype of the beastly enemy to the human enemy. The recoding of meanings was clearly noticeable in the folklore of the mid-20^th century, where the human/non-human opposition was established. The human-defining criterion impacted the characteristics of other ethno-images as well. Semantic equivalence between ‘the second moskals’ and the Nazi Germans was established based on folklore about the Second World War, where they personify cruel invaders:

Those nimaky,²⁷ they were not humans. They had no heart for our people. They pushed us around as they wished. That Adoltsyo taught them so wildly that they treated our people like toys, like a cat plays with a mouse. It is hard to recall how those nimaky observed with satisfaction their beastly mockery of our people. And to tell you the truth, there was no worse scum than those Volksdeutchers (НО: 320).²⁸

The emotionally charged epithet ‘mean’ also connects Nazi Germans and communist moskals, which are components of the collective image of the enemy. The Ukrainian insurgents (from UIA²⁹) fight communists in the insurgent song:

Likewise, in the song ‘You have Desecrated your Native Land’, which comes from Soviet partisans and was recorded in 1944, the image of the German is associated with an arsonist, someone who brings grief and death:

The enemy prone to unworthy acts is subject to condemnation, but at the same time, they are cursed, since ‘mean’ is also used as a term of abuse (СУМ, 6: 450). The universalism and expressiveness of folklore words endowed with magically targeted power can be recognised in the polysemy.

A similar comparison of Germans and Russians was suggested by the Polish science-fiction writer Stanislaw Lem, who in 1977 wrote in a letter to the American translator Michael Candle:

The cruelty of the Germans who entered the occupied country during Hitler’s times is not comparable in terms of the breadth and depth of the experience with the Soviet one [...] The Russians were a spawn aware of their meanness and infamy in a speechless, deaf way capable of any disrespect: raping 80-year-old ladies, handing out death out of reluctance, casually, among other things, knocking down, destroying, and eliminating all signs of prosperity, order, civilised dependence [...] they took revenge on the whole world outside their prison with the meanest revenge possible [10].

It is important that the social sign of humanity retains its power and socially defining categorical nature in the narratives of Russia’s current war against Ukraine. The opposition of the ethical standard good vs. evil has been actualised in narratives about captivity. Recalling manifestations of the wild behaviour and uncontrolled aggression of the Russian military against prisoners of war of the armed forces of Ukraine, a marine Mykhailo Dianov speaks directly:

In captivity, the essence of each one is revealed [...] An individual may be a warrior. It is the warrior who is revealed in war: I am brave, powerful. While in captivity it is completely different: humanism is revealed. You are a human or you are a brute [11].

Modern military contexts of the inhumane treatment of defenceless civilians and prisoners of war, and numerous facts of physical abuse, actualise the general knowledge about Russians. They are encoded in matrices of centuries-old folklore texts. They contain the motif ‘a moskal tortures a captive’: ‘The moskals beat me there, they pushed me around / And didn’t let the poor soldier sit down’(Там москалі мене били, там сі збиткували / І бідному жомнярови ше сісти не дали) (СП: 320). The depiction of the inhuman qualities of the moskal is achieved by various techniques developed in folklore poetics. A key technique is not only comparison, but also derogatory vocabulary, emotional and psychological epithets (‘As the conceived fiendish sons, moskals, started shooting’ [Як зачали вражі сини, москалі стріляти] [СП: 193]), hyperbolisation, and opposition. For example, the bravado of the Russian character is revealed through the antithesis sing vs. cry in the kolomyika song from Boykivshchyna:³² ‘A moskal came to the Carpathians singing and cheering / And when he left the Carpathians, he was crying and wailing’ (Ішов москаль у Карпати, то співав та гойкав / А як ішов із Карпатів, то плакав і йойкав) (БЄ, 17). In folk narratives, the opposition of us vs. them is often used as well. For example, in memoirs by Sich Riflemen, the central conflict between the protagonist and his antagonist reveals the motif of ‘a rifleman deceives a moskal.’ Linguistic clichés in interjections in the narratives indicate the practical knowledge of Sich Riflemen:

But I already knew that moskals fight by deception, because I had already come across situations where one seemed to give in and come to me without a gun, while several approached from the sides. Therefore, I kept a close eye on them and as soon as I saw what they intended to ‘markyruvaty’,³³ retreated quickly, for otherwise they would have beaten me (Назарук 1916: 72).³⁴

The front-line experience of riflemen is complemented by the folklore image of the cunning and insidious moskal. For example, in fairy tales from the Dnipro region, a swindler moskal steals shirts from the backyard and lard from the house (Демедюк 2020: 100). The same situation, where he wants to steal a symbolic product of Ukrainian cuisine (lard), is depicted in choruses from the time of the First World War:

The standard feature of Russians as robbers is present in local folklore pieces, e. g., a song from Berezhanshchyna:

The connotation of ‘thieves’ is transferred to later folklore, where the image of a Bolshevik robbing a peasant farmer appears. It is important to emphasise that in this socionym the national prevails over the social, as Yevhen Pashchenko wrote:

In oral prose, it is emphasised even to a greater extent: the bearer of bolshevism is not ours but a stranger. He is usually a communist ‘moskal’ or just a Bolshevik. This character is a personification of the antichrist, as brilliantly illustrated in the ‘Prophecy about Lenin’ recorded in 1931 in the Luhansk region. There ‘an old woman in her eighties read in the Bible that such a fierce enemy of all people, animals and birds would come’ called Lenin (Пащенко 2008: 9).

The correlation of the concepts Russian = Bolshevik for a large part of the population of Ukraine is connected with the tragic experience of the introduction of the collective farm system in Ukraine. Researching the language and the terms of Soviet totalitarianism, the linguist Larisa Masenko speaks bluntly:

[...] in Ukraine, the fight of the Bolsheviks with the wealthy peasantry transcended the class struggle. It was a war with the entire Ukrainian nation. Confirmation can be found in the idiom of indictments of the time (Масенко 2017: 73).

The political context of the Bolshevik regime, and its criminal essence, are conveyed through the expression ‘the kind ones among us’, used ambiguously in anti-collective farm satirical kolomyikas:

We have two hundred grams of what’s left, like medicine in a pharmacy (ГДА СБУ, 2).³⁸

The artistic technique of mocking Russians (moskals, Bolsheviks) is used in a variety of folklore genres. Derogatory features attributed to strangers are typical of jokes about a shrewd trickster character. In military folklore, they consistently appear in riflemen’s jokes, in particular in a story about a disguised reconnaissance rifleman:³⁹

A disguised rifleman goes to inspect the Russian positions. He passes a sentry and does not even pay attention to him.

‘I’m going to check what’s sticking out there,’ the rifleman responds casually.

‘Fool!’ the indignant soldier muttered. ‘Only one? Look down there in the valley.’

Shortly afterwards, the Austrian artillery responded and smashed the battery of the moskals. The moskals could not help wondering how our artillery knew so much about their positions (К [2009], 148).

The protagonist hides under the mask of deliberate stupidity, which is the most effective means of achieving the laughter effect in order to expose the uselessness of the anti-hero. The word ‘fool’, crudely thrown out by the moskal in the eyes of the Sich Rifleman, is used as a pun, it becomes a self-name and contributes to the self-identification of the enemy. The catchphrase of the joke shows the integration of meanings in the stupid vs. smart opposition. The semiotics of the word ‘fool’ in relation to the moskal can be shown not only based specifically on Ukrainian folklore. For example, in Polish culture, ‘stupidity’ is one of the stereotypical features of a Russian (Bartminski 2007: 281).

Metaphorical and occasional epithets become formulaic when describing Russians, in particular ‘obscure’ meaning ‘ignorant’ is an immanent constant. Historians have repeatedly written about the low level of literacy in the population of the Russian Empire, especially among the peasantry. According to official data, in the early 20^th century only 21% of those under the Russian emperor had reached primary education level, and they lived mostly in the cities. Such poor literacy did not contribute to their obtaining rational information about the outside world (Поршнева 2011: 317). In the memory of Galician burghers and peasants, in local folklore, this fact was reflected in stories where ‘Russians’ die en masse from the electric current connected to wire fences:

[Father] told me how those Austrians stayed near Przemyśl. They stretched the wires and let the current there. And the Russians did not know what a current was. They were still so [pause] obscure they were.

And they would go against that [current]. A grave of corpses fell there. And [the Russians] said: ‘We will step over corpses, but we will take Przemyśl, no matter what’ (К [2013], 82).

The semantic field of the image of the moskal keeps expanding thanks to regional works. An example is the ballad ‘Oh, the Hazel Grove is Rustling and Buzzing’, which spread from the Carpathian region to the Podniprovia region. One version, which was recorded in 1988 in the Kyiv region, demonstrates the method of embedding the image of a man-eating moskal in the matrix of a recruit song:

We believe that the genesis of the alogism can be traced back to the development of the beastly enemy image, and as a continuation of the traditional motif of the ‘hungry’ one drinking human blood. The archaic semantics of the epic motif ‘to drink blood’ can be seen in lyric and epic compositions from the First World War (‘There moskals drank blood instead of pure water’ [Там москалі замість щири води крови ся напили] [СП: 317]). The rudimentary motif appears in folk narratives from the Second World War in the images of ‘bloodthirsty fascist’, ‘bloodthirsty executioner’, ‘bloodthirsty beast’, which were often conditioned by the rhetoric of Soviet propaganda and the contexts of the development of ideological stereotypes of employees of the Soviet special services (Голик 2012: 195).

Mythologising the image of the moskal as a man-eater is based on fantastic beliefs that retain their folklore-creating power in modern folk narratives about the First World War (as ‘the Austrian War’):

In the year fourteen [1914], moskals came here and scared people. People said [...] ‘Run away, because they kill people and eat them.’ Yes, the devil knows what. I know it for my family, because in the fourteenth I saved a photograph where my Dad was twelve, and my grandfather, my grandmother, and my Dad’s family. And they fled to Austria, to Barakas, or [pause] wherever. So they fled there. And then, I know, they somehow returned from there. Everyone was alive and well, it seems that [the moskals] didn’t eat or kill anyone (К [2014], 162).

The moskal = man-eater association formed in the context of the Great Famine (Holodomor) of 1932–1933, which was echoed in folklore. The Bolshevik and communist repressive system that persecuted Ukrainians, and took their property, livestock and housing, caused a severe famine, which led to shameful cases of cannibalism. The collective knowledge of the deep cause-and-effect links between the famine, for which people blamed both supernatural forces (‘The devil did this to destroy people’) and Bolshevism as its reflection, was transferred into Ukrainian folklore (Кирчів 2010: 197).

The image took root and was updated after the Second World War. For example, in the stylised ‘Thought about Kempten’,⁴¹ the anonymous author resorted to the amplification of ‘man-eating executioners-GPUshniks:’⁴²

Started coming to the church, besieging it like a black cloud (Маруняк 1985: 61).⁴³

The symbolic representation of the occupation relations of the two systems centered in Moscow, the autocratic Imperial and the communist Bolshevik one, became entrenched in the folklore consciousness of Ukrainians through the sign of moskovsky (adj. ‘Muscovite’). The actualisation of the old epithet is especially noticeable in examples of the interchange of ‘Moscow’ → ‘Russian’ tsar. The trope moskovsky was built into other constructions with the concepts of ‘patrol’, ‘faith’, ‘army’, ‘tsarina’ and ‘Cossacks’. The list of binomials was supplemented by variants from the period of the national liberation struggles of the 1940s and 1950s, namely: ‘Moscow front’, ‘Moscow mercenaries’, ‘Moscow mercenaries killed the insurgent / And his bones were scattered by grey wolves’ (Убили повстанця московські найманці / А кістки рознесли вовки сіроманці) (СП: 221). The attribute moskovsky acquired the weight of a formulaic word. In folklore, such a word is known to be charged with meaning more than any other.

‘THE MOSKAL’S TRICKS HAVE CAUSED TORMENT’: DESCRIPTIONS OF CRUELTY

The stereotypical attribute of a cruel Russian in Ukrainian folklore from the 20^th century is entrenched in the word ‘executioner’, which contains ‘extensive destructive poetics’ (Луньо 2015: 782). According to the explanatory dictionary of the Ukrainian language, an executioner (кат) is a person who ‘carries out death sentences, tyrannises and tortures’ (СУМ, 4: 116). The historical context of the concept stems from the Cossack period of the formation of the Ukrainian ethnic identity in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. According to the ethnologist Vasyl Balushok, back then ‘executioner’ in the Ukrainian lexicon was considered a swearword, aimed at humiliating and insulting the addressee (Балушок 2008: 259).

This connotation was attached to the image of a Russian soldier in the first third of the 20^th century as a result of the folklorisation of riflemen’s songs of literary origin (Кузьменко 2009: 115–117). Since then, the metaphorical epithet ‘fierce’ was actualised in the poetic language of folklore neologisms. It is typical of historical ballads that depict the periods of bloodshed of the Ukrainian national struggle for liberation from 1918 through to the 1920s. For example, in the song ‘Near Kyiv, near Kruty’, the formula ‘fierce enemy’ is used to convey the image of the Bolshevik army under the command of the Russian Muravyov, who ordered the brutal execution of the fighters of the Student Corps. The historic battle of January 1918 at Kruty railway station in the Chernihiv region⁴⁴ between young defenders of the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UPR) and supporters of Soviet Russia is one of the most mythologised episodes:

‘Fierce enemy’ is a generalised image of the Red Guard, which is a symbolic embodiment of Lenin’s/Stalin’s policy of terror. With the tragedy at Kruty, it became obvious that global norms of morality and law had been replaced by the cruel norm of ‘revolutionary expediency’ (Бойко 2008: 53). It is not by chance that during the revolutionary years, the Russian writer Maksim Gorky tried to explain the reasons for manifestations of cruelty among Russians:

I think that only the Russian people [...] are characterised by a feeling of particular cruelty, a cold-blooded one, which tests the limits of human tolerance of pain, as if exploring the tenacity and resilience for life. In Russian brutality, one senses a devilish fastidiousness, there is something subtle and exquisite in it. This property can hardly be explained by the words ‘psychosis’, ‘sadism’, words that, in fact, do not explain anything at all (Горький 1922: 17).

The image of the cruel enemy acquires the highest degree of the emotional and sensual register in pieces where the motif of the last judgment over him appears. The righteous judgment of God, as the popular insurgent song ‘Autumn Flowers have already Withered’ goes, will become possible at a significant moment, the time of an independent Ukraine:

Folklore researchers single out a number of other formulas and nomena that marked Russians of the Soviet period. The words ‘communist’, ‘commune’, ‘fierce enemy’, ‘Red executioner’ and ‘damned moskals’ are used in political satire, nationalist songs and insurgent folklore. The semantics of the ‘hostile’ link the expression ‘fierce executioner’ with the formula of the ‘evil moskal’ in insurgents’ chronicles: ‘And the evil moskal, evil moskal trembles in Bukovina’ (І тремтить на Буковині злий москаль, злий москаль) (Дем’ян 2003: 299).

In Ukrainian, the word ‘evil’ (злий) denotes a person full of anger, enmity, unkindness and cruelty (СУМ, 3: 592). This folklore epithet expresses the deep roots of the image of a serial killer, which was transformed as the two-part phrase ‘executioner moskals’. The stability of the image was supported not only by the influence of information about ‘maliciousness’ as a mental trait of Russians, but mainly as a response to actual events. Ukrainian folklore of the 20^th century includes ‘the enemy tortures the protagonist’ as a typical motif. A mandatory item of the folklore biography of the protagonist is his experience of extraordinary trials. Narratives about repressions by the Soviet authorities in the 1940s and the 1950s, with episodes of physical and psychological abuse, and inhuman torture, no longer required artistic hyperbolisation. In these texts, the metaphor of ‘living blood’ is frequently used; the image of blood flowing down walls, over the body:

As moskals came to kill Banderas,⁴⁷ that garrison was in my house, and I was kicked out of my house. I stayed with my children at my mother’s house for two weeks [...] And they would take people to my house and beat them there. And the walls were covered in blood, that’s why they didn’t let me into my house. And they took away everything that was in and around the house (УНК, 15: 415).⁴⁸

Episodes describing the suffering of the characters, motifs of the martyrdom of Ukrainian insurgents present in narratives, and songs about the anti-Soviet underground, highlight an important information component. It is the artistic generalisation of the Ukrainian experience of the Stalinist terror. Erich Fromm wrote about the particular intensity and sadism of the terror (Фромм 1994: 248–250). The cult of armed violence was formed based on it:

Bolsheviks spoke a language that was understood where people lived in hunger and poverty. It was the rhetoric of isolation and violence that coincided with peasant ideas about the world structure [...] the Bolshevik cult of violence arose from a tradition that was based on the belief in the power of arms (Баберовскі 2007: 27–28).

The substantive attribute became one of the leading features of the image of the Russian in the ‘Moscow executioner’ formula (variations being ‘the executioner from the Kremlin’, ‘executioners of the Red Moscow’), as in versions of the popular insurgent song ‘Oh I Know, I Know that Time’ (Ой тямлю, тямлю я той час):

Administrative departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of State Security of the USSR spread terror in western Ukraine through planned punitive actions (round-ups) which began as early as September 1939. Numerous acts of brutal interrogation of arrested insurgents or people suspected of involvement in the Bandera movement in the postwar period implemented constructions with temporary images in folklore. It is known that interrogations were often held at night. The image of night in the song ‘Oh Cry, Grieve, Old Mother’ (Ой плаче, тужи стара мати) conveys the archaic semantics of that negative and dangerous time:

Those Ukrainians who bravely resisted the Bolshevik system and set an example to others who were gripped by fear were subjected to torture. For example, the eviction song ‘On Thursday, on Mykola, Early’ describes the torture suffered by a boy whose family was deported to Siberia:

‘Oh where are you, cursed executioners, oh where are you taking my family?’

The poetic toolkit for depicting the hero’s martyrdom involves the amplification of somatic images and the naturalistic visualisation of torture methods. According to the observations of folklorists, in war songs of Slavs from the mid-20^th century the image of the enemy is ‘extremely violent’ (Wasiuta2014: 305).

In insurgents’ narratives that were recorded in the 1990s and early 2000s, images of physical pain are depicted in detail, developing into an image of the spiritual anguish of Ukrainian insurgents. The aesthetics of the ‘physiological’ are influenced by the personal feelings of the narrators, who are determined to describe as truthfully as possible the tragic moments of the protagonist’s life ‘on the edge’. The ‘other’ world is marked by the foreign Russian language of the chastisers, which the narrators convey word by word. The body seems to be under the powerful lens of a movie camera, which catches the figure of the protagonist:

The grenade in Oak’s⁵³ hand exploded, but God helped me stay alive again. I was stunned and covered with soil. I heard them shouting: ‘Vylezay!’ (Get out!). More and more of them were coming. Covered in blood, I said: ‘Finish me off!’ But I heard some of their officers, apparently some of their sergeant-majors, say: ‘Ne nada, ne nada, zhivyom.’ (Don’t, don’t, take him alive.) I saw Oak dead. The hand in which he had held the grenade was torn off at the wrist, blood was pouring from the stump (НО: 355).

Often, the narrator is the protagonist who suffers sophisticated methods of sadistic beatings by NKVD investigators, who, judging by their surnames, were mostly ethnic Russians:

My investigator was Horokhov. They had a log carved out of wood and used it to beat me like that. They put me on a stool, and the stool was chained, I had to keep my legs straight, and they hit me like this on the throat and on the heels, on the larynx and on the heels. Then they turned me towards the wall, and spread my legs so that I held on to the wall with my teeth. But can you stand like that? You fall. And they would bang my head against the wall until the wall gave way. They knocked out my teeth [...] They would beat me as they wished. They would beat and torture me so that I didn’t have an intact spot on me (НО: 379).

They took me to Sudova Vyshnya. There they locked me up in a sizo (pre-detention facility). There was Captain Zuev, oh, but he was hard on me. And a Shandura was there. There was no intact spot on me. He put out cigarettes on my face for two months. It is just impossible to convey all the abuse that I suffered. They jumped on me, stamped on me: ‘Who, where, who were you with?’ (ЯПБ: 138).

Based on an analysis of folklore texts from the 20^th century, it is possible to speak objectively about the emergence of informatively complex verb-based formulas ‘beat and tortured’, ‘jumped and stamped’. Not only can new clichés implement a generalised image of the executioner in autobiographical stories, but they can also demonstrate the flexibility of the epic tradition, its influence on the lyrical epic. Folkloric amplification is an artistic means to portray systemic terror, for example, in the song ‘We were Going to Battle through Dark Woods’: ‘They beat us, shot us, beat and tortured / Red moskal executioners (Нас били, стріляли, били-катували / Червоні кати-москалі) (ДГ: 16).

In other thematic layers of folk art from the 20^th century, the epic picture of the ‘hero trial’ is achieved by the symbolism of the uncountable expressed through traditional anaphoric structures: ‘Many Ukrainians died in agony’ (Не один українець у муках загинув) (МН: 84). The context of mass terror introduced into folklore language formulas with the ‘to excruciate’ predicate: ‘terrible torments’, ‘people were excruciated’. The motif ‘Stalin excruciates Ukrainians’ appears in political folklore. The image of the odious historical figure emerges in the insurgent carol ‘Good News Spreading all over the World’:

Note that the character of the leader as Herod in the carol is derived not so much from the Gospel story but rather from folklore typology of the image of the Russian Tsar Peter I. In some legends from the 19^th century, this historical enemy of Ukrainians is likened to Herod in the motif ‘Peter I orders the killing of Ukrainian babies’ (Іваннікова 2011: 95).

The folklore reception of the executioner’s image is represented by pictures of blood and death. The image of blood is traditionally associated with the symbolism of red, which in folklore is one of the key colour designations in the universal triad ‘white-black-red’. Neologisms from the ‘Red 20^th century’, as historians call it, preserve the semiotic function of the word, but its semantic content acquires a purely political sense. The epithet becomes an element of the metaphorical images of the ‘Red broom’, ‘Red executioner’, based on which the reverse motif developed, that of bloody retaliation against the enemy/executioner:

‘NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU FEED AN ORC, IT STILL LOOKS TOWARDS THE HAGUE.’ NEW FORMS OF THE ENEMY/INVADER IMAGE

Proverbs and sayings, jokes about moskals, ditties as spells ‘for victory’ or as curses ‘for the death’ of the occupiers, oral dream interpretation narratives with motifs of ‘prophetic’ dreams with the symbolism of ‘bolshevism’, ‘war’ (Kuzmenko 2022: 1), original songs with elements of folklorism, oral life stories about escaping from Russian soldiers [18]: these are the most productive genres of neologism from the first months of the Russian-Ukrainian war. All the texts are examples of folk creativity in situational contexts. They reflect the pace and the rhythm of the ongoing war, which has shown the criminal nature and impact of the russkiy mir concept. This political concept is folklorised in military images, in particular in the metaphor of the ‘Russian warship’⁵⁶ and in the collective image of the Russian soldier.

A vocabulary of folk terms to signify Russians has developed originating from the new military contexts [10]. Along with age-old xenoethnonyms, original names have appeared: russcist (derived from ‘fascist’), rusnya (based on derogatory word-formation models, also katsapnya), orc (after the folklorised character from the works of J. R. R. Tolkien⁵⁷), chmonya (to signify a captured Russian collaborator [7], from the slang word chmo, ‘an unpleasant person who provokes disgust’⁵⁸ (УЖ: 365), the word-form neologisms okupadlo, mudyatly (as a fusion of literary and slang words: ‘occupation’ + ‘scum’, ‘asshole’, crim. ‘stupid, worthless, harmful person’ + ‘woodpecker’, slang ‘fool, informer’ [УЖ:133]). Even the long-established nomina moskal and katsap [6, 7] among the military, first among the combatants of the ATO/UFO,⁵⁹ and now in the armed forces of Ukraine (AFU), get emotional and reactive meanings:

Katsap (‘Kak Tsap’, like a goat). A derogatory name for Russians who behave like goats (Піддубний: 60).

Moskal [...] is a moskal even in Africa.⁶⁰ It is a brute that eats, defecates, boozes, lies, bows to its masters, and despite all this considers itself belonging to a ‘great empire’ (Піддубний: 76).

The attitude towards Russians is expressed with the help of dysphemisms, vulgar and jargon vocabulary. Such texts are not only a form of verbal weapon against the enemy (Lysiuk 2016: 143), but also a form of marginalisation. The negative features (‘eats, defecates, boozes, lies and bows ...’) define the paradigm of senses for people lacking normative behaviour within the parameters of modern European hygiene and ethics, without human dignity.

The new names function in oral everyday speech and in written format. A feature of short anonymous and amateur compositions about the war (poems, jokes, sayings, memes) is the visual and digital form of their distribution via social media, i.e. the Internet, Facebook, Instagram, Email, Tik-Tok, etc. Ukrainian revolutionary folklore of the first decade of the 21^st century, the ‘Maidan folklore’ of 2004 and 2014, showed for the first time how important new forms of exchange and transmission have become:

Facebook was a key space for sharing emotions, personal stories, humour and expressive forms of protest, making allusions to known literary works, historical events and world public figures (Bezborodova 2018: 104).

The portrait of a Russian in the mass media space is popular, bright and versatile. Here, I shall focus on a few of the most notable phenomena of an obviously folkloric nature. It is already possible to highlight several thematic blocks of new paremias, among which proverbs about the Russian occupiers, depicted in an ironic and satirical manner, make up a separate group.

There are two types of war sayings according to their origin: original ones and adaptations of traditional samples. We observe the immanent openness of sayings and proverbs to semantic and stylistic changes. They make it possible not only to logically emphasise a new keyword, but also to reveal its semantic potential and double meanings. In proverbs, we can see the changes that Dalia Zaikauskienė observed based on Lithuanian material. She rightly states ‘the tendency to improvise on and re-phrase traditional sayings, to modify them and create so-called anti-proverbs’ (Zaikauskienė 2020: 136).

Popular modern sayings have become a basis for revision, e. g.: ‘Water does not flow under a lying stone’ → ‘Water does not flow under a lying rusnya’, ‘It is easier to beat the father together’ → ‘It is good to beat a moskal together’.⁶¹ In the first illustration, we see the deconstruction of the idiom with the keyword ‘lying’. The expression ‘lying rusnya’ visualises Russians as fallen soldiers. The motif of stagnant (dead) water conveys the symbolism of death. In the second illustration, the core meaning is conveyed by the verb ‘to beat’. The polysemy of the word, which is a component of a number of Ukrainian idioms, allows us to change the meaning of the sema ‘to deal blows to someone’, and to emphasise the meaning of ‘to defeat someone, to defeat the enemy in battle, at war’ (СУМ, 1: 168). Thus, the semantic potential of the saying emphasises the image of a strong Russian who can only be defeated by joint efforts.

Modifications are often based on the replacement of a keyword that expresses one or several semantic dominants of the ethnostereotype, e. g.: ‘No matter how much you feed the wolf, it keeps looking at the forest’ → ‘No matter how much you feed an orc, it still looks towards the Hague’.⁶² In the revision of the two-part proverb about the wolf and the landscape of its habitat (the forest), the first part actualises the semantics of the ‘hungry’ moskal, and the second one the subject’s action. In this way, the direction of movement is re-coded from ‘desirable’ for the wolf (‘to the forest’) to ‘undesirable’ for Russians, ‘to the International Criminal Court’, which the high-level criminal deserves.

Given that, according to Viktor Raskin, ‘most ethnic humors are functionally deprecatory, or disparaging’ (Raskin 1984: 180), in the new military folklore, it is also aimed at exposing negative features of ‘the alien’. A stereotypical trait of Russians, ‘spite’, intensifies the connotation of ‘destroyer’ in the revision: ‘Consent builds and disagreement destroys’ → ‘Consent builds and rusnya destroys’.⁶³

Russians who are passive to organised rebellion and resistance are subjected to ridicule. Tamara Hundorova describes this type of text as ‘figures of anti-colonial resistance [...] aimed at national liberation’ (Гундорова 2012: 59). The traditional idea of a moskal known from fairy tales is one who associates himself with the authorities, and strives ‘to be one whole in a mass’ (Лихограй 2012: 174). Paremias and jokes with the motif of warring Russia (a variant, ‘Moskovia’), through which the image of the total belligerence of Russians and of brave Ukrainians is recognised, became popular in the first weeks of the war:

‘This is why: Moskovia is at war with the whole world, and Ukraine is at war fighting for the whole world’ [2].

The caricature image of the Russian state as a bear that has been replicated for centuries⁶⁴ is used in the new saying: ‘If Russia is a bear, Ukraine is a hive of bees!’⁶⁵ This saying was probably inspired by a video that explained the difference between Russians and Ukrainians, who are ready to sacrifice their lives, like a bee that stings the enemy [17]. Another paremia of the same kind is ‘A country with a chicken on its coat of arms will never beat a country with a fork on its coat of arms’⁶⁶ [6 no. 4695]. This arose based on a more complex multi-level association: the Russian coat of arms includes an eagle, but the eagle is not an eagle, but a chicken; one can eat chicken with a fork, and a fork is a trident, and a trident is the Ukrainian coat of arms. The waspish irony is aimed at disparaging the Russian Empire and its key symbol.

Another saying, ‘Every Russian obtains his swamp’ (Кожен росіянин своє болото хватить) comes from the traditional version ‘Every frog praises its swamp’ (Кожна жаба своє болото хвалить) (ПM: 230). The replacement of the lexical component is based on the association of the invader with a frog and a hidden comparison of the Russian land with a swamp. The paronymy khvalyt = khvatyt (praises = obtains) (derived from the Russian verb khvatat, ‘to be punished for a wrongdoing’) not only expands the paradigm of meanings of the stereotype, but also reproduces the motif of spelling for ‘death’. The proverb ‘Call oneself a mushroom – get into borscht’ (Назвався грибом – лізь у борщ) (ПM: 126) → ‘Call oneself a moskal – get into a sack’ (Назвався москалем – лізь в мішок) alludes to new forms of the partisan struggle by Ukrainians that developed in the first months of the war [1]. Black plastic sacks have become a common euphemism for where occupiers’ bodies are dumped. In the functioning of new examples of short folklore genres, we observe ‘the fundamental polysituativity, polyfunctionality, and polysemanticity of proverbs in actual contexts’ (Mieder 2015: 69). For example, the joke phrase about Russians who entered the territory of the Chernobyl zone appeared in April 2022 on the eve of another anniversary of the disaster [18]:

New ranks have already been invented for orcs in the Chernobyl zone. For those who stayed there for a week ‘your lightness’, for those who stayed for two weeks ‘your brilliance’! [15 no. 6524].

The portrait of ‘radiated’ soldiers implicitly reminds us of the old image of ‘obscure moskals’. The conceptual pun and the contrast of ‘light’ and ‘dark’ is recognised through the Russian-language lexemes of siyatelstvo, svetlost (verbatim ‘lightness’, ‘brilliance’ in the sense of ‘excellency’, ‘highness’). The satirical grotesque verbalises the ethno-cultural concept of ‘light’. Mircea Eliade wrote about this universal experience of light that brings one closer to the spiritual world (Еліаде 2001: 549–550), while an absence of light is the path of spiritual emptiness.

Russian soldiers are humiliated in many other examples of ‘black humour’ where vulgar vocabulary is often used. According to researchers, the genesis of such pieces lies in the sublimation of accumulated social and national grudges, which transform ‘the desire of fair revenge to the “brothers” for the numerous betrayals and violence, it is a peculiar manifestation of protest and a means of self-preservation’ (Мельник 2017: 244).

The multiplicity of situations where new figurative expressions are used has caused proverbs to become parts of larger texts, in particular jokes and anecdotes. Ethnocultural differences are often expressed in opposition, e. g., our guys vs. orcs:

The proverb shows how front-line realities and public opinion are typified in the semantic structure of a joke. Soldiers of the armed forces of Ukraine are idealised and Russians are denigrated, for example, in new metaphors (‘loose’ = disoriented) and euphemisms (‘in bags’ = dead⁶⁷).

Jokes about Russians spread in social media reflecting the folklore-making process, which started actively in 2014 with Russia’s ‘hybrid’ war against Ukraine. Even then, in Donbas, personal contacts deepened the gap between the opposing parameters our guys–strangers, us–them. Political jokes created in Soviet times have been updated. They mostly play with the theme of the partisan national liberation struggle of the 1940s and 1950s ‘about banderivtsi’ and ‘black humour’ about ‘dead moskals’ [13]. As rightly noted by Salomėja Bandoriūtė:

The persistence of certain themes for over a century reveals a tendency to laugh at jokes that are based on stereotypical views about certain social groups. It can also be argued that joking is a certain form of bullying that arises when people see things from the perspective of the we—they opposition (Bandoriūtė 2020: 208).

An important ethnic determining factor is the language, which expresses the national specificity of each nation. The marker of linguistic affiliation, the difference between the Russian and Ukrainian languages, and the poor linguistic competence of the Russians, are factors that influenced the actualisation of the image of the uneducated moskal in wartime satirical humour:

We agree with the statement by Iryna Hryshchenko, who in 2015 recorded and researched examples of such jokes about moskals,⁶⁸ that:

[...] language has always maintained a dominant role in the process of defining the ethnic Us and the ethnic Other. Under the current conditions, linguistic ethno-marking gains even greater importance: these categories (us–strangers) are a reflection of the rejection of the Little Russian complex, the ethnic inferiority of the Ukrainian nation that has been imposed for a long time (Грищенко 2015: 8).

New war situations have actualised the folklore motifs of ‘non-understanding’ and ‘a foreign language’. Situational dialogues between soldiers of the armed forces of Ukraine and captured Russians have spread anecdotes in the form of short dialogues, rhetorical questions (‘A test to identify a russcist’ [20]), and anagrams in a non-military context. According to their origin, they are close to examples of children’s folklore, where a coded language in tongue twisters or fairy tales is a way of testing the character with riddles and defining ‘our guy’:

The flow of satirical and humorous pieces about Russians as occupiers has become not only an extension of the tradition of a special category of ethnic humour based on scenarios of national superiority, antagonism, enmity or ‘denigration’ (Raskin 1984: 180–230). It is rather a particular means of psychological support and unification of Ukrainians as a national community. Alleen and Don Nilsen look at the important compensatory function of modern humour:

Some people refer to these kinds of jokes as ‘survival humour’ because they relieve tensions about issues that are difficult to talk about. Other people, like Boskin, use them as evidence of what’s happening in a culture (Nilsen, Nilsen 2018: 129).

In the first month of the Russian invasion, various websites continued publishing military humour and satire, the thematic area of which was determined by the title ‘Jokes about our victory’ [2; 3]. A joke about the occupation experience was published on one of the web pages:

Four Russian tanks enter a village in the Sumy region. The locals sit around their houses and observe the life of the mammals with interest. The tanks stop, the crew get out, pour fuel from two of the tanks into the other two, and leave, while the two empty tanks are left in the middle of the village. The locals run out, stick Ukrainian flags on the tanks and rush back to their houses, sit and wait. The first two tanks come back (maybe, they’ve dug for some fuel), they see the two tanks with Ukrainian flags and start shooting at them. They smash the tanks, drive up, realise they were theirs, and get upset. The locals are quietly choking with laughter.

The two tanks that remained on the move go around the village (apparently, they get lost). And there is a five-ton bridge for passenger cars. One tank drives on, and the bridge collapses, the tank hits the river, and the entire crew sinks. The locals are roaring. One tank remains. It drives around, finds a ditch, and turns over in it. The crew climb out, push it and push it, leave the tank lying there, and walk away.

This is how, with only two Ukrainian flags, a village defeated four tanks of the Russian invaders without firing a single shot.⁷¹

In the text, we see an allusion to Ukrainian folk tales about the clever naimyt⁷² and the stupid landowner (priest), where the culminating episode is structured as ‘the protagonist’s act → the protagonist’s escape’. In the plot of the joke, in fact, the conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist is replayed in the version of ‘peasants outwitting a tank crew’. The antinomy of the strange/own space highlights the feature of dull-witted Russians who lose their way in the unfamiliar area of a Ukrainian village and are ‘strangers’.

Other key stereotypical features that have been actualised during the war are ‘poor’ and ‘dirty’ Russians. In verbal and visual folklore, the first semantics is coded with the image of a Russian peasant who traditionally wears bast shoes.⁷³ The image is repeated in the motif of ‘losing one’s bast shoes’ in the popular song ‘Our Father Bandera, Our Mother Ukraine’: ‘Moskals were running away losing their bast shoes / And our guys were shooting behind them’ (Москалі тікали, аж лапті губили / А наші за ними постріли били) (Харчишин 2022: 248–249). In the new texts, the same motif is a marker of Russianness, e. g., in the opening part of the satirical poem stylised as a spell with an allusion to ‘The Testament’ by Taras Shevchenko:

The second feature was actualised in the plots of oral narratives about Russian occupiers, who ‘defecate on pillows in every occupied house’. The kind of ‘animalistic’ behaviour model, ritualised revenge through the release of excrement in inappropriate places forms a grotesque image of the ‘shitty’ Russian. Contexts gave rise to anonymous texts, for example, cross-language satirical anagrams:

Decoding the markings on Russian scrap metal: V – vmer (dead), Z – zdoh (croaked), O – obisravsya (shat himself) [8 no. 4721].⁷⁵

CONCLUSIONS

Ukrainian folklore of the 20^th and early 21^st century is very helpful material for studying ethno-stereotypes. Folklore actualised the old set meanings for a Russian as a ‘stranger’ which had formed by the end of the 19^th century. New thematic layers of folklore from the 20^th century (riflemen’s folklore, folklore from the period of the Ukrainian revolution, insurgent, anti-collective farm, eviction folklore) significantly modernised the ethno-stereotype. However, the ancient nomen moskal remains the most widely used. This image has mostly negative connotations (ignorant, cunning, insidious, sinful, thieving, rapacious, cruel, destructive), which are attributes of a Russian soldier.

The language of folklore uses a vocabulary of tropes and a number of attributive formulas that verbalise the folkloric portrait of a Russian. He is ‘wild’ → ‘dirty’ → ‘obscure’ → ‘mean’ → ‘scary’ → ‘angry’ → ‘fierce’ → ‘red’. A number of comparisons with an ‘evil’ force (the Devil) or an animal (a dog, a wolf, a frog) extend the strategy of metaphorising and transmitting the traditional knowledge of Russians as ‘strangers’ and ‘invaders’. Key connotations of the image conveying fauna symbols are ‘dangerous’ and ‘disgusting’. It is important that the Ukrainian folklore model of the stereotype is not so much about appearance in the sense of a ‘disgusting enemy’, as Umberto Eco reflected when he wrote that ‘the enemy is supposed to be ugly, since the beautiful is identified with the good’ (Эко 2014: 9). Russians are perceived as ‘disgusting’ in a metaphorical sense, based on their essential behavioural characteristics.

In modern social vision, the stereotype of a Russian continues to change. It is formed as a combination of information from the new military and political contexts and based on connotations established in the historical and political folklore of the 20^th century. The image and its key variants (moskal, ‘executioner’, russcist) are associated with a subject who shows evil caused by his aggression, senseless rage, revenge, lying, disorientation and ignorance. A peculiar feature of the folkloric image of Russians and ‘Russianness’ is their connection with the concepts of ‘dirt’ and ‘physical impurities’, with the focus on the destruction of the material and spiritual values of ‘others’.

EPILOGUE

I had to complete this paper on the morning of 10 October 2022 in a basement when Russian missiles were targeting major cities in Ukraine: my native city of Lviv and the capital. In Kyiv a good friend of mine lives who I met during the first month of the war. For the next three months, the woman and her two daughters and her husband lived in my house as internally displaced persons. To the typical morning question for most Ukrainians after 24 February 2022: ‘How are you?’ she responded unexpectedly clearly. Let me illustrate our short Viber correspondence dialogue verbatim:

KS: We have to hang on. We have no right to be exhausted. Let’s hang on, because we are strong, and they [the Russians] are devils (11 October 2022).

It is obvious that the pragmatics of the response is determined by the context of the exchange, but the symbolism of what was said corresponds to the folklore memory standard. She revived the stereotypical image of the Russian devil. The form of the response is one of the facts manifesting ‘inner understanding’ between participants in traumatic situations. This is the concept that Modesta Liugaitė-Černiauskienė focuses on (Liugaitė-Černiauskienė 2021: 52). Exploring the liminal aspect of songs of Lithuanians displaced to Siberia,⁷⁶ the researcher not only emphasises the power of the positive impact of songs on deportees, but also proves the productivity of the anthropological perspective of research into all historical and social folklore.

In the third decade of the 21^st century, Ukrainians are once again involved in an active phase of folkloristic activity. New social, political and national contexts provide fresh material, in which traditionally established knowledge about ‘others’ and ‘strangers’ is updated. Despite the schematicity of the stereotype, the set of meanings regarding Russians remains the basis for the construction of the ethno-image of the moskal in new pieces, in particular in amateur poems:

Undoubtedly, the folk creativity of Ukrainians, awakened by the spirit of resistance to Russians showing aggressive intentions and actions, acquires a mass nature. The presentation of the folklore ethno-stereotype has been one effective way of verbalising the idea of national solidarity.

SOURCES

БЄ – Коломийки, пісні (без мелодій), вірші: побутові, ліричні, про Першу світову війну, які записав Є. Бабанич [1912–1917 рр.], Архівні наукові фонди Рукописів і фонозаписів Інституту мистецтвознавства фольклористики та етнології імені Максима Рильського Національної академії наук України (далі – АНФРФ ІМФЕ ім. Рильського), ф. 28–3, од. зб. 222, арк. 1–46.

БП – П. П. Батюк. Пісні, коломийки (з мелодіями). Про часи Вітчизняної війни, пісні німецької неволі; про радянське життя. Записи в Київській, Житомирській, Закарпатській обл. 1944–1949 рр.), АНФРФ ІМФЕ ім. Рильського, ф. 14–3, од. зб. 12 б, арк. 124–178.

В – Вірші, пісні, розповіді з часів Першої світової війни. Власна творчість та записи в Західних обл. України, [1914–1920 рр.], АНФРФ ІМФЕ ім. Рильського, ф. 28–3, од. зб. 237, арк. 1–133.

ВПС – Волинські та поліські села в народних переказах: збірник народних топонімічних переказів Західної Волині та Західного Полісся, уклала Наталія Шкляєва, Луцьк: Терен, 2014.

ГДА СБУ – Галузевий державний архів Служби Безпеки України, ф. 13, спр. 376, т. 87, арк. 1–2.

ГВ – Українські народні пісні в записах Володимира Гнатюка, упорядкування, вступна стаття та примітки Михайла Яценка, Київ: Музична Україна, 1971.

ГІ – «Ой де ясне сонце сходи...». Пісні (без мелодій), вірші на теми Першої світової війни. Станіславщина, записав І. Гонтарук [1914–1917 рр.], АНФРФ ІМФЕ ім. Рильського, ф. 28–3, од. зб. 242, арк. 1–45.

ДГ – Дем’ян Григорій 1992. «Двадцять п’ять повстанських пісень», in: Україна в минулому, 3, р. 10−42.

ІА – Хрестоматія з українського музичного фольклору (з поясненнями та коментарями), упорядкування Анатолія Іваницького, Вінниця: Нова книга, 2008.

ІМ – Ірчан Мирослав. Хто такі УСС? Та інші твори, упорядкування, підготовка текстів, вступна стаття та примітки Петра Арсенича. Івано-Франківськ: «Нова зоря», 1997.

ІП – Історичні пісні, упорядники Іван Березовський, Марія Родіна, Варвара Хоменко; за ред. М.Т. Рильського і К.Г. Гуслистого, Київ: Видавництво Академії наук УРСР, 1961.

К [2009] – Оксана Кузьменко. Народна проза про січових стрільців: науковий збірник [2009], Архів Інституту народознавства НАН України (далі – Архів ІН НАН України), ф. 1, оп. 2, од. зб. 613, арк. 1–201.

К [2012] – Оксана Кузьменко. Фольклорно-етнографічні записи з Опілля (Рогатинский район Івано-Франківської обл. [09-18. 07.2012]), Архів ІН НАН України, ф. 1, оп. 2, од. зб. 641, арк. 1–310.

К [2013] – Оксана Кузьменко. Фольклорно-етнографічні записи з Покуття (Коломийський, Тлумацький, Городенківський, Снятинський р-ни Івано-Франківської обл., липень 2013 р.), Архів ІН НАН України, ф. 1, оп. 2, од. зб. 731, арк. 1–320.

К [2014] – Оксана Кузьменко. Фольклорно-етнографічні записи з Покуття (Тлумацький, Тисменицький р-ни Івано-Франківської обл., липень 2014 р.), Архів ІН НАН України, ф. 1, оп. 2, д. зб. 742, арк. 1–293.

ЛМ – Микола Левченко 1926. «Оповідання селян за часів громадянської війни на Вкраїні», Етнографічний вісник 2, р. 68–75.

МН – «Минулося та незабулось...»: Карпатська Україна у піснях, легендах, переказах, бувальщинах та літературних творах, упорядкування, вступна стаття та примітки Івана Хланти. Ужгород: Карпати, 2009.

НО – Народні оповідання, упорядкування, вступна стаття, примітки та словник Степана Мишанича, Київ: Техніка, 2008.

НПБ – Народні пісні Березівщини: за матеріалами експедиції 2013 року, упорядкував Юрій Рибак, Рівне: ПП Дятлик М. С., 2016.

НПР – Народні пісні Рівненщини (фонографічний збірник), редактор, упорядник Надія Супрун-Яремко, Рівне: ПП Дятлик М. С., 2013.

НТШ – Етнографічна комісія наукового товариства Шевченка у Львові. Пісні (без мел.), вірші та ін. Матеріали з часу Першої світової війни, надіслані фронтовиками або записані від них. [1915–1917], АНФРФ ІМФЕ ім. Рильського, ф. 29–3, од. зб. 309, арк.1–39.

ПБ – Пісні Бережанщини, зібр. та упорядкувала Орися Голубець 2010 р., Архів ІН НАН України, ф. 1, оп. 2, од. зб. 627, арк. 1–300.

ПВ – Василь Піддубний. Словник солдатського сленгу своїми словами. Житомир: Видавець О.О. Євенок, 2019.

ПМ – Прислів’я і приказки. Природа, господарська діяльність людини, упорядник Михайло Пазяк, Київ: Наукова думка, 1989.

ПП – Повстанські пісні, упорядник Василь Подуфалий, вип. 3, Тернопіль: Лілея, 1995,.

СП – Стрілецькі пісні, упорядкування, запис, вступна стаття, коментарі та додатки Оксани Кузьменко, Львів: Інститут народознавства НАН України, 2005.

ССД – Срібні струни душі: вірші, переклади, пісні та фольклорні записи, упорядник Богдан Тихий, Бережани: Рідне місто, 2012.

СУМ – Словник української мови в 11-ти томах, Київ: Наукова думка, 1973–1985.

СХН – Співанки-хроніки. Новини, упорядкування Олексій Дей (тексти), Софія Грица (мелодії), Київ: Наукова думка, 1972.

УЖ – Леся Ставицька. Український жарґон: словник, Київ: Критика, 2005.

УНК – Українські народні казки 15: Казки Бойківщини, 2, запис, упорядкування і літературна редакція Михайла Зінчука, Тернопіль: Богдан, 2006.

ШП – З народної творчості Волині, упорядкував Пилип Шайда, St Paul, Minnesota: Товариство «Волинь» в Торонті, 1978.

ЯПБ – Яворівщина у повстанській боротьбі: розповіді учасників та очевидців 2: Яворів, записав й упоряд, Євген Луньо, Львів: Растр-7, 2015.

INTERNET SOURCES

[1] Ukrainian resistance during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_resistance_during_the_2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine).

[2] Анекдоти нашої перемоги, Укрінформ, 2022-03-03 (https://www.ukrinform.ua/rubric-ato/3419358-anekdoti-nasoi-peremogi.html).

[3] Анекдоти нашої перемоги. Укрінформ, 2022-03-05 (https://www.ukrinform.ua/rubric-ato/3421310-anekdoti-nasoi-peremogi3.html).

[4] «Бог створив цапа, а чорт – кацапа»: походження зневажливих прізвиськ ворога, MY-KIEV.com, 2022-05-28 (https://my-kiev.com/news/bog-stvoriv-tsapa-a-chort-katsapa-pohodzhennya-znevazhlivih-prizvisk-voroga-29430.html).

[5] Букет Євген 2022. «Бог створив цапа, а чорт – кацапа», Арміяinform, 2022-04-23 (https://armyinform.com.ua/2022/04/23/bog-sotvoryv-czapa-a-chort-kaczapa/).

[6] Збірник українських анекдотів, rozdil.lviv.ua/anekdot 2022-09-01 (https://rozdil.lviv.ua/anekdot/).

[7] Ковельчанин DOVI випустив пісню «Кохайтеся Чорнобриві», Restaut, 2022-10-02 (https://kowel.rayon.in.ua/news/545012-kovelchanin-dovi-vipustiv-pisnyu-kokhaytesya-chornobrivi#subscribe).

[8] Клочко Надія 2022. «Стояли тисячу років. Росіяни розбили кам’яних половецьких баб біля Ізюма», Главком, 2022-09-19 (https://glavcom.ua/country/culture/stojali-tisjachu-rokiv-rosijani-rozbili-kamjanikh-polovetskikh-bab-bilja-izjuma-876268.html).

[9] Кононенко Вероніка 2022. «Від Чмоні до бавовни. Будь у тренді: словничок термінів, які породила війна», Вікна, 2022-08-17 (https://vikna.tv/styl-zhyttya/bavovna-u-krymu-shho-cze-znachennya-sliv-porodzhenyh-vijnoyu/).

[10] Лем Станіслав 2016. «Кодло», переклад з польської Андрія Павлишина, Zbruč, 2016-07-26 (https://zbruc.eu/taxonomy/term/5792).

[11] «Морський піхотинець Михайло Діанов, позивний Мішаня: ‘Азовсталь’ – то був жах’», Mukaachevo.net, 2022-10-02 (http://www.mukachevo.net/ua/news/view/4267547).

[12] Найсмішніші анекдоти про москалів. Laguna, 2017-01-24 (https://laguna.ua/blog/naysm-shn-sh-anekdoti-pro-moskal-v.html).

[13] «Ой, ви, орки лаптєногі, повертайтеся, убогі, у свої трущоби!», YouTube, 2022-10-02 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkmMT6FHzzE).

[14] «Паляниця – не полуниця»: ЗСУ «спалили» ще одного диверсанта (відео), Час Дій, 2022-02-28
(https://chasdiy.org/news/palianytsia-ne-polunytsia-zsu-spalyly-shche-odnoho-dyversanta-video.html).

[15] Свіжі анекдоти українською 2022: анекдоти про москалів. Анекдоти UA (https://anekdot.kozaku.in.ua/pro_moskaliv/).

[16] Сидор Мирослава 2022. «А ми без світла і у холоді», Facebook, 2022-10-11 (https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=5399945793385858&set=a.1824269340953539).

[17] Суворов Виктор 2022. «Украинцы – это пчёлы», Канал N+, 2022-03-15 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjGeW0EnXCI).

[18] Чорна Світлана 2022. «Помста Рудого лісу», Голос України, 2022-04-26 (http://www.golos.com.ua/article/359183).

[19] Шиканова Анна 2022. «Тіла на дорогах, погрози розстрілу і тижні в підвалах: моторошні історії жителів Бучі, яким вдалося вижити», РБК-УКРАЇНА, 2022-03-24 (https://www.rbc.ua/ukr/styler/tela-dorogah-ugrozy-rasstrela-nedeli-podvalah-1648133254.html).

[20] «Як визначити рашиста, який видає себе за місцевого (mem)», ФРАГМЕНТИ, 2022-02-26 (https://texty.org.ua/fragments/105782/yak-vyznachyty-rashysta-yakyj-vydaye-sebe-za-miscevoho-mem/).

[21] «14-річна дівчина з Бучі, яку зґвалтували п’ятеро росіян, залишить дитину», Київ 24 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mk8jI049_Hs).

[22] “Since the beginning of the war, about 700 people have been killed in Chernihiv”, Ukrinform, 2022-04-08 (https://www.ukrinform.ua/rubric-regions/3452201-vid-pocatku-vijni-u-cernigovi-zaginuli-blizko-700-ludej.html).

[23] «Ось, як виглядає автор легендарної фрази про рускій ваєнний карабль: він уже вдома», Радіо незламних, 2022-03-29 (https://maximum.fm/novini_t2 (https://maximum.fm/os-yak-viglyadaye-avtor-legendarnoyi-frazi-pro-ruskij-vayennij-karabl-vin-uzhe-vdoma_n202992).

[24] “Orc”, Cambridge Dictionary (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/orc).

[25] Шеметова Божена. Facebook, 2022-03-08 (https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=%D0%91%D0%BE%D0%B6%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B0%20%D0%A8%D0%B5%D0%BC%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0).

[26] “Palianytsia”, Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palianytsia).

[27] Nikityk Marysia. Facebook, 2022-03-08 (https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=Marysia%20Nikitiuk).

[28] Олександрович Олександр. Facebook, 2022-06-14 (https://www.facebook.com/100015381244913/videos/962023377808551).

[29] Sydor Myroslava. Facebook, 2022-10-11 (https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=5399945793385858&set=a.1824269340953539).

[30] “Olena Stepaniv”, Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olena_Stepaniv).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bandoriūtė Salomėja 2020. “Homo ridens: The Joking Human in Lithuania from the Late Nineteenth to the Early Twenty-First Centuries”, in: The Storytelling Human: Lithuanian Folk Tradition Today, edited by Lina Būgienė, Boston: Academic Studies Press, p. 172–208.

Bartmiński Jerzy 2007. Stereotypy mieszkają w języku. Studia etnolingwistyczne, Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej.

Berting J., Villain-Gandossi С. 1995. „Rola i znaczenie stereotypów narodowych w stosunkach międzynarodowych: podejście interdyscyplinarne“, in: Narody i stereotypy, pod ed. Teresy Walas, Kraków: Międzynarodowe Centrum Kultury, p. 13–27.

Bezborodova Nataliya 2018. “Nebesna Sotnia: Formation of a New Narrative from Protest Lore to Institutionalized Commemorative Practice”, Ethnologies 40 (1), p. 101–138.

Būgienė Lina 2021. „Folkloras ir politika: prigimtinės sąsajos ir įsišaknijusios stigmos“, Tautosakos darbai 61, p. 156–172.

Herzfeld Michael 2016. Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics and the Real Life of States, Societies, and Institutions, 3rd edition, London-New York: Routledge (https://en.calameo.com/books/002123892296282877929).

Kępiński Andrzej 1995. „Geneza i funkcjonowanie negatywnego stereotypu Rosji i Rosjanina”, in: Narody i stereotypy, ed. Teresy Walas, Kraków: Mięnzynarodowe Centrum Kultury, р. 153–157.

Kuzmenko Oksana 2022. “Something about Ukrainian Folklore from a New Historical Era of the Struggle for Independence”, Korean Journal of Ukrainian Studies, 2022-04-02 (https://www.koreanjournalofukrainianstudies.com/post/something-about-ukrainian-folklore-from-a-new-historical-era-of-the-struggle-for-independence).

Liugaitė-Černiauskienė Modesta 2021. „Tremtinių, politinių kalinių dainavimas: liminalumo aspektas“, Tautosakos darbai 61, p. 47–70.

Lysiuk Natalia 2016. “A President’s Portrait in Domestic Protest: The Anatomy of Hate”, FOLKLORICA – Journal of the Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Folklore Association 19 (doi.org/10.17161/folklorica.v19i1.5722).

Mieder Wolfgang 2015. “Politics is not a Spectator Sport’: Proverbs in the Personal and Political Writings of Hillary Rodham Clinton”, Tautosakos darbai 50, p. 43–74.

Nilsen Don Lee Fred, Nilsen Alleen Pace 2018. The Language of Humor, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Przybyła-Dumin Аgnieszka 2013. Proza folklorystyczna u progu XXI wieku, Chorzów-Katowice: Wydawnictwo naukowe «Sląsk».

Raskin Viktor 1984. Semantic Mechanisms of Humor, Dordrecht-Boston-Lancaster: D. Reidel Publishing Company.

Wasiuta Sebastian 2014. „Zbiorowa narracja o wojnie zawarta w lubelskich pieśniach żołnierskich i wojennych“, in: Historia mówiona w świetle nauk humanistycznych i społecznych, ed. S. Niebrzegowska-Bartmińska, J. Szadura, M. Szumiło, J. Kłapcia, Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej, p. 299–316.

Zaikauskienė Dalia 2020. “The Contemporary Consumer and Creator of Proverbs, or Why do we Need Proverbs Today?”, in: The Storytelling Human: Lithuanian Folk Tradition Today, ed. Lina Būgienė, Boston: Academic Studies Press, p. 134–171.

Баберовскі Йорг 2007. Червоний терор. Історія сталінізму, переклад з німецької О. Маєвський, Київ: К.І.С.

Балушок Василь 2008. Українська етнічна спільнота: етногенез, історія, етнонімія, Біла Церква: Видавець О.В. Пшонківський.

Белова Ольга 2005. Этнокультурные стереотипы в славянской народной традиции, Москва: Индрик.

Бистрицький Євген, Зимовець Роман, Пролєєв Сергій 2020. Комунікація і культура в глобальному світі, Київ: Дух і літера.

Бойко Олена 2008. «Бій під Крутами: історія вивчення», Український історичний журнал 4 (479), p. 43–54.

Бондаренко А. О. 2015. Культ воїна-звіра у мілітарних традиціях на території України: автореферат дисертації на здобуття наукового ступеня кандидата історичних наук, Київ.

Булашев Григорій 1992. Український народ у своїх легендах, релігійних поглядах та віруваннях, Київ: Довіра.

Гаилите Гундега 2013. «Россия-медведь в латышской карикатуре (К вопросу о фольклоре как факторе международных отношений)», in: ed. Katarzyna Dembska, Michał Głuszkowski, Rosja w dialogu kultur. Literatura. Język. Folklor. Idee: abstracty wystąpień międzynarodowej konferencji naukowej 19–20 września, Toróń: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Universytetu w Torónie, p. 19.

Голик Роман 2012. «Радянська влада та український визвольний рух у Галичині в контексті ідеологічних стереотипів», Україна: культурна спадщина, національна відомість, державність 22, p. 191–208.

Горький Максим 1922. O русском крестьянствъ, Берлинъ: Издательство И. П. Ладыжникова (https://vtoraya-literatura.com/pdf/gorky_o_russkom_krestyanstve_1922_text.pdf).

Грищенко Ірина 2015. «Етномова як маркер чужого у народній прозі», Scientific World 15 (1[38]), p. 96–10 (http://www.sworld.education/index.php/ru/philosophy-and-philology-115/folklore-115/24565-115-005).

Гундорова Тамара 2012. Транзитна культура. Симптоми постколоніальної травми: есеї, Київ: Грані-Т.

Демедюк Марина 2020. Українська народна казка: національна специфіка тексту, Київ: Наукова думка.

Дем’ян Григорій 2003. Українські повстанські пісні 1940−2000-х років (історико-фольклористичне дослідження), Львів: Галицька видавнича спілка.

Драгоманов Михайло 1883. Політичні пісні українського народу XVIII–XIX ст. 1, Женева: Печатня «Громади».

Драгоманов Михайло 1885. Політичні пісні українського народу XVIII–XIX ст. 2, Женева: Печатня «Громади».

Еліаде Мірча 2001. Мефістофель і андрогін, переклад з німецької Галина Кьорян. Київ: Видавництво Соломії Павличко «Основи».

Іваннікова Людмила 2011. «Полтавська битва і Батуринська трагедія в історичних думах, піснях і легендах», Батуринська старовина 2 (6), р. 95–96.

Качмар Марія 2015. «Українські етіологічні легенди про народи: генезис, структура, семантика», Народознавчі зошти 3 (123), р. 647–654.

Кирчів Роман 2010. Двадцяте століття в українському фольклорі, Львів: Інститут народознавства НАН України.

Кузьменко Оксана 2009. Стрілецька пісенність: фольклоризм, фольклоризація, фольклорність, Львів: Інститут народознавства НАН України.

Кузьменко Оксана 2017. «Фольклорні ремінісценції воєнних поезій Б. Лепкого (з історії народного життя пісень ‘Що то за грім, осінній грім’, ‘Чи то буря, чи то грім’)», Studia Methodologica 44, р. 123–131.

Кузьменко Оксана 2018. Драматичне буття людини в українському фольклорі: концептуальні форми вираження (період Першої та Другої світових війн), Львів: Інститут народознавства НАН України.

Кузьменко Оксана 2020. «‘Гей, яблучко наливається, Україна молода – укріпляється’: народна творчість про Українську революцію 1917–21 рр.», Україна модерна 29, р. 122–163.

Лихограй Руслан 2012. «Образ «москаля» в українській народній прозі», Література. Фольклор. Проблеми поетики 42, р. 169–175.

Лобач Владимир 2015. Образ московита в белоруской традиционной культуре. FAKEOFF, 2015-06-03 (https://fakeoff.org/culture/obraz-moskovita-v-belaruskoy-traditsionnoy-kulture).

Луньо Євген 2015. «Сатирична візія московсько-комуністичних загарбників у повстанських колядках», Народознавчі зошити 4 (124), р. 777–785.

Масенко Лариса 2017. Мова радянського тоталітаризму, Київ: ТОВ Видавництво «Кліо».

Маруняк Володимир 1985. Українська еміграція в Німеччині і Австрії по другій світовій війні 1: Роки 1945–1951, Мюнхен: Академічне видавництво д-ра Петра Белея.

Мельник Наталя 2017. «Образ москаля в українському народному анекдоті ХХ ст.: соціальні та національні маркери», Наукові записки Кам’янець-Подільського національного університету імені Івана Огієнка: філологічні науки 44, p. 240–244.

Микитенко Оксана 2019. «Етнічний стереотип як пам’ять традиції: серби в українському фольклорі», in: Стереотипът в славянските езици, литератури и култури: сб. с доклади от Четиринадесетите межд. славистични четения, София, 26–28 април 2018 г., 2: Литературознание. Културология. Антропология. Фолклористика, София: Университетско издателство „Св. Климент Охридски“, р. 425–432.

Назарук Осип 1916. Слідами Українських січових стрільців, Відень: Видання Спілки Визволення України.

Пащенко Євген 2008. «‘Уже гаї листом криє’ (усна народна політична творчість)», in: Український політичний фольклор, упорядкування, передмова, коментарі Євгена Пащенка, Київ: Видавець Микола Дмитренко, p. 3–12.

Поршнева О. С. 2011. «Образы западных союзников в русском традиционном сознании накануне и в годы Первой мировой войны (1914 – февраль 1917 гг.)», Проблемы истории России 9: Россия и Запад в переходную эпоху от средневековья к новому времени, p. 316−325 (http://elar.urfu.ru/bitstream/10995/22242/1/pir2011-32.pdf).

П’ятаченко Сергій 2006. «Образ москаля в українських приказках і прислів’ях (за збіркою М. Номиса «Українські приказки, прислів’я і таке інше»)», Актуальні проблеми української літератури і фольклору 10, р. 57–69.

П’ятаченко Сергій 2007. «Іноетнічні образи та стереотипи їх сприйняття в українському фольклорі», Матеріали до української етнології 6 (10), р. 235–241.

Фромм Эрих 1994. Анатомия человеческой деструктивности, перевод с английского Э. Телятниковой, Москва: Республика.

Харчишин Ольга 2022. «‘Батько наш Бандера’: передумови виникнення та феномен популярності пісні», Народознавчі зошити 1 (163), р. 243–251.

Эко Умберто 2014. Сотвори себе врага и другие тексты по случаю, перевод с итальянского Я. Арьковой, М. Бизеля, Е. Степанцевой, Москва: ACT COPUS.

1 The Legion of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen (USR), a separate Ukrainian unit that fought as part of the Austro-Hungarian army in the First World War, was a unique phenomenon in Ukrainian culture. The cultural and artistic activities of the Sich Riflemen and their songs (see the collection Стрілецькі пісні [Riflemen’s Songs], 2005) underwent intensive folklorisation in the interwar period (for more detail, see the monograph: Кузьменко 2009). Riflemen folklore formed the basis for the emergence of new layers of Ukrainian historical and political folklore from 1944 to the 1960s: insurgent songs (composed by fighters in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army [UIA]), songs about Ukrainian partisans, prison and exile songs (Дем’ян 2003; Кирчів 2010), and narratives (ЯПБ [Yavorivshchyna in the Insurgent Fight: stories of participants and eyewitnesses]).

2 Velykorosy, an ethnonym, ‘the same as Russians’ (СУМ, 1: 320), a historical name originating in Imperial Russia.

3 The infamous campaign ended with the encirclement of the Muscovite army and the Treaty of Pruth.

4 Та ше не світ, та ше не світ, / Та ше не світає, / Та хитрий мосаль запорозьку землю / А кругом обїжджає. / Ой обїхавши запорозьку землю / Та й став степ межувати, / Ой став городи, панські слободи / По річах саджати.

5 Bezroha is a dialect form of the word ‘pig’.

6 Щоб ми ся тим москалям в руки не дістали, / Бо москалі, як ті звірі, усі з бородами, / Щоби не мали для нас сили і власти над нами (СП: ٣١٦).

Москалиско, вражі [і]й син, іде як безрога, / «Гурра, стрільці, гурра враз!» — то наші тривоги (СП: 319).

7 The metaphor ‘fascist dogs’ appears in Ostarbeiters’ lyrics starting from the Second World War under the influence of Soviet rhetoric and propaganda (Кузьменко 2018: 350).

9 І так наші товаришки тяжко воювали, / Що москалі, як дикі пси, від них утікали. / Товаришка Степанівна не мала надії, / Щоби тепер бідувала в Ташкенті в Азії. / Бодай же ви, москалики, жінки не пізнали, / Що ви нашу Степанівну в неволю забрали (СП: ٣٢٢).

Не вір, дівко, москалеви, як тотій собаці, / А він тебе вінка збавить при зеленій млаці (БЄ: ١٦ зв).

11 For the story of the creation and folklorist revision of this song, see the paper: Кузьменко 2017.

12 Чи то грім загримів, чи то вітер зашумів, / Що столітні дуби затріщали, / То московські вовки на наш край дорогий, / Мов той вихор на степ налітали (СП: ١٠٩).

13 Shmirak is robber’s slang for someone who stands guard during a robbery.

14 А які то люди були́? Та-во такі були шміраки́. В них обмотки. То войско. Войско таке. І їдна риба була. І більше нічого. Та вінтовка довга з тим штикόм і навіть того ременя́ не мав, но на шну́рку. Отакі були салда́ти тоті перші. А потόму вони вже сі в Німéччині дороби́ли, як вже [...] ті другі прийшли [...] (К [2012], 102).

15 Не йде мати поливати / Дрібними сльозами, / Бо йде ворог притоптати / Брудними ногами (ДГ: ٣٠).

16 Де не взялися татари, / Стидкі, бридкі, погані (ІП: ٧٤).

А французи, яко звірі, хоть ви з бородами, / Не мають до нас моці ні сили над нами (Гнатюк: ١٤٤).

17 За Жовкву стріляли, / За Львів гроші дали, / За Золочів кров проляли, / А Перемишль чорти взяли (НТШ, 7).

18 A village known for the discovery of an ancient Rus settlement dating from the 11^th to the 15^th centuries, located on the border between Volyn’ and Poland. Marshy swamps are part of the local landscape.

19 Volyn’ is an ethnographic and folklore region in the northwest of Ukraine.

20 In Boykivshchyna there are also stories about how the Don Cossacks raped a Jewish woman and her servant, a priest’s wife and her daughter (К [2009], 69–71).

21 Лишив тато коровину, щоби діти мали, / Було хліба не багато – москалі забрали. / Була хата старенькая, де ми разом жили, / Прийшло во[й]ско москалеве — і ту запалили! (ГІ, 1).

22 ‘Looking for Bandera’ is a motif that became topical in the first month of the Russian-Ukrainian war (Kuzmenko 2022: 2).

23 Пограбують усі села, їдуть до району. / Кожен везе торбу сала, бутель самогону. / Раз, два, три, чотири, лізуть до комори, / Скрині вивертають — Бандеру шукають (НПБ: ١٨٣).

24 Osvoboditel is a calque from Russian corresponding to the word ‘liberator’.

25 In some Ukrainian fairy tales recorded at the end of the 19^th century, the function of the character’s assistant is assigned to the figure of a moskal benefactor (Демедюк 2020: 100).

26 Москаль військо ізбирає, Господи борони! / Уже стоїт на границі штири міліони. / Зібрав штири міліони, зачив си грозити (СХН: ٢٠٠).

27 Nimaky is a derogatory form of the word for ‘German’.

28 Ті німаки – то не були люди. Жодного серця не мали над нашим народом. Збиткувалися, як хотіли. Так їх дико виховав той Адольцьо, що робили вони собі з нашого брата забавку, як кіт з мишею. Тяжко згадувати, як ті німаки задоволено дивилися на свої звірські насмішки над нашими людьми. А вже гіршого стерва, як ті фольксдойчери, скажу вам правду, не було (НО: ٣٢٠).

29 Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Insurgent_Army).

30 Нова радість стала, / як УПА повстала, / Яка підлих комуністів / знищила немало (ДГ: ١٢).

31 Підлий німець горе сіє, / І спішить спалити все, / Він усім: старим і дітям – / Смерть жорстокую несе (БП, 130).

32 Boykivshchyna is an ethnographic region in the Carpathians in western Ukraine.

33 Markyruvaty, ‘to fiddle’, ‘markyrant’ in the riflemen’s army for ‘those who evade military service’.

34 Recorded by the rifleman Goryansky on 3 June 3 1915 in the village of Varpalanka in the Transcarpathian region from Oleksa Sadzhenitsa, who was born in 1891 in the village of Bystya in the Zhovkivsky district.

35 Patrolya, a dialect form of ‘patrol’.

36 Пішов москаль до хатини, / Хотів вкрасти солонини, / Баба кричит аж збіліла. / Наші патроля прилетіла (В, 3 зв).

37 Австрійці, германці верніться до нас, / Бо русскі солдати рабують нас. / Корови забрали і вівці женуть, / Молоді дівчата на муки ведуть (ССД: 103).

38 Ой, які ж ті більшовики добрі поміж нами: / Забирають хліба тонни – нам лишають грами. / Загрібають хліба тонни: жита і пшениці / Нам посліду двісті грамів, як ліків в аптиці (ГДА СБУ, ٢).

39 There are widespread legends and stories in the 20^th-century Ukrainian epic about a character in disguise which is typical of historical folklore. There is a narrative in the Ivano-Frankivsk region ‘about Petliura’ (the prototype is Symon Petliura, chief otaman of the Ukrainian People’s Republic [UPR] troops), who goes to moskal (= Bolshevik) troops to scout their positions disguised as a beggar (see the full text in: Кузьменко 2020: 154).

40 Битим шляхом москалі йдуть, / Ой да мого мужа коня ведуть. (٢) / Коня ведуть, сідло сяє, / Ой да мого мужа десь немає (٢) / Ви, москалі, людоїди, / Ой да де ж ви мого мужа діли? (2) (ІА: 333).

41 Kempten, the largest city in Swabian Bavaria, Germany. After the end of the Second World War, there was a temporary camp for displaced persons (DP) in the city.

42 GPUshnik, from the abbreviation GPU, the Russian State Political Administration under the NKVD.

43 [...] Боже Великий! / Вкороти наші страждання, / Спаси-порятуй від московського полювання. / Як зачули про те моління святе / Та три кати людоїди-гепеушники, / Ще й сімсот жуйців, нерозумних людців, / За московське золото куплених, / Стали до церкви прибувати, чорною хмарою її облягати [...] (Маруняк ١٩٨٥: ٦١).

44 The story of the killing of Ukrainians by the Russian army in the Chernihiv region was reenacted. See [22].

45 Ви, дівчата всі хороші, / Вишивайте хлопцям ноші. / Нехай ворог лютий знає, / Що Вкраїна воскресає (СП: ٣٤٦).

46 Прийде той час, прийде пора – / І Україна встане, / І розпічнеться страшний суд / Над лютими катами (ШП: ١١٢).

47 Banderas and Banderivtsi are colloquial forms for followers of the Ukrainian nationalist movement, members of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), in the interwar period, which was led by Stepan Bandera, and a name for the population of west Ukrainian lands who supported Ukraine’s independence.

48 Як прийшли москалі вбивати бандерів, той гарнізон був у моїй хаті, а мене з хати вигнали. Я була з дітьми дві неділі в маминій хаті [...]. А в мою хату водили людей і били їх там. І стіни були всі з кров’ю, тому мене в мою хату не допускали. І все, що в хаті й коло хати було, в мене забрали (УНК, 15: 415).

49 Сади вишневі не цвітуть, / Зморожені вітрами, / Кати московські нас ведуть / Знущатися над нами. // Ми України не дамо, / Ні Києва столиці, / Ми всю комуну розіб’єм / І станем на границі (ПП: ٢٣).

50 Ой плаче, тужи стара мати, / Плаче дівчина молода, / Кати московські надлетіли / На наші села і міста. // Вночі спадають, мов ті круки, / І сплячого беруть зі сну. / ‘Прощай, дівчино, забудь за мене, / Я йду на смерть за Вітчину’. // Вночі вивозять по одному, / І скоростріла чути стріл. / Іще раз: ‘Слава Україні!’ / Які він муки там терпів (ПБ, ٢٩٦).

51 Turpentine is a dialect word derived from turpentine oil.

52 Як проснувся юнак молоденький, протираючи очі від сну: / «Ой куди ж ви, катюги прокляті, ой куди ж ви везете сім’ю?» / Як почули кати такі слова, що юнак обізвався до них, / Закували його у кайдани і повели його до тюрми. / До сих пір я ще добре пам’ятаю, як вели вороги до тюрми. / Били в п’яти, штовхали у спину, терпетину до носа клали. / А ще вішали вниз головою і за ногті пихали голки, / Ліворверами били у груди, відбивали легені, печінки (НПР: ٢٣٢).

54 Ірод проклятий прийшов на Вкраїну, / Зробив з держави велику руїну, / Тридцять три роки, як Ірод панує, / На нашій Вкраїні українців мордує (Луньо ٢٠١٥: ١٣).

55 Ви, червоні кати, вам ніде не втекти, / Ми готуєм криваву відплату. / За Соловки й Сибір, за голодні роки / Гідно б’ємо червоного ката (ПП: ٥).

56 The image originates from the Russian-language catchphrase ‘Русский корабль иди нахуй’ (‘Russian warship, go f*ck yourself’) [23].

58 Note that there is the popular idiom chmo bolotne (‘swamp chmo’) in the Ukrainian language, which conveys the meaning of ‘unclean’, ‘demonic’.

59 ATO/UFO – ATO: anti-terrorist operation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-terrorist_Operation_Zone), UFO: Joint Forces Operation.

60 An allusion to the well-known proverb ‘Moscal is Muscal in Africa as well.’

61 «Під лежачий камінь вода не тече» → «Під лежачу русню вода не тече», «Гуртом і батька легше бити» → «Гуртом і москаля добре бити».

62 «Скільки вовка не годуй, а він в ліс дивиться» → «Скільки орка не годуй, а він в Гаагу дивиться».

63 «Згода будує, а незгода руйнує» → «Згода будує, а русня руйнує» [25].

64 The image of a bear to denote Russia and Russianness has been used in Latvian culture to support the positive collective identity and unity of Latvians (Гайлите 2013: 19).

65 «Якщо Росія – ведмідь, то Україна – вулик з бджолами!».

66 «Країна, на гербі в якої курка, ніколи не переможе країну, на гербі в якої виделка».

67 The expression is an allusion to the black plastic sacks in which corpses are placed.

68 In January 2015, Iryna Hryshchenko recorded a joke about the imposition of European sanctions on Russia. In a dialogue between friends, the semantics of ‘degradation’ is used through the dysphemism of ‘an ass’ (Грищенко 2015: 4). The comic element is due to the fact that one of the participants in the conversation interprets the essence of the expression ‘the economic paradigm’ using this word. It is known that obscene vocabulary is inherent in the everyday speech of Russians. A vulgar word used to imply ‘Russianness’ is a kind of verbal weapon against the enemy. With the help of a key word (a vulgarised colloquial lexeme for the rear end of an animal or a person), a degrading image of Russians is constructed indicating the empty rhetoric of the Russian authorities.

69 In Ukrainian national cuisine ‘a loaf of bread’ [26].

70 From the Ukrainian for ‘a strawberry’.

71 The text was published on 8 March 2022 on the Facebook page of Marysia Nikityk [27]. Her post has been shared by 13,000 people. Today, the story already has variants entitled ‘Stories about Douches’ and an animated version [28].

73 From the Russian lychaky, meaning peasant shoes made from bast, or some other material, that were worn with footwraps by tying them to the leg with string; figuratively, ‘a poor person’ (СУМ, 4: 501).

74 Ой, ви, орки лаптєногі, / Поздихали, щоб ви, / повертайтеся, убогі, / у свої трущоби! / Поки всіх вас не поклали / Наші Збройні Сили / Серед поля широкого / У сирі могили. / Не дивіться на Вкраїну, / Не плямкайте ласо / Всіх положим в домовини, / Як гарматне м’ясо. / І не треба зазіхати / на нашу свободу, / Ми є правнуки великі / козацького роду / Не схилиася Вкраїна – / Зав’язала берці. / Кожна мати з джавеліном / у своєму серці. / Кожна мати молить Бога / за свою дитину, / На той світ у вас дорога – / Через Україну [١٣].

75 Розшифровка позначок на рф-ському металобрухті: V – вмер, Z – здох, O – обісрався [٨ no. ٤٧٢١].

76 The tradition of singing eviction songs is rich in Ukrainian folklore (Дем’ян 2003: 347–450).

77 From a poem by Myroslava Sydor, written on 11 October 2022, which has been shared by 16,000 users [29].

Russians in Ukrainian Folklore from the 20th and Early 21st Centuries: The Dynamics of the Images and Contexts