The folkloric tradition gained prominence in the intellectual sphere during 19th century

as the cultural-literary ideas of the time transitioned from those of the Enlightenment to
those of the Romantic. With the valourisation of childhood as an idealised state of being
and the emergence for the need to understand it as being more than a preparatory stage
for adulthood, the fairy tale - a sub genre of the folk tale transformed from being a tool
for didactic instruction into a serious literary enterprise since the derided pastimes of
child-play became the signifiers of imagination and inspiration. Following the Germanic
trend popularised by the Brothers Grimm, Afanasyev's compilation of Russian folk tales
had a great impact on Russian Romanticism. Pushkin not only enriched the genre with his
verse fairy tales but was one of the first to utilise the rustic dialect and to revive interest
in Russian indigeneity. Moreover contemporary critics like Orest Somov revealed how
the Russian fairy tale harked back to the Romantic notions of chivalry of the bogatyr or
knight and thus was part of a truly national and vernacular literature.
The paper would explore the Russian folk tale to demonstrate how within the premise of
a formulaic genre there were seeds of innovation and dissent- as in stories like "Martin
the Peasant's Son" we find the echoes of political and social subversion in keeping with
the ideology of the 1825 Decembrist Revolt, a trait reminiscent of British Romanticism.
Even the hegemony of Neo-Classical literary mores of rationality and imitation were
challenged by the imaginative renderings of such figures as Wassilissa- the unattainable
Romantic ideal and the enigmatic witch-crone Baba-Yaga while the homeland again
became a source of inspiration as the revitalised folk tale at once nativised the stories
while defamiliarising it with the addition of the fantastic, making the Russian steppe and
woods strange yet identifiable.