E-mail: q.h.f@yandex.ru Tel.: +7 (499) 973‑43‑54
15–7, Chayanova str., Moscow, 125047, Russian Federation
Postgraduate Student, Center for Typological and Semiotic Folklore Studies, Russian State University for Humanities
This article was written as part of the project of the Russian State University for Humanities, “Song Traditions of the Twentieth — Twenty-First Centuries: Poetic Structures, Biographical Discourse and Historical Narrative” (“RSUH Student Project Research Teams” competition).
The author thanks S. Yu. Neklyudov, A. B. Moroz, V. B. Novikova for the discussion of the article, V. I. Sayapina for valuable consultations and materials provided from her personal archive, M. V. Akhmetova, N. N. Rychkov, N. V. Petrov, O. B. Khristoforova for important comments and suggestions. The author also expresses his gratitude to I. S. Veselova, S. Yu. Koroleva, and M. A. Bryukhanova for their help in organizing field and archival work in St. Petersburg and Perm. This work would not have been written without interviewees, who shared their memories of student life and student songs, especially thanks to L. V. Bakhnov.
This article considers various contexts of the student song “Within the First Few Minutes God Created Universities,” which emerged in the twentieth century, but which reflects various layers of Russian student song culture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The song preserves elements of nineteenth-century student songs that may be said to belong to the collective memory. This includes the theme of student drunkenness and topics connected with the identity of the community. The performer’s personal narrative is also present. This helps account for the existence and variability of the text, turning the song, if not into a full-fledged biography, at least into fragments of biography, that mention the main stages of student life. The article also analyzes the political topics that began to appear in student songs at the turn of the century and that continued to be included in student texts of the second half of the twentieth century. The study also examines student song as a part of the tradition of Russian parodia sacra, considering the ritual structures and bureaucratic elements that allow domestic sacred parody to survive in the post-folklore era and in the context of twentieth-century urban song traditions. Mechanisms influencing variations of the song “Within the First Few Minutes God Created Universities” are also examined, as well as the song’s development from a war song based on Konstantin Simonov’s poems to author Vladlen Bakhnov’s reworking of the song, to later variants.
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