JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Slavic Review.The golden era of the study of folklore in the Soviet Union was the first decade after the Revolution, when the party and government, occupied with more urgent tasks, let the literary scholars and folklorists do their work relatively undisturbed. In 1925 the so-called "magna charta libertatis" for Soviet writers was issued by the Central Committee of the party, which permitted "free competitioni of various groups and currents."1 As a result, the 1920s turned out to be rich and fruitful in literary scholarship, including folkloristics. In the study of folklore, different trends could freely coexist and thrive side by side. The most important of thenm were the historical school, Formalism, and the so-called Finnish school. The historical school continued the traditions of its leader Vsevolod Miller, whose first concern had been to find reflections of concrete historical reality in Russian byliny (epic songs). Thus the tendencies of the historical school are found in the commentaries to some bylina collections in 1918 and 1919, and also appeared strongly in the works of the brothers Boris and Iurii Sokolov, both of them disciples of Miller.The Formalists Propp, Nikiforov, Skaftymnov, Zhirmunsky, and others concentrated on certain formal aspects, with complete disregard for ideology and historical conditions. They studied the artistic form of folklore-its structure, style, verse, and language. Formalists produced a number of significant works-perhaps the highest achievements of Russian folklore scholarship. Here belongs, for example, V. Ia. Propp's famous study Morphology of the Folktale (1928), which investigates the structure of fairy tales on the basis of the function of the dramnatis personae and concludes that all Russian tales are uniform in their structure. A. I. Nikiforov's studies touch partly on the same problems. It is possible that the notion of "function" used by Propp was originally invented by Nikiforov.A. P. Skaftyrnov's Poetics and Genesis of Byliny (1924) concludes that the bylina structure is based on the endeavor to create effects of surprise and 1. Gleb Struve, Russinn Literatiure Uuder Lenin and Stalin, 1917-1953 (Norman, Okla., astonishnment in the audience, wlhich is achieved by an excessive use of contrasts in depicting the hero and his opponent. This build-up to the unexpected is resolved at the end of the bylina, when the underestimated hero destroys hiis seemingly all-powerful opponent with amazing ease. Skaftymov demonstrates that the negative attitude toward Prince Vladimiir in some byliny is prompted by bylina ...