Researcher speaks on Orange Revolution folklore (02/26/06)

Researcher speaks on Orange Revolution folklore

by Natalie Kononenko

EDMONTON - Oleksandra Britsyna, senior researcher at the Rylsky Institute of Art, Folklore and Ethnology of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, Kyiv, spoke on January 17 on the folklore of the Orange Revolution at the University of Alberta. Dr. Britsyna and her colleague Inna Holovakha conducted fieldwork among the residents of the tent city on the "maidan" - Kyiv's Independence Square, the focal point of the revolution - photographing graffiti, collecting jokes, and recording text messages where people transmitted folklore by cell phone.

According to Dr. Britsyna, folklore played a most important role in the Orange Revolution, and it took many forms. People used traditional folk sayings and manipulated them to communicate their sentiments.

Thus, the expression "Moia khata z kraiu" (my house is at the edge of the village), an expression used to excuse non-involvement, was changed to the slogan, often written on banners, "Moia khata na maidani" (my house is on the maidan) to voice deep commitment to the Orange Revolution.

Similarly, headgear typically worn at weddings and stars traditionally carried at Christmas were modified and used to convey the joyous, virtually carnivalesque, atmosphere of the tent city on the maidan.

As folk expressions were modified to suit the goals of the Orange Revolution, so were traditional jokes. The good news/bad news jokes were transformed to comment on vote-count rigging by Viktor Yanuknovych and his supporters, for example. Graffiti played an extremely important role. Usually relegated to alleyways and other places where it would be visible only to the few, graffiti showed up everywhere: on subway entrances, fences and even people's clothing. Words and drawings played on the infamous egg incident in which Mr. Yanukovych was supposedly injured by an egg, and on the orange as revolutionary symbol. Some graffiti were obscene, but tolerated in the context of the carnival atmosphere.

Interestingly, folklore about Mr. Yushchenko generated today, one year after the revolution, draws more on television commercials than on folk sayings. Perhaps this is an indication that President Yushchenko has lost some of his status as folk hero, the speaker observed.

In addition to giving a lecture on the folklore of the Orange Revolution, Dr. Britsyna visited folklore classes and spoke about her work in the village of Ploske, where she studied the preservation and transmission of folktales and other prose texts.

Dr. Britsyna came to the University of Alberta to serve as an outside examiner on a doctoral defense. After the defense, she was able to share her expertise through the lectures described above. She also explored Canadian repositories of Ukrainian folklore, specifically the Bohdan Medwidsky Ukrainian Folklore Archive at the University of Alberta and the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village east of Edmonton.

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