I would like to acknowledge support received from the International Research and Exchanges Board in 1984, which contributed substantially to this article. I would also like to acknowledge the assistance I have had from the very start of my dissertation work from Antonina Georgievna Sakovich, who has given unstintingly of the knowledge she acquired as curator for many years of the Rovinskii collection at Pushkin Museum. Both by correspondence and by allowing me to work at her side for several weeks in 1984, she has taught me much that I could have learned nowhere else. An early version of this article was presented at the 1983 national conference of the Popular Culture Association. This study is part of a larger work in progress, "Russian Popular Prints, 1660-1860."

1. Among the publications of seventeenth century popular materials with particular relevance to lubki are Adrianova-Perets, V. P., Russkaia demokraticheskaia satira XVII veka, 2nd. ed. rev. (Moscow: Nauka, 1977 Google Scholar, and Ranniaia russkaia dramaturgiia XVlI-pervaia polovina XVIII v., ed. A. N. Robinson, 5 vols. (Moscow: Nauka, 1972-1976).

2. Farrell, Dianne, “Laughter Transformed: The Shift from Medieval to Enlightenment Humour in Russian Popular Prints,” in Russia and the World of the Eighteenth Century, ed. R. P. Bartlett, A. G. Cross, K. Rasmussen (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1988), 157–176.Google Scholar

3. This article draws upon Dmitrii Aleksandrovich Rovinskii's monumental collection, Russkie narodnye kartinki, 5 vols, and 4 folios (St. Petersburg, 1881-1893) and two volumes by the same title published in 1900 after his death and edited by P. N. Sobko [hereafter RNK and RNK 1900]. I have chosen to use the term popular with respect to lubki and the phenomenon of premodern festive humor, because it suits my material better than any alternative, such as folk or low. Popular covers all the senses which apply here: pertaining to the common people or the whole body of the people; suitable to the public in general, that is easy to understand and adapted to the means of the generality (relatively cheap); having general currency; and beloved or approved by the people. The drawback of using narodnyi is that the term, as it is used today, should not include the creations of professional artists or of artists who work in a borrowed or international style. Narodnyi is linked particularly to the peasantry, since in the nineteenth century, when the term came into currency, the old national traditions were sought among the peasantry. Rovinskii, in using the term narodnyi, probably only wished to avoid denigrating his material by calling the prints lubochnyi, which in his time had become synonymous with “cheap and shoddy.” The French use images populaires for the same type of print. Soviet scholars call them lubki, lubochnye kartinki, or narodnye kartinki. Whatever term one applies to lubki one needs to explain that they were not really popular at first but only cheaper than other art forms, although they became increasingly accessible in the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Additionally, they were of a Russian national style—hence narodnyi in the ethnic sense—in an era before art was strictly divided as to professional and folk in Russia. As the lubok become more popular, it ceased to be narodnyi in style and became a cheap copy of the west European styles that had been adopted by the elite culture, although a narodnyi style reasserted itself in the early nineteenth century. Lubki did emanate from the city and were by professionals who often borrowed non-Russian styles.

4. The earliest dated print (1668), of the Archangel Michael, is among a group of forty-two prints discovered in the 1970s in TsGIA SSSR. The group is published in an exhibit catalog edited by Mishina, E. A. and Alekseeva, Mariia Andreevna, Ranniaia russkaia graviura vtoraia polovina XVII-nachalo XVIII veka; novye otkrytiia (Leningrad: Gosudarstvennyi Russkii Muzei and Tsentral'nyi Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv, 1979)Google Scholar. The actual imprints date from just before 1731, when they were seized from a trader by the synod.

5. Sakovich, Antonina Georgievna, Narodnaia gravirovannaia kniga Vasiliia Korenia, 1692-1696 (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1983 Google Scholar, especially chap. 3 and Zhegalova, S. G., “O stilisticheskoi edintstve lubochnykh kartinok i severnykh rospisei po derevu XVII-XVIII vv.,” in Narodnaia graviura ifol'klorvRossii XVIIIXIXvv. (Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1976), 131–139 Google Scholar (hereafter NGiF).

6. Sakovich, Narodnaia gravirovannaia kniga, 83.

7. Mariia Andreevna Alekseeva, “Torgovlia graviurami v Moskve i kontrol’ za nei v kontse XVII-XVIII vv., NGiF, 140-158 and idem, “Iz istorii graviury petrovskogo vremeni. Ivan Agapitov syn Postnikov i russkaia graviura kontsa XVII-nachala XVIII veka vne gosudarstvennykh masterskikh,” in Russkoe iskusstvo pervoi chetverti XVIII veka (Moscow, 1974).

8. Evidence of class orientation is treated in Dianne Farrell, “Popular Prints in the Cultural History of Eighteenth-Century Russia” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1980).

9. This characterization relies primarily on Bakhtin, Mikhail M., Tvorchestvo Frantsua Rable i narodnaia kul'tura srednevekov'ia i Renessansa (Moscow: Khudozhesrvennaia literatura, 1965 Google Scholar; translated by Helen Izwolsky as Rabelais and His World (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968 Google Scholar. See also Likhachev, D. S., Panchenko, A. M., and Ponyrko, N. V., Smekh drevnei rusi (Leningrad: Nauka, 1984 Google Scholar.

10. Zguta, Russel, Russian Minstrels (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Famintsyn, A. S., Skomorokhi na rusi (St. Petersburg, 1889)Google Scholar. Mooser, R. A., Annates de la musique et des musiciens en Russie au XVlIle siecle, vol. 1. Des origines a la mart de Pierre III (1762) (Geneva, 1948), 49–178 Google Scholar; Opers, intermezzos, ballets, cantates, oratorios joue en Russie durantleXV1U siecle. 3rd. ed. rev. et complet. (Geneva, 1964); R. M. Tonkova, “K istorii peterburgskikh teatrov. Pechatanie ‘tsettelei’ (aflsh) v tipografii Akademii nauk s 1727 po 1771 god,” in XVI11 vek., sbornik 4 (Moscow and Leningrad: Nauka, 1959), 385-394.

11. Zguta, Russian Minstrels, 15-22, 65.

12. Ibid., 65.

13. Zabelin, I. E., “Khronika obshchestvennoi zhizni v Moskve s poloviny XVIII st,” in Opyt izucheniia russkikh drevnosti i istorii, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1872-1873) 2: 391–392.Google Scholar Zabelin also reports that festival theatricals were called lubochnye, either because they were sometimes produced in huts of bast (tub) or because they were cheap, crude productions.

14. RNK 5: 255-256. See Iarko, B. N., Rifmovarmaia proza russkikh intermedii i interliudii (Leningrad, 1968)Google Scholar and Odinnattsat’ intermediiXVIII veka (St. Petersburg, 1915).

15. I count twenty-seven in RNK in the first half of the century, twenty in the second half, and for 1800-1837 ten. Since some prints were reprinted over a very long period, they cannot be attributed to one half century, regardless of the date of a surviving copy or copies. Another problem is unequal survival rates; for most prints, out of the hundreds or thousands of copies issued, only one survives. Before 1766, when no one was yet collecting them, the survival of lubki was particularly fortuitous.

16. Zabelin counts twenty-five gulianie in Moscow (seven major ones). Some were very localized, even just parish affairs. Most of those Zabelin lists took place at a particular monastery or church. Zabelin, “Khronika obshchestvennoi zhizni,” 387-390.

17. Vladimir Dal', Tolkovoi slovar’ zhivago velikorusskago iazyka, 3rd. ed., rev. J. Baudoin de Courtenay, 4 vols. (St. Petersburg and Moscow, 1905), s.v. “Maslenitsa. “

18. Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’ Brokgaus-Efron, s.v. “Maslenitsa. “

19. RNK no. 92.

20. The church opposed music, dancing, and drunkenness from earliest times, evidently with little success. Instrumental music was forbidden. In the seventeenth century the use of popular musical instruments was made a criminal offense at the behest of the church (although the tsar himself had an orchestra). Fedotov suggests that the church's opposition to music and dancing was provoked by the Dionysiac aspect of pre-Christian festivities, which was carried over to Christian holidays. Fedotov, George P., The Russian Religious Mind, 2 vols. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960) 1: 351–353 Google Scholar.

21. All lubok variants on Maslenitsa activities seem to refer to a theatrical performance. The first frame in each shows Maslenitsa and Semik as though on a stage with a theater curtain. Costuming is mideighteenth century. The plates are probably from the 1750s or 1760s. One print has a watermark dated 1800.

22. Jung, Carl G., “On the Psychology of the Trickster-Figure,” Collected Works, 12 vols., 2nd. ed. rev. (New York: Pantheon, 1968) 9 (pt. 1): 258.Google Scholar

23. The traditional sources on evil women were mainly spurious sermons of St. John Chrysostom, St. Basil the Great, Ephrem of Syria, Herodias, and Pchela, a Byzantine anthology of moral quotations. Russian compilers chose to omit positive references to women in these sources. Fedotov, Russian Religious Mind 2: 75-78.

24. Excluded from the multivolume collection published by Afanas'ev between 1855 and 1863, the erotic folk tales were published in Switzerland as Russkiia zavetnyia skazki, probably in 1872 and survive as a manuscript, “Russian folk tales not for publication,” in Pushkinskii Dom (Arkhiv no. R-l, opis’ 1, no. 112). Only one of these tales found its way into lubki and that is a toned-down version of “The Bear and the Woman” (RNK no. 180, early nineteenth century).

25. Dmitrii Aleksandrovich Rovinskii, in his Podrobnyi slovar’ russkikh graverov XVI-XIX vv. (St. Petersburg, 1895), 519-520, writes that “The Mice Bury the Cat” was probably first published by the Old Believers in the year of Peter's death. He infers Old Believer authorship because they were enemies of Peter's innovations. In RNK he made no mention of Old Believer authorship, but in RNK 1900, 255, it is again asserted. RNK nos. 166-170 are editions of “The Mice Bury the Cat “; 172 and 172-a are “The Cat of Kazan. “

26. RNK Nos. 37, 38, and 39.

27. M. A. Alekseeva, “Graviura na derevie ‘Myshi kota na pogost volokut'—pamiatnik russkogo narodnogo tvorchestva kontsa XVII—nachala XVIII v. in XVIII Vek, sbornik 14 (Leningrad: Nauka, 1983), 45-79.

28. “The Schismatic and the Barber” bears an absolutely distinctive style of script, shared by only one other print, RNK no. 191, “Savoska and Paramoshka.” The latter is purely a clown's gag featuring scatalogical humor.

29. Adrianova-Perets, V. P., Russkaia demokraticheskaia satira XVII veka (Moscow and Leningrad: Akademiia nauk, 1954), 191.Google Scholar

30. A. V. Kokorev, “Sumarokov i russkie narodnye kartinki,” Uchenye zapiski moskovskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta 127 (1948), 227-236. It is not proven whether these texts were used with or without their author's permission. Kokorev thinks they were authorized because Sumarokov, who was quite active on behalf of his author's rights, never protested the use of his work in lubki.

31. Treated in Farrell, “Laughter Transformed,” 157-171.

32. This reformation of popular culture occurred all over Europe between roughly 1500 and 1800. See Burke, Peter, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (New York: New York University Press, 1978)Google Scholar, chap. 8. Raeff, Marc, The Well-Ordered Police State; Social and Institutional Change through Law in the Germanies and Russia, 1600-1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983 Google Scholar describes the same general trend.

33. Jung, “On the Psychology of the Trickster-Figure,” 260.

34. This argument was suggested by Jaynes, Julian, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), 157–171.Google Scholar