BABA YAGA: A MANIFESTATION
OF THE RUSSIAN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PEASANTS’
COMING TO TERMS WITH INDUSTRIALIZATION
by Julia Wallhager
Macalester College
Interdisciplinary Student Research Symposium
The Museum of Russian Art, 21 February 2015
Introduction
Many scholars believe that the role of the Russian forest is “foundational
for understanding Russian culture,” and indeed it has provoked political debate,
raised questions of identity and belonging, bears strong symbolic meaning, and is
the source of conflicting emotions as both an indispensable resource and
considerable danger (Costlow, 2013, p. 6). Deep inside the forest is the home of
one of the most ambiguous and singular characters of eastern European folklore:
Baba Yaga,∗ a grotesque witch living in a spinning hut on chicken legs. On some
occasions, the hero(ine) voluntarily stops by Baba Yaga’s hut in his or her quest
for a spouse as Baba Yaga gives good advice in these matters, or in order to serve
Baba Yaga as she also possesses valuable magic items. At times, however, the
hero(ine) involuntarily comes to Baba Yaga’s hut after being either kidnapped by
Baba Yaga (or any of her servants), or after being forced there by a family
member. Traditionally, the hero(ine) makes the spinning hut stop by a formulaic
phrase and finds Baba Yaga in a completely surreal position inside—her body is
often extended from one corner of the hut to the other at the same time that her
nose “has grown into the ceiling” (Johns, 2004, p. 2). Baba Yaga’s idiosyncrasy,
such as her ambiguous behavior towards the hero(ine), either expressing the wish
to eat them or help them (or both!), her emblematic hut and strange body
features, greatly contributes to why she is considered a unique folklore figure.
This essay attempts to bring to the surface the motifs, both disguised and
undisguised, in the stories of Baba Yaga that are drawn from the historical
circumstances in Russia in the 18th century, the century in which the first
documentary evidence of this folklore figure appeared (p. 12). My interpretation
seeks to call attention to the aspects of these stories that reflect the life of
peasants in the 18th century, especially during and in the direct aftermath of the
Petrine regime (1682-1725), that have been unrecognized in the most extensive
work on Baba Yaga thus far: Andreas Johns’ Baba Yaga: The Ambiguous Mother
and Witch of the Russian Folktale (2004). Specifically, I argue that Baba Yaga
and her hut can be seen as manifestations of the 18th century peasants’ coming to
terms with and channeling the fear of their traumatic first encounter with
industrialization. Entering the forest does not only involve “crossing a [physical]
∗
Other variations of her name include Iagaia, Iagaba, Egabova, Iagabikha, Egibinikha,
Iagishna, Baba-Igipuvna and Aga Gnishna, to mention a few (Johns, 2004, p. 8).
1
2
Julia Wallhager
boundary” (Costlow, 2013, p. 11), but also a mental one, as humans there
become animals among other animals. It is not strictly a safe place, but it is a
primitive one that humans understand and where an advancing civilization
exercises no psychological or physical power. The first part of this essay
addresses some of the events and the overall social environment that characterize
the 18th century and early 19th century Russia, focusing on their impact on the
peasants. Then I will pinpoint prevalent motifs in the stories of Baba Yaga and
interpret these in light of the events and the impacts of these events on the
Russian peasantry, her storytellers.
Historical Context
Immense and rapid industrializing changes took place between the
Petrine period (1682-1725) and the Emancipation of 1861 (Falkus, 1972, p. 20).
In the later part of Peter the Great’s life, he expanded old industries and
established new ones (p. 21). Both the existing and the new industries primarily
accommodated the needs of the State, notably the military (ibid.; Hellie, 1999, p.
8). These newer industries were large clothing industries for the soldiers’
uniforms etc., and mining industries drilling copper and iron for weapons and
cannon foundries, and they steadily expanded throughout the 18th century
(Falkus, 2004, p. 21, 26-7). In the beginning of the 19th century, the textile
industry was the predominant manufacturing industry along with metals (p. 335). About one third of industrial output came from outside factories, either from
the mines or from urban workshops or the peasant villages (p. 12). Much of the
fabric was simply produced in households on an industrial scale; it is estimated,
for instance, that the increase of spindles used in spinning went from 100,000 in
1830 to 1,750,000 in 1863 (Moon, 1999, p. 38). The Russian industrialization
has been classified as a “forced industrialization,” as an initiative because of
Peter the Great’s desire to westernize Russia (Falkus, 2004, p. 22). The entire
Russian industrialization was indebted to imported foreign technology and
entrepreneurs who were encouraged by Peter the Great to establish businesses in
Russia (p. 19).
Peter the Great’s attempt to rapidly reduce aspects of the prevalent
backwardness in Russia by forcing industrialization had a dramatic immediate
effect on the peasant population, as serfdom was expanded and taxation on the
remaining peasants was increased in order to finance the army and the industrial
undertakings (p. 23-25). A willing labor force was scarce because of the extent
of the expansion and the undesired work (p. 26). As a consequence, peasants
were forced, “ascribed” to the industries in very large numbers; in some cases,
“whole villages” were purchased to work in the industries (p. 24). The working
conditions of these ‘possessional peasants’ were in many ways much worse than
those of agricultural serfs (ibid.). In fact, the peasants who were taken from the
country many times suffered under “conditions that were comparable to those of
penal labor” and had to work and carry out tasks with which they had little or no
experience (Raeff, 1971, p. 92).
Unsurprisingly, these traumatizing events stayed in the mind of the
Russian peasants and “were felt until the time of the Emancipation and beyond”
Baba Yaga, Russian Eighteenth-Century Peasants, and Industrialization
3
(p. 25). The grim circumstances under which the peasant lived in the later stages
of the industrialization initiated by Peter the Great are illustrated in the letter
News From Russia addressed to Tsar Nikolai I 1849 by Petr O, in which he
explicitly voices the brutal conditions of peasants in his village Mir, exemplified
by the many references to death and captivity (MacKay, 2009, p. 38). Petr, the
author, says that the “poor slaves in the villages” live their lives “[a]s though in
expectance of destruction”; they seem to him like “phantoms from the
grave…who dragged their feet [a]s though barely alive” (p. 46-7, 53). Stephan,
another peasant from the village, assents that the peasant life is like “[k]ill[ing]
yourself at work from childhood on,” and remarks on what it is like to be the
property of others: “[t]he human, created in blessed immortality, [i]s bought and
is sold like cattle or plants” (p. 101, 116). Finally, the “old man” gives a
powerful account: “[w]e’re born into the world in chains, [a]nd are bound to live
in them unto the grave” (p. 48). He adds that he has no problem with work in
general, “labor is useful to everyone on earth,” but that it is the “nobles’ robbery”
that causes the impossible situation (p. 49).
The condemnation of serfdom is clearly expressed in these accounts.
Although there is no information regarding whether these peasants fell victim to
Peter the Great’s restoration of semi-pervasive serfdom in Russia in the name of
industrialization, their accounts of their daily lives most likely describe what
many serfs felt during this period, regardless of why they were enslaved.
Conclusively, from this historical section, several key characteristics and
consequences of events of the 18th century also appear as disguised and
undisguised motifs in the stories of Baba Yaga: the mining and cloth industries;
the foreign presence and the strong Western influence, pervasive serfdom and the
army’s strong presence, as well as the forced industrialization and the
consequential brutal situation for the peasants.
Textual Interpretation
In light of this historical context and, specifically, the traumatic event
that the industrialization was for the peasants, it is possible that the first stories of
Baba Yaga were fantasies and ways of channeling the stress and agony inflicted
by it. Johns acknowledges that “during the time the folktale was recorded [i.e. in
the 18th century], it was surely to a large extent a fantasy creation recognized as
fiction, and enjoyed as entertainment” (Johns, 2004, p. 41). In Sula Benet’s
study of the Russian village Viriatino, she confirms that at least a few of these
stories, i.e. “Prince Ivan and the Grey Wolf” and “The Firebird” were told as
amusement in the evening in the 1800s, when young women gathered to do the
last bit of spinning for the day (Benet, 1970, p. 140). Johns argues that because
of imagination’s important role in fairy tales, “little or nothing of them
necessarily reflects an earlier reality,” and whenever they do, “it is likely
that…[they] were soon transformed and adapted to the poetic requirements of
this narrative genre” (Johns, 2004, p. 41). Taken that these stories are fantasy
creations, however, it is unlikely that they existed in a vacuum uninfluenced by
the everyday backbreaking lives of their tellers; it is probable that they were
4
Julia Wallhager
wish-fulfilling stories, told to calm the soul and gather strength for tomorrow’s
workload.
The fear of technological advances and their consequences, such as those
brought forth by industrialization, were for instance later addressed by Fritz
Lang’s film Metropolis (1927). In his analysis of the film, Andreas Huyssen
argues that men rid themselves of their fear of both woman and technology by
uniting the two in something concrete that can consequentially be defeated. In
reference to a climactic scene in the film in which the female machine vamp is
burned as a witch, Huyssen argues that
the dangers of a mystified technology have been translated into the dangers an
equally mystified female sexuality poses to men, the witch could be burnt at the
stake, and by implication, technology could be purged of its threatening aspects
(p. 81).
The fact that Huyssen chooses the word witch to describe this union of mystified
technology and woman is not entirely coincidental to the fact that Baba Yaga is a
witch, since the incomprehensible workings of technology to someone unfamiliar
with them can be comparable to the incomprehensible workings of magic.
Moreover, in the 18th century, nature gradually became seen as a “gigantic
machine” and from the 19th century onwards, we have multiple representations in
literature where industry and technology are portrayed as women, a typical
reflection of “the double male fear of technology and woman” (Huyssen, 1986,
p. 70, 77, 71).
If we first take a look at Baba Yaga’s house, the notorious hut on chicken
legs, we find aspects that suggest a way of visualizing the new factory and its
relation to the peasants. Kanatchikov, a factory worker in Moscow in the late
1800s, describes the “turning gears” of the machines in his factory (Kanatchikov
& Zelnik, 1986, p. 50) and similarly Baba Yaga’s hut spins endlessly; in fact this
endless rotation can be seen as a symbolic image of factories in the modern time
as, for instance, portrayed in the close-ups of machinery in Man with a Movie
Camera by Dziga Vertov. Although the emblematic description of the hut
focuses on it standing on chicken legs, human bones are a significant part of its
construction. The surrounding fence is frequently described as being constructed
by poles of human heads as in “Mar’ia Morevna,” for instance. In “Vasilisa the
Beautiful,” we get a detailed description of how human bones are the structural
building blocks of the hut:
[t]he fence around the house was made of human bones; human skulls with eyes
were stuck on the fence. There were human leg-bones in the gate instead of
posts, there were arm bones instead of doors, and a mouth with sharp teeth
instead of a lock (Forrester, 2013, p. 174-75).
Furthermore, in “The Stepdaughter and the Stepdaughter’s Daughter,” when the
stepdaughter asks Baba Yaga where her firewood is, Baba Yaga directs her to
behind the bathhouse, “[b]ut the fuel stacked there was really human bones” (p.
132). These examples show how the hut is structurally built with human bones
Baba Yaga, Russian Eighteenth-Century Peasants, and Industrialization
5
and how it “consumes” them for heat. The latter is strikingly similar to the
famous scene in Metropolis, in which the industrial machinery is portrayed as the
mouth of the Moloch that consumes the factory workers. It moreover recalls
Peter the Great’s methods in the construction of Saint Petersburg, the city
notoriously known as being “built on bones,” because of the number of peasants
and convicts whom Peter the Great forced to work on its construction and who
died during its formation (“St. Petersburg,” encyclopedia.com).
Moreover, in many stories, Baba Yaga is described inside the hut as
occupying a remarkable amount of space, as stretching from ceiling to floor,
corner to corner, in a way that suggests that she cannot have a normal human size
and structure. Baba Yaga’s impossible human structure suggests that she is part
of the hut as an interior mechanism or machine of a factory building. Other
similarities between Baba Yaga and the hut support the reading of them as
structurally linked; for instance, the fact that the hut “consumes” bones and Baba
Yaga eats humans, and that the house is spinning around, and Baba Yaga in a
few stories is found sitting and spinning some type of fabric inside it (Forrester,
2013, p. 213). Indeed, a few stories only describe the chicken legs as supporting
the house, and that the “center of the house was fixed on the spindle of a
spinning-wheel” further suggests that they are two parts of the same mechanical
construction (Dixon-Kennedy, 1998, p. 25). Finally, the spinning hut is also
machinelike in that it stops when asked to by the hero(ine), similar to how
machines stop when “ordered” to.
Lastly, the fact that Baba Yaga’s house is described as a semi-house, a
hut indeed, but also a bizarre structure of bones and that spins, suggest the
transition from household to factory that gradually occurred in the 18th and 19th
century. Typically, the activity inside Baba Yaga’s hut is spinning or sewing, for
instance in “Baba Yaga 1,” “Baba Yaga 2” and “The Bogatyrs Sosna, Usynia,
Gorynia, and Duginia,” which we know was one of the most prevalent industrial
activities in this period, both in peasant households and factories in the cities.
Also the other large industrial activity, mining, is hinted at as Baba Yaga’s hut on
a few occasions is located underground as in “The Bogatyrs Sosna…” and
“Prince Ivan and Beloy Polyanin.” Essential to the hut’s location and Baba Yaga
is that they are foreign. It is made explicit in some stories as Baba Yaga often
makes clear that nobody has come from Russia to her hut for a very long time, or
that she is going there: “[s]o girl, I’m going to Rus’” (Forrester, 2013, p. 11).
Indeed, the industrialization and the factories were not something originating in
Russia through a natural development, but through Peter the Great’s “forced
industrialization” after gathering inspiration from the West and attracting foreign
investors to Russia (Falkus, 2004, p. 22).
Zooming in on the specific tasks inside the hut and the motifs of the
stories of Baba Yaga, we see that they are similar both in kind and manner to the
industrial chores of 18th century Russia. In addition to the already mentioned
spinning hut and Baba Yaga who spins inside the house and has this as the
predominant task for any of the heroines who visits her, motifs related to
spinning—clothes, needles, carpets and cloth—are ubiquitous in these stories.
Metals, especially iron, are also excessively present in these stories. For
instance, both cloth and iron are foregrounded in “The Feather of Finist the
6
Julia Wallhager
Bright Falcon,” in which the two older sisters want dresses and handkerchiefs
from their father, they harm the Bright Falcon with needles, he tells the third
sister that she must “wear out three pairs of iron shoes, break three iron staffs and
gnaw through three stone loaves,” at Baba Yaga’s hut, the girls spins, she follows
a ball of thread, the second Baba Yaga gives her a needle and embroidery frame,
etc. (Forrester, 2013, p. 104).
Universal for all the tasks set by Baba Yaga is their strenuous to the point
of impossible nature and the constant threat of death if these are not carried out
(Johns, 2004, p. 39). On some occasions, the nature of these tasks is strictly
impossible as for instance when the heroine is asked to carry water in a sieve
(ibid.). At other times, it would be very hard, as when the heroine is told to heat
up the bathhouse with human bones as firewood (Forrester, 2013, p. 132). The
arduous work of peasants as they transitioned to work in the mines or factories
was indeed much harder than the agricultural work up to that point and in some
cases, as I have mentioned earlier, tantamount to penal labor. Given the
historical context of the time, that the two possible outcomes were either
successful service or death is not remarkable. As Petr O’s autobiography tells us,
death was constantly lurking around the corner.
When it comes to marriage or the married life, Baba Yaga is exclusively
a helper in these stories (ibid.). For instance, in “Fenist the Bright Falcon II,”
Baba Yaga helps the heroine recover her Fenist, in “The Frog Princess,” she
helps Prince Ivan to regain Vasilisa the Beautiful (p. 19, 123). Indeed, women
matchmakers were common in this period in Russia and it is no surprise that
Baba Yaga “emerges in these tales as a mediator…between spouses”; it is a way
for her to exercise power and promote economic prosperity, a similar goal to that
of the industrialization, as marriage between peasants in the 18th century was
business “according to purely economic considerations” (Johns, 2004, p. 168;
Burds, 1988, p. 70). In fact, one of Baba Yaga’s most formulaic phrases in the
encounter with the hero(ine) is “are you doing a deed or fleeing a deed?” or
something analogous (Johns, 2004, p. 156). English translations of this phrase,
“дела пытаешь иль от дела лытаешь?,” and its variations have universally
translated the Russian dela [делa] as deed, but this word in fact also means
business and affairs; this famous sentence therefore also reads, “are you doing
business or fleeing business?” To a woman like Baba Yaga, knowing if the
hero(ine) is at her hut to serve her or to seek advice in order to find a spouse, i.e.,
has arrived with business in mind, is more relevant than questioning his or her
deeds, as it is under these two circumstances that she decides not to kill them.
Lastly, a few stories of Baba Yaga depict her as the chief of an army, as a
warrior, which is truly unusual, arguably even a surreal feature for an old granny,
but nonetheless a prevalent theme in the history of this time. In most of these
stories, the hut is underground and smiths and seamstresses are producing an
army for Baba Yaga (Johns, 2004, p. 180). This is a very explicit combination of
smiths and seamstresses, the most common industrial “jobs,” in combination with
the production of an army. In reality, an army was not literally so produced, but
both the sewing industry and the mining industry were specialized to
accommodate the army and in the Petrine regime almost exclusively produced
armaments and clothes for it (Falkus, 2004, p. 21). In one story, for instance, the
Baba Yaga, Russian Eighteenth-Century Peasants, and Industrialization
7
hero chases Baba Yaga underground, where “peasants are hammering,…maidens
are weaving, all of them making an army for Baba-Yaga with these activities”
(Johns, 2004, p. 181). This aspect of Baba Yaga in connection to her foreignness
also recalls this period as Russia was at war with the Ottoman Empire and later
the Swedish Empire.
In conclusion, my interpretation of Baba Yaga and her hut as disguised
manifestations of Russian 18th century peasants’ way of channeling their
discomfort and fear of the inaugurated industrialization, which I have shown
dramatically worsened the lives of peasants, helps to explain Baba Yaga and her
hut’s odd features and behavior. This reading is further supported by the
presence of the many everyday motifs from the 18th century, such as spinning,
clothes and metals from the factories and mining, marriage customs, and the
strong army presence that are undisguised in these stories. Why Baba Yaga
should have the precise character of eating and kidnapping children at times and
at other times helping the hero(ine) in marriage, and occupy such a bizarre
position inside her spinning hut is left unexplained in all major interpretations of
her but are features essential to her characterization.
Mythological
interpretations, for instance, arguing that Baba Yaga is a personified death, a
cloud or ancient goddess, all fail to explain why she would have these
extraordinary characteristics (Johns, 2004, p. 20). I hope to have presented an
additional reading of some of Baba Yaga’s features and her relation to the last
storytellers, still uninfluenced by the rigid character she took on, as the stories of
this magnificent folklore figure were written down.
8
Julia Wallhager
Bibliography
Benet, Sula. 1970. The Village of Viriatino; an ethnographic study of a Russian
village from before the revolution to the present. Garden City, N.Y.:
Anchor Books.
Burds, Jeffrey. 1998. Peasant dreams & market politics: labor migration and
the Russian village, 1861-1905. Pittsburgh, Pa: University of Pittsburgh
Press.
Costlow, Jane T. 2013. Heart-pine Russia: walking and writing the nineteenthcentury forest. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Dennison, T. K. 2011. The institutional framework of Russian serfdom.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Dixon-Kennedy, Mike. 1998. Encyclopedia of Russian and Slavic myth and
legend. Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO.
Falkus, Malcolm E. 1972. The industrialisation of Russia, 1700-1914.
[London]: Macmillan.
Forrester, Sibelan Elizabeth S., Helena Goscilo, Martin Skoro, and Jack David
Zipes. 2013. Baba Yaga: the wild witch of the East in Russian fairy
tales. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
Hellie, Richard. 1999. The economy and material culture of Russia, 1600-1725.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Huyssen, Andreas. 1986. After the great divide: modernism, mass culture,
postmodernism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Johns, Andreas. 2004. Baba Yaga: the ambiguous mother and witch of the
Russian folktale. New York: Peter Lang.
Kanatchikov, S., and Reginald E. Zelnik. 1986. A radical worker in Tsarist
Russia: the autobiography of Semën Ivanovich Kanatchikov. Stanford,
Calif: Stanford University Press.
MacKay, John. 2009. Four Russian serf narratives. Madison, Wis: University
of Wisconsin Press.
Melton, Edgar. 1993. “Household economies and communal conflicts on a
Russian serf estate, 1800-1817.” Journal of Social History 26 (3).
Moon, David. 1999. The Russian peasantry, 1600-1930: the world the peasants
made. London: Longman.
Raeff, Marc. 1971. Imperial Russia 1682-1825; the coming of age of modern
Russia. New York: Knopf.
“St. Petersburg.” Retrieved 16 December 2014 from: http://www.encyclopedia.
com/topic/Saint_Petersburg_Russia.aspx.