Composing Russianness : Folk Music and Russian Identity in the Twentieth Century

This paper discusses the socio-historical issues that determine how Russians have defined popular concepts of Russianness through the wide and culturally deep phenomenon of music. Antithetical and mutually hostile attempts at defining and utilizing the narod have confused the Russian sense of self so that only something as soulful, accessible and ancient as folk song could reconcile the mystical Russian dusha (soul) with the self-contradictory history of Russia and the Soviet Union.