In July 1900, Mikhail Nesterovich Speransky (later an academician, a famous Slavist, who was repressed in the 1930s) recorded spiritual poems in the Rylsky district of the Kursk province (1). The blind man Grigory Artamonov sang him twelve traditional works, including one non-traditional, which Speransky in his publication entitled "About Alexander II" (Speransky M. Dukhovnye stikhi iz Kurskoi gubernii Spiritual poems from the Kursk province // Ethnographic review. 1901. N 3. P. 65). The fact that this song belongs to the category of spiritual poems was not indisputable for Speransky because of the unconventional content. Other collectors, having recorded it in other regions of Russia, designated the genre differently. But the very first, anonymous publication, which extracted a similar text from the investigative file ten years before Speransky's recording, reported that it was "one of the 'verses '" sung by the sectarian-

1 The name "spiritual verses", which belongs to their performers, was fixed in science for a multi-genre complex of common people's pious hymns, the themes of which were mainly taken from the Holy Scriptures. The lives of saints and works close to them in content, some of which the church did not recognize as true (these are the so-called apocrypha).

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mi in the Land of the Don Army (How Russia cried about its White Tsar) / / Russkaya starina. 1890. N 12. P. 689). And the last publication cited below, carried out in 1916 by a major folklorist Nikolai Yevgenyevich Onchukov (later also repressed), was entitled "A Verse about Alexander II" and was a recording from a blind man who sang for passengers of the 3rd class on a steamer traveling along the Kama River.

In the Voronezh province, this song was recorded as a "psalm", which, according to the collector, "is sung in the villages to the tune of a long and sad one" (Ketrits B. E. "Psalm" about the Emperor Alexander II / / Historical Bulletin. 1898. N 3. P. 1126). Other publishers identified the work they recorded as a song. In Tambov province, it was recorded from a poor old man on Holy Thursday. To the accompaniment of a Cossack lyre, the song was performed by her audience, the blind people on the Don and in Kharkov. In Kuban, a recording made there was printed "from the words of a torbanist singer, an old servant" (A song about the Sovereign Alexander II-Tsar. Recorded (...) A. S. Popov // Kuban collection. Ekaterinodar, 1899. Vol. 5. P. 1). From the Cossacks, the song was also recorded by well-known publishers of folklore of the Astrakhan and Orenburg Cossack troops A. A. Dogadin and A. I. Myakutin. In all, I know of ten records published over the course of twenty-seven years, from 1890 to 1916. And all of them were made in a relatively short time, and their geography indicates a wide and rapid distribution of the song, which, apparently, was determined solely by its content.

The work remained unexplored, but some thoughts were still expressed. One of the first publicators wrote: "Before us is a lyric-epic song, true, weak in artistic terms, but concerning a fact that undoubtedly made a strong impression on the people; both the personality of the tsar-liberator and his tragic death should have been preserved in the people's memory." Noting that the circumstances of the song's origin are unknown, the publisher recognized it as significant that "the work has gone to the people and is listened to in different places to the sounds of the lyre; he believed that if the song is "grafted in", then "that mysterious process of artistic processing that took place in our ancient songs and which gives the right of authorship may come to all the people." In the meantime, the song has little connection "with the usual folk-poetic techniques", and "as for the form, its peculiarity is the rhyme, which is only occasionally accidentally found in an old song, but is common in songs of a modern warehouse, which, of course, should be attributed to the introduction of the people to literary verse" (Kulman N. Song on the death of the Emperor Alexander P (recorded in the region of the Don Army) / / Russkaya starina. 1900. N 6. P. 653-654).

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The content of the song is such that after 1917 ,the" process of artistic processing " of it had to stop. In its fixed form, this work has a volume of 48 to 89 verses. The recorded versions, differing in essence only in the degree of completeness, convey one version, which belongs mainly to the genre of chronicle historical songs. Few recordings of such songs have been made in Russia since the beginning of the 17th century. The song about the death of the emperor stands out among them by the presence of sometimes significant emotional coloring. Here is the beginning of this song with abbreviations and a summary of its central episode recorded by Onchukov:

You listen, friends,

All about the White Tsar.

My dear Sir

Alexandra the Second Tsar,

He served with love,

I wanted to give everyone freedom.

He corrected all the laws,

I heard poor people moaning.

The villains began to judge,

As if to destroy the king.

The desperate ones were bribed.

They were given grenades in ruz,

They are cursed by God.

First day of March

The life of the tsar died.

It's scary to think and guess,

Raise your hands to the king!

Between the crowd of people

Didn't see it, split off

A big bang appeared

And striking the sovereign.

Then there was confusion,

There's a shock all over the damp earth,

And the passion was great,

As the royal blood flowed.

It goes on to describe in detail how the emperor was brought to the palace and the people were waiting for news, anticipating a tragic outcome. Mention is made of the humanity of Alexander II and the liberation of the peasants:

You laid down your life for it,

That he did a lot of good,

All laws were repealed

And he freed the peasants.

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The song ends with an expression of people's grief and hope for the tsar's son:

Let's ask the Lord,

May God make the King wise:

A son by the wisdom of his father

He'll see it through to the end.

(Onchukov N. The death of Alexander II / / Zhivaya starina. 1916. Issue 4. pp. 327-328).

The final lines were apparently dictated by Alexander III's well-known statement of March 2, 1881: "I accept the crown with determination. I will try to follow my father and finish the work he started."

This motif was developed in a spiritual verse recorded in the Lower Volga region (it was kindly pointed out to me by A. A. Panchenko). The lengthy text, consisting of 113 lines, was based on the song just quoted: the first third of the verse is its arrangement. What follows is a retelling of Alexander II's dying monologue:

He's in the king's palace

Said the word at the end

- after "the Synod and the entire royal white family" and even the "all earthly courts" that had stopped their activities "appeared before him" at his request; the dying sovereign

Alexander blessed -

"Here's your scepter and crown

And my entire royal palace,

My sword and crown,

And a sad road;

Another blue ribbon

And my golden seal.

Please manage the truth,

To glorify my faithful.

A number of my father's instructions emphasize the demand for a fair trial of terrorists:

And my villains are bought

Please call me personally;

You can legally convict them,

In the glory of God you will abide.

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Alexander P himself fulfilled his earthly destiny:

Leaving my body behind,

I go to the Father God boldly.

The heavens will rejoice,

Teles will be famous,

I will rejoice in the sky,

Forever with God to interpret.

In his dying address to the Almighty, the emperor asks him to protect his subjects from the machinations of revolutionary troublemakers and terrorists:

Lord, clean up the body,

Keep my loyal ones safe,

You arrange them, rest them,

Get rid of all the villains."

(Solosin I. I. Poems of Akhtuba sectarians / / Zhivaya starina. 1912. Issue 1, pp. 156-159).

Attempts by revolutionaries to assassinate Alexander II began fifteen years before his death, which was the result of the seventh attempt. The first of them was also reflected in the song-small in volume, but it conveyed the fait accompli quite accurately:

In the sixty-sixth year

God has passed the trouble by.

Karakozov exactly the mole

I made my way through the crowd.

The king was coming out of the garden,

The villain shot announced.

Komissarov flew up

And he managed to save the tsar.

The black cloud has passed:

The tsar was surrounded by a bullet.

This typical example of a common folk song-chronicle was accompanied by a note from the collector, who in this case was also the publisher: "The event of saving the life of the emperor during an assassination attempt on April 4, 1866, at the Summer Garden in St. Petersburg is celebrated. The peasant Osip I. Komissarov pushed the arm of the nobleman Karakozov at the moment when the latter was shooting at the emperor" (Epics and songs of the Astrakhan Cossacks / Collected and put on the notes by A. A. Dogadin. Astrakhan, 1911, Issue 2, No. 22).

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The song recorded only by this collector also did not receive artistic processing, being forced out of the folk repertoire by responses to the regicide on March 1, 1881. The tragic event caused the appearance of several more works of various genres. Especially interesting is the song, in which the chronicle basis is processed by traditional folklore visual means in a manner that really resembles spiritual poems. Its text was written in the Kostroma district from a 65-year-old peasant Dmitry Stepanovich Vaulin under the title "Lamentable Song about the death of the Tsar-liberator". Here are excerpts from it (in its full form, the work contains 83 verses)::

A terrible cloud was gathering

Vranov chernyeh, krovozhadnyeh

...................

On killing evil yasna sokol,

Light-winged, quick-eyed.

This is followed by a dialogue between the future assassins and the former conspirators who blew up the hall of the Winter Palace from the basement, where the emperor at that moment, contrary to their expectations, was not there, and carried out other failed attempts.

We tried and tried,

An attempt was made on the life of the falcon,

Not once, but several times,

His nest was compromised,

Yes, and vzbrvali warm nest.

I didn't have to kill Yasna Sokol,

Clear falcon, eagle soaring,

And with the eagle, with the queen,

With the young chicks of the golden wings.

And our deeds have fallen to dust.

......................

No bullets fly into it well aimed,

His enemies ' hands are shaking;

Only with it will meet-will be frightened,

Well-aimed shots make mistakes.

Komisarov was-he intervenes;

The bullet bounces in the air.

The song then sets out the plot for a new assassination attempt:

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We'll invent a death unheard of,

Nedomyslennu chelovekam:

Let's prepare terrible bombs,

With fierce fire, shaking thunder,

Stunning mother earth.

......................

Only with greatness will we meet,

We'll drop them off at his feet

And hit her on the cheese ground.

The infernal flame will explode the bomb.

......................

Sing off his gray feathers,

Podshibet him frisky legs,

He will also tear off the flesh, like an evil tormentor.

......................

Kostroma peasants will no longer be there

Komisarova and Susanina, Protect the special powers:

They lay down in their mother's bosom.

As they came up with, so they did.

The final verses of the song, the solemn key of which prompted you to switch to a different size, also have a more clearly marked rhyme, but then return to the previous size.:

How the ship with the zloty pearls was swallowed up by the sea,

How cloud cover closed the sun of day,

As the whirlwinds extinguished the bright panikadilo,

Life of the king and protector,

All the peasants of the liberator,

The white King, the just One -

Alexander the Second, the Good and wise!

(N. Selifontov Two folk songs about the Emperor Alexander II / / Russkaya starina. 1900. N 11. pp. 364-365).

The song emphasizes that Ivan Susanin and Osip Komissarov, who saved Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich and Emperor Alexander II, are Kostroma residents. By the way, it was in the Kostroma district that two more songs were recorded on the same subject.

A completely different type of "Song in memory of Alexander II", recorded by the Terek Cossacks, which formed, starting in 1832, the emperor's own convoy. Apparently originating in their midst, it is one of the examples of a "late song" that owes its "impact

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literary versification", which "affected such elements of her poetic technique as stanzas and rhyme" (Historical songs of the XIX century. L., 1973. p. 25). The song has echoes of the poetics of the so-called "cruel romances":

He died in the depths of everyday life,

Suffering for people's happiness.

Hand struck by the villainous,

He fell victim to vulgar people.

By genre, this is more likely not a chronicle song, but a historical ballad, which, however, retained some elements of chronicality. Here is the end of it:

The Russian Tsar who was killed in Russia,

Received the crown of thorns.

The escorts are rushing in rows;

Crowds surround the palace.

They didn't know how to save the living,

Now they're running to the rescue;

They didn't have time to help the living one,

So at least they saved the dead one.

The Russian Tsar who was killed in Russia

By the hand of the Russian people,

He lies, a sufferer, drenched

With your sacred blood.

What is our Orthodox tsar for,

Why did he suffer so much?

Is it because he gave glory to the fatherland?

(Gusev A. Beliefs, holidays, songs and fairy tales in St. (anitsa) Sbornik materialov dlya opisaniya mestnostey i plemen Kavkaza [Collection of materials for describing the localities and tribes of the Caucasus]. Tiflis, 1893. Vol. 16. Department I. P. 346).

The oral art of the people responded to the death of the tsar-liberator not only with songs, but also with semi-prosaic tales. A curious text written by the collector on the way from Moscow to Vladimir was titled by the performer-a resident of the village of Zuevo, Vladimir province - " The memory of the Russian people, ordinary people, about the tsar-deliverer, Alexander II, now deceased in Boz." Actually, the death of the sovereign is not discussed, but the actions of the emperor are listed in detail - in the common perception - and the failed attempts on him by revolutionary terrorists are mentioned. Here are excerpts from this 60-line text::

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Currently-century

A God-given person appeared to us from above,

Who has done much good in the Russian world

And in many subjects, evil-ignorance has been reduced.

......................

He destroyed slavery,

Piteyniy otkup suspended,

Established judicial reform,

He allowed his state to make a twofold and threefold loan

And thus encouraged the whole of Russia.

Mentally and telegraphically, I restored relations everywhere,

Steam train tracks in many places.,

He abolished corporal punishment for criminals.

......................

General military service, equality created,

And thus quenched the murmur of the people, -

It was as if an angel from heaven had given him all the good news!

And during the Turkish War,

He was on active duty for seven months,

He did the holy work, quenched the wrath of the Lord,

He defended his fatherland faith and protected the whole Race with himself.

After giving a detailed account of how the Turkish shell that exploded at the feet of the tsar's horse did not harm the emperor, the story turns to the hospitals that the sovereign took care of -

And visited hospital places,

He comforted the sick with a kind word.

And at the end of the war, in immediate time

I visited my capital, Moscow.

Military, active and serving personnel

I enjoyed a sumptuous dinner,

And I thanked them for their military campaign,

And he praised God for his victory.

Having also reported on the tsar's gratitude to civilian donors for the liberation war, the story finally turns to the failure of attempts by "evil-minded enemies-villains" -

And the Most High Hand

From the six actions of the villains, he was protected by,

Kept the royal belly (that is, life)

And she did a great miracle

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And in the same hour she visited the whole Race,

Just like the lightning illuminated,

And all over Rasei a great thunder broke out,

And every Orthodox Christian has been crossed more than once

And shouted: Hurrah! Hurray!!

The collector also relayed the reaction of the crowd gathered at the railway station where the recording was being made:

"- Hurrah! Urr-a!! - what is it? - said the audience enthusiastically.

"Praise be to God, the tsar! - the old man finished loudly and enthusiastically (...)

"Praise! The crowd chimed in again... - Praise!! "(Prugavin A. Vox populi: From the ethnographer's Notebook // Severny Vestnik, 1885, No. 1, ed. I. pp. 115-117).

These exclamations, apparently, were intended not for the deceased Alexander II, but for the reigning Alexander the Third. The current tsar was getting a glimpse of the people's attitude towards his father.

Concluding the conversation about the oral and poetic responses to the death of Alexander II, it should be recalled that in Russian folklore for more than three hundred years there was a tradition to mourn the deceased monarch. The form of historical songs dedicated to this event has long been established. They were performed as a monologue of a sentry standing at the coffin and complaining about the troubles in the army caused by the death of the sovereign: the sentry mourns him on behalf of his colleagues and colleagues. A modern historian who has studied more than forty published recordings of these songs, which are dedicated to the tsars and emperors of the XVI-XIX centuries, concluded that, having arisen in 1505 on the occasion of the death of Ivan the Third, the song subsequently "was subjected to repeated alterations caused by attempts to update it" (Amelkin A. O. About whom does the sentry cry? // Live antiquity. 1996. N 2. P. 30).

Oral poetry responded quite differently to the death of Alexander II. Radical differences from the similar songs of the previous ones are due to the exclusivity of the fact itself: the emperor was killed in public by his subjects, who allegedly spoke on behalf of the people whom he had also benefitted. Chronicle folk songs conveyed emotionally colored vivid impressions of eyewitnesses and were widely distributed, serving as the basis for further song-making. The ethical assessment of the murder of the tsar-liberator brought such songs closer to spiritual verses. The works were created in various genre forms, but the central motif was the assessment of what the terrorists had done from the standpoint of the Orthodox attitude to regicide.

Saint-Petersburg

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