Axiological approach in epic studies: value analysis of the Russian epic in the second half of the XX century. Part 2, the 1970th - early the 1980th

The author continues the series of articles on the formation of value analysis of Russia epos (bylins) considers the period of the second half of the XX century. This period is characterized by the widespread class approach to the analysis of the values of epics, complicating an unbiased axiological study. Idealizing heroes, giving them a familiar set of “absherona” qualities, Soviet researchers were deprived of a chance to explore the special “psychology” of the epics, where the hero is not complete but is moving to victory, battling their own weaknesses and passions. Soviet epic scholars found themselves in a methodological impasse. On the one hand, they felt a powerful axiological (and as a consequence - didactic) “charge” of the epic. On the other hand, scientists could not describe the specific values of epics (except abstract “patriotism” and even more abstract “humanism”) because they ignored the negative spiritual experience of epic heroes. To justify morally dubious actions of the heroes, it was necessary to adjust under these acts hastily reconstructed “criteria of morality” of Russians, allegedly cardinally changing over time. Students and followers V. I. Propp, who tried to apply to the epics method of structural analysis, as well as developments of the so-called “Finnish school”, sought to identify in the Russian epic typical “story schemes”, comparable to externally similar schemes of the epic of other peoples. On this basis, they wanted to show the genetic connection of epics with the rites that modern ethnographers recorded in peoples at an early stage of development. These examples indicate the weakness of the structuralist approach and its incompatibility with the analysis of the meanings and values of the epic. Supporters of the initiation school, developing a comparative-typological method, identified and classified only the standard nodes of the epic composition, playing a technical role and easily correlated with the “common places” of folk poetics of different peoples. This article made a General conclusion that the unique ideological and artistic content of the epics is not “fit” in the classification model of story diagrams and remained outside the bold typological comparison, which is so rich in works of the Russian participating the 1970th and early the 1980th.