News from hell in the Kargopol region: problem of chronological stratification of local tradition

News from Hell is a type of pamphlet, well known in various ethno-confessional European traditions of the Modern History, widely spread in Russia since the late XVIII century, and regularly recorded in both handwritten and oral forms in Belarus, Romania, the Baltic states, Central Russia, and the Volga region, as well as in the Russian North, Ural and Altai. The solution to the problem of chronological stratification of the handwritten editions or copies and the oral versions of the popular pamphlet directly depends on a consistent description of the evolution of the studied satire within the framework of local oral and handwritten traditions. In 1958, an expedition of Lomonosov Moscow State University recorded an oral version of Kargopol News from Hell, which determines the upper time limit of the satire’s life in the local tradition. The lower limit of the local tradition is marked by the handwritten satire of the late XVIII century A Letter from a Former Olonets Clerk Klim Nefediev to His Son Artamon, Written from the Afterlife, which used motifs, images and topoi corresponding with the News from Hell and represented the avant-text of the studied oral tradition.