"Kolobok" is a Russian folk tale. Plot, history, characters

Everyone knows the folk tale about Kolobok, but few know what it is - “ bun" In the fairy tale, this character is represented in the form of round bread. He escaped from his grandmother and grandfather, who baked him, outwitted the hare, wolf and bear, but was still eaten by a fox. So what kind of character is this Kolobok? Is there spherical bread?

It turns out that kolobok is a traditional round flatbread in ancient Rus'. Other names for kolobok - kolobukha, kalabushka, kolobushka. Kolobukha or kolobok is a round flatbread that had a spherical shape. This shape was achieved through the process of preparing bread from a mixture of different types of flour.

If you remember how the “grandmother and grandfather” prepared the kolobok, you can find out the basic recipe for preparing this dish - to prepare the kolobok, the grandmother “scraped the box and broomed the bottom.” It turns out that kalabushki were baked precisely from the remains of various flours (wheat, rye, oatmeal, etc.) and the remains of kneading. Due to the fact that the kolobok was a mixture of different types of flour, the proportion of leaven in the kolobok, according to the laws of biochemistry, always exceeded the proportion of leaven in bread made from homogeneous flour. Heterogeneous flour gave an extraordinary effect. The bread turned out to be extremely fluffy, fluffy, soft, and baked. It was the combination of various types of flour that contributed to the rise of the flatbread, which by the end of cooking turned into a real ball. This bread had a special taste and did not go stale for a long time. It was on the basis of this product that the fairy tale about the revived Kolobok was invented.

One can even guess how folk imagination came up with the original plot for everyone famous work. It is likely that the person who first came up with this story, cooked or witnessed the preparation of kolbukha. Because of its round shape, the bun could, as if alive, roll off the table onto the floor, which led to the creation of a funny fairy tale about how bread escapes from grandparents.

Another interesting thing about the tale about Kolobok is that, apparently, this plot was invented a very, very long time ago. Surprisingly similar plot about runaway round bread exists in many countries around the world. There are similar tales in Uzbek, Tatar, German, Scandinavian, English and others folk compositions. In fairy tales different nations world, the escaped bread experiences various adventures (in Norwegian version he is eaten by a pig, and in German he gives himself up to be eaten by three orphans), but their basis is very similar (round bread runs away from those who baked it, and for a long time escapes from various animals until he is eaten), which may lead to the idea that the tale of Kolobok was invented in very ancient times and was subsequently preserved among different peoples who were formed from one ancestral people.

Gingerbread Man cartoon:

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Folk tales belong to oral folk art, folklore. Such fairy tales were not written down - they were passed on from mouth to mouth, told, “overgrown” with details, modified, and as a result, the same fairy tale plot could exist simultaneously in many variations.


At the same time, some fairy tales are repeated in folklore different countries. And “Kolobok” is no exception. According to the classifier of fairy-tale plots, the story about someone who ran away from his grandparents belongs to the type of story about a “runaway pancake,” and not only Slavic peoples. For example, the American Gingerbread Man is the hero of the same story about how baked goods come to life, run away from their creators and end up being eaten anyway. This story can be found among German and Uzbek, English and Tatar fairy tales, in Scandinavia and other places around the world.


Thus, “Kolobok” is truly a people who have been retelling this story to each other for centuries. However, in recent decades, we have most often become acquainted with this story by reading collections of fairy tales. And the text published in them actually has an author.

Who wrote "Kolobok" - the author of the generally accepted text

Folklorists began recording Russian fairy tales as early as mid-19th century. Since this time, collections of fairy tales and legends written down in Russia have been actively published. different corners countries. The same stories appeared in them in many versions. And each of the versions, recorded from the words of the narrator, had its own advantages and disadvantages.


And at the end of the 30s of the 20th century, Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy decided to prepare certain “standardized” versions of Russian folk tales for children's book publishing houses. He met with folk storytellers, studied many versions of folk tales recorded in different parts of the country, chose the “indigenous”, the most interesting one from them - and added vivid verbal turns to it or plot details from other versions, “gluing” together several texts, editing, adding. Sometimes in the process of such “restoration” of the plot he had to add something, but Tolstoy, who had a very keen sense of the poetics of Russian folk art, created in the same style. And the fairy tale “Kolobok” was also included in the number folk stories, processed by Tolstoy.


Essentially in in this case there was talk about the author's adaptation of folk tales, which Alexey Tolstoy performed brilliantly. The result of his work were two collections of folk tales published in the forties, as well as a posthumous publication in 1953. Since then, in most cases, Russian folk tales have been published in the USSR (and then in post-Soviet Russia) precisely under his editorship.


Therefore, Alexei Tolstoy can rightfully be called the author of the fairy tale “Kolobok” - or at least a co-author. After all, despite the fact that the plot of this story relates to folk stories, it was he who wrote the generally accepted (and very popular) text.

who wrote the fairy tale Kolobok

  1. People..
  2. I won’t give the exact name of the author. Kolobok is Russian folk tale. The author is collective - the people.
  3. hmm she seems like a folk
  4. This is a folk tale, which means it was written by the people. someone composed a fairy tale for their child, and then passed it on to others, and they passed it on to someone else. The tale was slightly “modified”, but the meaning remained.
  5. grandfather for granddaughter
  6. the people came up with it. and written by A. N. Afanasyeva.
  7. This is a Russian folk tale
  8. Russian folktale
  9. This is a folk tale, which means someone from the people invented it
  10. What is the author of the kolobok fairy tale?
  11. People. This is oral folk art. And brilliant;)
  12. The fairy tale Kolobok was invented by the people.
  13. People-father.
  14. Russian traditional.
  15. Folk tale.
  16. "It's called FOLKLR.
    Previously, fairy tales were only retold; they simply did not know how to write.
    Later, there were even people who collected these folk tales from various villages and outskirts.
  17. The kolobok was written by the people because it’s a Russian folk tale
  18. Lisa wrote (before breakfast), under the dictation of Kolobok himself...
  19. people

    Kolobo#769;k is a character of the Russian folk tale of the same name, depicted as a small, yellow, spherical bread (in contrast to the foreign loaf, baton - French “stick”), but taking on the fabulous image of a talking creature.
    Kolobok is a diminutive of kolobok, round loaf of bread, bread 1). In the Tver region, kolub#769;kha dumpling, valen, kolob#769;n thick flatbread.

    Vasmer's etymological dictionary considers the origin from the word kolo (wheel) doubtful.
    In 1610-1613, paintings of royal food were created in Moscow. The paintings contained a list of dishes served on various days at the royal table. The list mentions the Kolob dish, consisting of 3 scoops of semolina flour, 25 eggs, and 3 hryvnias of beef lard. The spatula is not a currently known measure.
    In the fairy tale, the bun is created by an old man and an old woman by throwing it around the barns and scraping along the bottom of the tree like spherical bread, which suddenly comes to life and runs away from the house. The plot of the fairy tale is a chain of homogeneous episodes depicting meetings with various talking animals (representatives of the fauna) intending to eat him, but the bun escapes from everyone except the fox. With each animal the bun enters into a discussion, in which it is the source of logical induction? argues for his departure: I left my grandmother, I left my grandfather, and I will leave you, bear (wolf, hare). The fox, through deception, pretending to be partially deaf, catches him in his vanity and, taking advantage of his kindness (expressed in his readiness to repeat the song closer to the fox’s ear and mouth), eats him. In form, the fairy tale goes back to the modern European morality books, ridiculing the base vices of the soul. Source? . The tale about the kolobok is built on the principle of cumulation. Source? .

    The image of the bun is close to the English gingerbread man (another version: gingerbread man), however, the Russian version of the fairy tale appeared in print much earlier than the English one - in 1873, in the first volume of “Russian Folk Tales” by A. N. Afanasyev. While "The Gingerbread Boy" was first published in 1875.

    At the same time, in some studies by the Institute of the Russian Language, there are versions of the fairy tale with seven characters, each of whom takes a bite from Kolobok, and the last one eats it completely. However, it cannot be digested, so the characters regurgitate the eaten pieces one by one, and Kolobok, gathering the pieces again, continues his journey. It is believed that in this option fairy tales allegorically describe the phases of the moon and their periodicity.

  20. Togolok Moldo invented

"Kolobok"

Kolobok- a character from the folk tale of the same name, depicted in the form of a small spherical wheat bread, which escaped from the grandparents who baked it, from various animals (a hare, a wolf and a bear), but was eaten by a fox.

The tale about Kolobok is found in Russian and Ukrainian folklore, and also has analogues in the fairy tales of many other peoples: the American “Gingerbread Man”, the English “Johnny Donut”. The plot is also found in Scandinavian, German, Uzbek, Tatar and other fairy tales. According to the Aarne-Thompson plot classifier, the tale belongs to the 2025 type - “the runaway pancake.”

Etymology of the word[ | ]

Kolobok - diminutive of kolob- “rolled lump, ball; small, round loaf, bread; unleavened dough dumpling." In Tver dialects there are words kolobukha"dumpling, lump" coloban"thick flatbread" talk about"shrink" A thick, round flatbread made into a bread-like lump, almost a ball, or swelling to a ball shape at the end of baking.

Word kolob probably formed from the root of Old Russian. colo"wheel" using a suffix -b- .

Some researchers consider the word borrowed, for example from Greek. κόλλαβος "wheat bread" or from Swedish. klabb “chock”, Norse. klabb “com” or from other Scand. kolfr “beam, pole”, but such comparisons are unconvincing from a phonetic point of view. Sometimes the word is compared to Latvian. kalbaks “loaf, crust of bread.”

culinary product[ | ]

Fairy tale adaptations[ | ]

Using the Kolobok image[ | ]

At the beginning of 2011, the Ulyanovsk region expressed its desire to be called “the birthplace of Kolobok.” The reason was a statement by local historian, associate professor at Ulyanovsk State University Sergei Petrov. According to him, in the old days in the Volga region they called the remains of dough “kabolyatka”.

The image of Kolobok is planned to be used to develop the tourism industry in the region. Projects are being considered to create an interactive gaming theme park based on the Russian folk tale "Kolobok", which will include the Kolobok Estate, Kolobodrom, a children's playground, and the "Simbirsk Koloboks" production line with the production of Berliners in branded packaging with the support of the Governor of the Ulyanovsk Region Sergei Morozov.

Currently, in the Ulyanovsk region, souvenirs are made in the form of painted koloboks: “kolebyatka” - a girl and “kobyatko” - a boy.

From 1969 to 1992, the children's illustrated audio magazine “Kolobok” was published in the USSR, the main literary hero which he tells to readers and listeners instructive stories.

see also [ | ]

Notes [ | ]

  1. Russian folk tales by A. N. Afanasyev: In 3 volumes. M.: Nauka, 1984. T.1. Notes on page 445. No. 36.
  2. Chistov K.V. Comparative index of plots. East Slavic fairy tale. L., 1979.
  3. What is KOLOB
  4. // Explanatory dictionary of the living Great Russian language: in 4 volumes / author's compilation. V. I. Dal. - 2nd ed. - St. Petersburg. : Printing house M. O. Wolf, 1880-1882.

When Russian children reach a certain age, they begin to read Russian folk tales, for example, “The Ryaba Hen”, “Turnip”, “Kolobok”, “The Fox and the Hare”, “The Cockerel - the Golden Comb”, “Sister Alyonushka and Brother Ivanushka”, “Geese-Swans”, “The Little Thumb”, “The Frog Princess”, “Ivan Tsarevich and Gray wolf", and many others.

And everyone understands that if fairy tales are “Russian folk”, it means that they were written by the Russian people. However, all the people cannot engage in writing at once. This means that fairy tales must have specific authors, or even one author. And there is such an author.

The author of those fairy tales that have been published in the USSR since the early 1940s and are now published in Russia and the CIS countries as “Russian folk” was Russian Soviet writer Alexey Nikolaevich Tolstoy, better known as the author of such novels as “Peter the Great”, “Aelita”, “Engineer Garin’s Hyperboloid”.

To be more precise, Count Alexei Tolstoy was the author not of the plots of these fairy tales, but of their currently generally accepted texts, their final, “canonical” edition.

Beginning in the second half of the 1850s, individual enthusiasts from among the Russian nobles and commoners began to record the tales that different grandmothers and grandfathers told in the villages, and subsequently many of these recordings were published in the form of collections.

In the 1860s - 1930s in Russian Empire and in the USSR such collections as “Great Russian Tales” by I.A. were published. Khudyakova (1860-1862), “Russian folk tales” by A.N. Afanasyev (1864), “Tales and legends of the Samara region” by D.N. Sadovnikova (1884), “Krasnoyarsk collection” (1902), “Northern Tales” by N.E. Onchukov (1908), “Great Russian Tales of the Vyatka Province” by D.K. Zelenin (1914), “Great Russian Tales of the Perm Province” by the same D.K. Zelenin (1915), “Collection of Great Russian fairy tales from the Archives of the Russian Geographical Society” by A.M. Smirnova (1917), “Tales of the Verkhnelensky region” by M.K. Azadovsky (1925), “The Five Speeches” by O.Z. Ozarovskaya, “Tales and Legends of the Northern Territory” by I.V. Karnaukhov (1934), “Tales of Kuprianikha” (1937), “Tales of the Saratov Region” (1937), “Tales” by M.M. Korgueva (1939).

The general principle of constructing all Russian folk tales is the same and clear - good triumphs over evil, but the plots and even interpretations of the same plot in different collections were completely different. Even the simple 3-page fairy tale “The Cat and the Fox” was written down in dozens of different versions.

Therefore, publishing houses and even professional literary scholars and folklore researchers were constantly confused in this multitude different texts about the same thing, and often disputes and doubts arose about which version of the tale to publish.

At the end of the 1930s A.N. Tolstoy decided to sort out this chaotic accumulation of records of Russian folklore, and prepare uniform, standard texts of Russian folk tales for Soviet publishing houses.

What method did he use to do this? Here is what Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy himself wrote about this:

“I do this: from the numerous variants of a folk tale, I choose the most interesting, indigenous one, and enrich it from other variants with vivid language turns and plot details. Of course, when collecting tales like this, I have to individual parts, or “restoration” of it, add something yourself, modify something, supplement what’s missing, but I do it in the same style.”

A.N. Tolstoy carefully studied all of the above collections of Russian fairy tales, as well as unpublished records from old archives; in addition, he personally met with some folk storytellers and wrote down their versions of fairy tales.

For each fairy tale, Alexey Tolstoy kept a special file cabinet in which the advantages and disadvantages were recorded. various options their texts.

Ultimately, he had to write all the fairy tales anew, using the method of “assembling a fairy tale from separate parts,” that is, compiling fragments, and at the same time, fragments of fairy tales were very seriously edited and supplemented with texts of his own composition.

In the comments of A.N. Nechaev to the 8th volume of the Collected Works of A.N. Tolstoy in ten volumes (M.: State Publishing House fiction, 1960, p. 537-562) are given specific examples, how Alexey Nikolaevich Tolstoy very significantly modified the “source books” of Russian folk tales, and how his author’s texts differ quite seriously from the original versions of the corresponding fairy tales in other collections.

The result of the author's processing by A.N. Tolstoy's collections of Russian folk tales were published in 1940 and 1944. The writer died in 1945, so some fairy tales were published from manuscripts posthumously, in 1953.

Since then, in almost all cases when Russian folk tales were published in the USSR, and then in the CIS countries, they were published based on the original texts of Alexei Tolstoy.

As already mentioned, the author’s adaptation of the “folk” versions of fairy tales by A.N. Tolstoy was very different.

Is it good or bad? Definitely good!

Alexei Tolstoy was an unsurpassed master artistic word, in my opinion, he was the best Russian writer of the first half of the 20th century, and with his talent he could “bring to mind” even very weak texts.

The most typical and well-known example:

Alexey Nikolaevich Tolstoy took a very mediocre book by the Italian writer Carlo Collodi, “Pinocchio, or the Adventures of a Wooden Doll,” and based on this plot he wrote an absolutely brilliant fairy tale, “The Golden Key, or the Adventures of Pinocchio,” which turned out to be many times more interesting and exciting than the original.

Many images from “The Adventures of Pinocchio” have become part of daily life, in Russian folklore, and in Russian mass consciousness. Remember, for example, the classic saying “I work like Papa Carlo,” or the TV show “Field of Miracles” (and the Field of Miracles in the tale about Pinocchio, by the way, was in the Land of Fools), there are a lot of jokes about Pinocchio, in a word, Alexei Tolstoy managed to turn Italian plot in a truly Russian way, and beloved by the people for many generations.