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Fairy tale is a legacy
people love fairy tales.

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VALERY GERGIEV
Conductor
People love something
where they can travel with their minds,

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with their fantasies,
with their hopes, in a way.

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This film is about tales and storytelling

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and how their influence is present even today
throughout Russian culture.

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Woven into Russia's literary heritage,

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they have become part of the whole way
that Russians see the world.

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Every Russian child learns by heart words
by the great poet Pushkin.

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His tale of 'Ruslan and Lyudmila'
is told not by a human but by a cat.

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By the sea stands a green oak.

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There's a golden chain around that oak and,
day and night,

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a wise cat keeps walking around and around
the tree on the end of the chain.

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He walks to the right and starts a song,
he walks to the left and tells a fairy tale.

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Fairy tales are based on many, many factors.

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You read them, read them several times
when you are 10 years old

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and you are full of, you know, pictures,
full of stories, you remember them.

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Fairy tales are everywhere
in a Russian childhood

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not only told by parents and by grandparents

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but found in literature and painting
and in the world of music, dance and theatre.

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Tchaikovsky, who often wrote music for children
and about their lives,

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described the theatre
as a place of fairy-tale enchantment.

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He said that 'the theatre is a place
where we come not just to listen but to see'.

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He observed that
theatre music must be like scene-painting

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simple, clear and colourful.

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TCHAIKOVSKY
The Nutcracker

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VERA PROCHOROVA
Teacher
Childhood and the world of magic go together.

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My childhood was like a fairy tale
and we are all the products of our childhood.

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NINA ZARKHI
Film Critic
For me childhood means something different.

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They're like a virtual reality
a parallel world.

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The theatre takes you away from reality,
especially from the boring side of reality.

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In the theatre you can imagine
that there are no borders,

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there are no limits,
only your belief in the beauty,

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or belief in the depth,
belief in the colour and the movement,

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you know, because movement always means
that you can do so many things,

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that's why ballet is so attractive.

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MUSORGSKY
Pictures at an Exhibition - Tuileries

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Pushkin wrote,
in his verse drama 'Evgeny Onegin',

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The dancer stands
she brushing the floor with one foot,

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turns slowly on the other one

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and suddenly she jumps, and flies as suddenly,
flies like thistledown on the lips of the wind.

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She coils and uncoils
and clicks one foot against the other.

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And they set out
into the big wide world.

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And they walked and walked and walked...

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In the contemporary classroom,

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myth and fairy tale are still
as resonant as they were

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when Pushkin wrote in his prelude to 'Ruslan'

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We received from our forefathers
a small legacy of folktales and songs.

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What can we say of them?

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If we treasure even the poorest of old coins,

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should we not preserve
the literary remains of our ancestors?

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My sword is made of damask steel.
And it will cut off your head.

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MUSORGSKY
Pictures at an Exhibition
- Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks

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These friends are all active
in Moscow's cultural life.

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ALEXANDER TIVOFEYEVSKY
Animator
There was a tradition where
the adults sat at the table and read Gogol

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and I, a 4 year old child
was allowed to sit and listen.

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What an honour to sit for me.

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Only later did I understand
that it was done especially for me,

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I thought it was they needed me to sit
and read Gogol's fairy tales

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and if I behaved properly
I would be allowed to listen.

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The roots of Russian fairy tale
as a modern work of art are here,

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deep in the Russian countryside,

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in the little village of Mikhailovskoye where
Alexander Pushkin spend much of his childhood.

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Here he first heard
the traditional village fairy tales,

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which he would later transform
into his own poetry.

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Pushkin is very good,
it's the best spiritual support

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it's the best mental and, I would say,

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brain training, brain sharpening and also
brain empowering, friend you can find.

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'Pushkin is our everything'
said the 19th century poet Appollon Grigoriev

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There would have been
no Russian literature without Pushkin.

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ALEXANDRE BUKOVSKY
Director Puskhin House
You see his nanny
Arianna Rodionova was illiterate

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but she knew many old talesegends,
sayings and songs

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and Pushkin studied the oral form.

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Nanny Arianna,
began each one of her tales with:

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In a cove by the sea stood an oak,

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and around the oak a gold chain
and on the end of it a cat.

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In 1828 in 'Ruslan and Lyudmilla',
there appeared the famous prologue

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'ln a sea cove, a green oak, etc.'

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Pushkin wrote:
Nanny my only female friend

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and only with her am I not bored.

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Or again this:
In the evening I listen to nanny's tales.

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I am amused about the holes
in my damned upbringing.

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How wonderful are these tales,
each one is a poem.

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Russia owes this woman a lot.

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Pushkin owed her
his deep knowledge of folklore

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and he made her name immortal.

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You remember the poem:

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True friend in all my time of trouble,
dear frail little dove of mine all alone

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languishing in a woodl
and hovel awaiting my return.

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And that little house of ours
with the slope down to the pond,

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surrounded by lilacs
and ponds which froze in winter

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and where we played on our sledges.

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And then the full spring
with the cherry orchard and the lilacs,

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first the violet then the blue
and last the white.

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And such a feeling of happiness
and joy and sunlight.

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No doubt there were rainy days
but for me each season was equally lovely.

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And when winter came
we knew we'd go sledging again.

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They could learn from their nurses,

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hey could hear from their parents
wonderful stories

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and you would always
have this very beautiful image,

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of course, of Russian fairytale world.

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GLINKA
Ruslan and Lyudmila

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The flower of love and springtime
will be resplendent at dawn

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with a magnificent beauty...

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In ancient, legendary times,
tales were told by the bard or 'bayan'.

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As Pushkin wrote:
Suddenly a pleasant sound rang out.

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At the sonorous running sound of the dulcimer
all fell silent, listened to the bard.

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And the sweet singer gave glory
to the enchanting Lyudmila and Ruslan,

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...The leaves are all scattered.

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You can always hear about wonderful costumes,
miraculous transformations,

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there would be always a danger,

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there would be always,
most probably, happy end.

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...in answer to love's call,

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But fate, coming to meet him,

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prepares for him an evil contest
with destruction...

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It provokes your own imagination,
even if you are a child 5, 7, 10 years old,

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to work on many more scenarios of your own,

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the fantasy is awakened and you become,

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even without knowledge
that it happened to you,

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you become small
but important Russian artist.

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Making young children into artists

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is something Russians traditionally
take very seriously.

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The rigorous and sometimes
harsh discipline of schools like the Gnessin

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and the Petersburg's Vaganova ballet academy
has produced virtuosi for over a century.

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Rachmaninov wrote:

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Now began a life of discipline
and serious study.

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Zverev's sister supervised us
with the utmost severity.

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Woe to him who began practice
five minutes late

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or finished five minutes early.
He would be treated without mercy.

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I was 10 years old when I realised that

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I had a very, very strong link
to my piano teacher.

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He put such high goals,
such incredible horizons in front of me

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and told me 'Go there'
and I knew I can't

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but he always would tell me:
'This is what you have to do! '

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We shouldn't forget the tradition goes
at least hundred and fifty years ago

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and the rules didn't change very much.

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There are very many schools in Russia,
it was, in a way, a fashion,

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at least I remember it extremely well,

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it was still the feeling of importance that
a boy or girl would go to normal school

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but it would be very nice and would be
a matter of even pride for the family

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that it would be a combination with lessons
in a music school,

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maybe learn something about paintings.

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They would also think of, maybe,
giving you a chance to attend dancing lessons,

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which was a very good thing.

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You cannot by command,
giving the orders,

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find another Tolstoy or Pushkin,
certainly not,

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but you can give
a certain degree of acceleration.

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In this specialist children's world
from which future artists grow,

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the teacher is not merely a master
and a severe disciplinarian,

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but a magician, a sorcerer
and a guide, a pied piper,

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someone whose own example asa performer
awakens the fantasy in children.

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This is Mark Pekarsky.

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In Stravinsky's 'Petrushka',

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the puppet theatre
becomes a world of transformation

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and the artist, the magician, is the
puppet master who brings the toys to life.

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STRAVINSKY
Petrushka

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And life was like a fairy tale, for example,

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we lived in the state institute
for theatrical art

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it was a splendid communal flat
Professor Mikhailov lived there,

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the famous expert in Russian Literature.

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He was separated from our family
by a curtain

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and behind the partition lived a policeman.

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On Sundays he got drunk
and started shooting

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And I lived with my step brother
and my grandmother

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and she used to shout 'Hit the deck! '

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KABALEVSKY
Nash Krai

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The system allowed that much space
that the media,

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so to say in a modern language,
would allow again

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culture, literature, museums,
symphonic or opera or ballet,

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live activities locally or nationwide
to be reported

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and to be always
in the conscience of people that

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this is what the best society in the world
will bring to the whole world one day.

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And this is what, again, our great leader
Vladimir Lenin wanted everyone to share.

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When I was 7 or 8 or 10 years old,
I was attending a normal school

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in Vladikavkaz in Northern Ossetia
in Caucasus, which is part of Soviet Union.

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There was a normal teacher
or teachers who would tell us,

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without much pressure on the kids,

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that Lenin was a very, very good boy

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and after he was grown
and became a very good young man,

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after he was grown and became
a very important revolutionary,

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he transformed our country to the better.

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That he tried to build the best society ever
built, that he wanted everyone to be equal,

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certainly everyone to be happy
and not only Lenin but also smaller people.

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PROKOFIEV
Symphony No. 7

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That was structurally the way for us
to live in the Soviet Union,

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at least this is what some people thought
was the best scenario

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for this 220, 230 million people
who lived in the Soviet Union.

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Then it looked like a land of paradise, dreams,
equality, brotherhood, freedom,

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freedom, freedom and freedom
and peace, and peace.

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You have to understand
the duality of this world.

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For example,
I found myself in the siege of Leningrad

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and once again the siege is for me
one of the happiest memories of my life

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because I was surrounded
by wonderful people

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who in dreadful conditions tried to ensure

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that a child's life remained wonderful
and so it was.

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I was full of love for everyone.

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Over time it revealed itself.
Because of that beginning and that love,

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the Russian fairy tale and Russian poetry
entered my life.

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I've given 40 years
to poetry and cartoons for children.

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One monster familiar to every Russian
is a tsar who never dies,

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Kashchei the lmmortal.

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00:29:21,007 --> 00:29:23,123
RIMSKY KORSAKOV
Kashchei the lmmortal

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it contains my death forever.

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The effects of her love are all-powerful,

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and many knights

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seeking my death have perished

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in her enchanted realm!

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Princess!
Come back to the castle.

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00:30:44,367 --> 00:31:04,278
Come and sit beside me,
and sing me a lullaby.

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SHOSTAKOVICH
Silly Little Mouse

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Goodnight children,
goodnight, goodnight...

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It's time to sleep,
time to go to bed.

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00:31:59,247 --> 00:32:02,956
Night is often presented not just as
a time of fears and fantasies,

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00:32:03,127 --> 00:32:05,482
but also of dreams and freedom.

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00:32:06,727 --> 00:32:09,958
In Pushkin's famous lines
it was a night-time animal,

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the cat, who created fairy tales
by walking round and round a tree.

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00:32:15,127 --> 00:32:17,766
And Pushkin's cat
can take you anywhere you want,

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free from the logic
of the grey realities of day

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GUBAIDULINA
The Cat Who Walked by ltself

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The cat is free.

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She is by herself.

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She went through the trees.

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Sounds, echoes, sighs...

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In his song cycle 'The Nursery',

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00:33:11,927 --> 00:33:17,797
the composer Mussorgsky shows a petulant child
rejecting the scary side of fairy-tale

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in favour of absurdity and slapstick.

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Nursey dear!
Wait a moment!

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I would rather hear about the King and Queen,

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MUSSORGSKY
The Nursery

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who beside the sea dwelt in a lovely palace.
He was lame and hobbled as he walked,

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when he stumbled down,
up a mushroom came!

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The Queen had such a nasty cold,
and in sneezing cracked all window panes.

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Yes, oh Nursey dear,
I don't want to hear about the wolf again.

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Let us leave him! Let me hear the other,
yes! That funny tale!

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It was Glinka who first chose to make
fairytale and fantasy the seed bed

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for a national operatic style.

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The princess with whom every Russian girl
can identify is Pushkin's beautiful Lyudmila.

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The young princess quietly bloomed,
and grew and grew, rose up and flowered,

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white of face and black of eyebrow,
meek and mild

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and a suitor came to seek her hand.

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GLINKA
Ruslan and Lyudmila

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Radiant Lel, be for ever with us,
give us days brimming with happiness!

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Shield our fate with your emerald wings!
By your mighty will preserve her from sorrows!

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Every heroine needs a hero.

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Glinka celebrates
the noble knight Prince Ruslan,

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Borodin conjures up Prince lgor.

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00:36:42,807 --> 00:36:45,844
The Soviet composer Gliere
chose llya Murometz,

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whose horse covered half a mile in one leap
and who announced his presence with the words:

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'A strong and mighty hero rode by here
llya Murometz.'

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You can defend your motherland,
you can find a hero,

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there will be always someone
who can save your country

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and I think not very different
it looked for the children of 19th century

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with what I can remember
as years of my own childhood.

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We came to believe
that heroes are important

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and national treasures
are of complete importance,

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never forgetting that you belong to something.

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BORODIN
Symphony No. 2

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Borodin was very attracted to
the opportunity simply

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to write something about
what he himself described 'bogary bogartista'

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which means, actually,
like 'mighty knights',

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'mighty', makes you feel,
feel somebody with a huge sword

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with, maybe, with a beard,
dressed as a warrior but mighty.

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The mainspring of such heroic stories
comes from the threat of supernatural powers

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omnipotent wizards like Chernobor
the dark god, who may strike at any time.

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And then, of course,

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in a Russian fairytale scenario
everyone should wake up

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and there would be two or three
or maybe more men, young men,

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most of them brave men,
they should rescue Lyudmilla.

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It was such a masterful end
and such an unbelievable fantasy of Pushkin

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would immediately make you
believe in all of that

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and would transport you, you know,
from realities of your class,

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realities of your, just small,
apartment where you live with your parents,

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you would really be totally taken away.

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To the Russian composer,

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the greatest imaginative challenge
is the quest

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the hero's journey to win treasure
or to release the captured heroine

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or conquer the forces of darkness.

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And the vast territory of Russia
offers endless possibilities.

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Russians in general understand
even subconsciously

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that they live in a very big Country.

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So there is a vast, enormous, huge space
for fantasies, for folklore, as we say,

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for miraculous transformations,
for incredible trips.

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You would be prepared to
believe in it completely.

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RIMSKY KORSAKOV
Sheherazade

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The earliest known Russian story of all

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is the twelfth-century epic
'The Lay of Prince lgor's Host'.

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It describes the archetypal legendary quest:

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00:43:58,207 --> 00:44:01,802
My men are renowned warriors,
swaddled to the sound of trumpets,

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nursed beneath helmets,
fed from the point of a spear.

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00:44:05,807 --> 00:44:08,924
The roads are known to them,
the ravines familiar to them,

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their bows are strung, their quivers open,
their sabres whetted.

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They race across the steppe like grey wolves,

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seeking honour for themselves
and glory for their prince.

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In 'Ruslan',
the climax to the archetypal quest

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comes in a confrontation
with a monstrous severed head.

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GLINKA
Ruslan and Lyudmila

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The eternal sleep of decomposing knights.

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00:44:49,727 --> 00:45:00,479
I guard them from uninvited guests!

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I am slain!

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The sword which I so desired!

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00:45:38,047 --> 00:45:48,400
But who are you?
And whose is this sword?

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TCHAIKOVSKY
The Sleeping Beauty

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The language of fairy tales and fantasy

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00:47:37,967 --> 00:47:40,356
even finds its way into
Chekhov's 'Uncle Vanya'.

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His dream of a better world
at the end of the play

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inspired Rachmaninov's song
'We Shall Rest'.

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The dream is equally resonant
in today's very different Russia.

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RACHMANINOV
We Shall Rest

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00:47:59,487 --> 00:48:06,199
We shall rest
we shall hear the angels

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00:48:06,647 --> 00:48:13,200
We shall see all the heavens

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00:48:14,207 --> 00:48:19,759
Covered with stars like diamonds

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All our sufferings swept away by the grace

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which will fill the whole world

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00:48:41,367 --> 00:48:53,882
And our life will become peaceful, gentle...

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and sweet as a caress

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00:49:01,167 --> 00:49:11,361
I believe it, I believe it

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We shall rest...

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00:49:46,727 --> 00:49:50,163
I just want to say that we are small people

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and we are lucky to have big ones
as our predecessors, you know,

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giving us such a gift

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00:49:58,247 --> 00:50:01,523
and since some people do not believe
in the future of Russia.

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00:50:01,647 --> 00:50:04,764
I think that it's very simple
to find the reasons

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for enthusiasm,
for optimism and for the hope

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00:50:07,927 --> 00:50:10,395
and for confidence for people of my country.

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00:50:10,647 --> 00:50:11,557
They just have to look here,

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00:50:11,767 --> 00:50:14,645
they shouldn't look in
the over Atlantic anymore,

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00:50:14,807 --> 00:50:17,526
they shouldn't look
they always have to find it

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00:50:17,687 --> 00:50:21,760
I don't mean literally in this room
I mean here, within yourself.

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00:51:15,287 --> 00:51:18,882
It's people to people, person to person,
person to persons,

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00:51:19,007 --> 00:51:23,762
and I give it to 10, 10 give it to 100,
100 give it to a million.

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00:51:24,287 --> 00:51:27,723
In this case you say tradition is living.

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There is no other way for my country
to stay important to the world

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then through culture.