Lecture 'The Tale of How Bazhov Invented the Urals'

THIS MATERIAL (INFORMATION) HAS BEEN PRODUCED BY A FOREIGN AGENT, DMITRY LVOVICH BYKOV, CONTAINED IN THE REGISTER OF FOREIGN MASS MEDIA THAT PERFORM THE FUNCTIONS OF A FOREIGN AGENT, 29.07.2022.

The long-awaited Yekaterinburg lecture we’ve been talking about for a long time has been titled “The Tale of How Bazhov Invented the Urals.” And this is no exaggeration: Bazhov was not merely a collector of folk legends—he effectively rebuilt Ural mythology, creating it “from scratch.”

In the 20th century, many did something similar: speaking and writing “on behalf of the people” was considered both honorable and, more importantly, safer. But it was Pavel Bazhov who shaped the image of the Urals the way we’re used to seeing it. Moreover, a significant part of Soviet mythology—essentially pagan, pre-Christian—owes much of its birth to this enigmatic bearded Ural man.