Fantastic Rus. From the Kikimoras of Romanticism to Slavic Cyberpunk. Slavic Myths and Folklore in Art and Mass Culture of the 18th–21st Centuries

Have you ever wondered how Baba Yaga, Koschei the Deathless, and epic heroes turned into characters of Pushkin's fairy tales, Vasnetsov's paintings, Soviet film fairy tales, and finally, into iconic figures in games and comics?
"Fantastic Rus" is the first large-scale study of how Russian mythology has been perceived in different eras and in what forms it has been refracted in art and mass culture for centuries — from the first and sometimes quirky attempts to reconstruct the Slavic pagan pantheon to modern fantasy interpretations of Rus in books, comics, movies, tabletop, and computer games.
You will learn what was read in the 18th century instead of Slavic fantasy, why the king Saltan and Prince Guidon from Pushkin's fairy tale have such strange non-Slavic names, how Baba Yaga became a vampire and founded the Nosferatu clan, and what the epic tales about Lenin and Stalin look like. Trace how poets and writers of the 19th century — Zhukovsky, Pushkin, Gogol — transformed folklore characters into familiar literary heroes, while Vasnetsov and Bilibin created the visual canon of magical Rus, which is still embedded in our imagination.
Masterfully handling a vast amount of material and not missing bright details, the author, historian Fyodor Panfilov, convincingly demonstrates that Russian mythology has inspired and continues to inspire not only classical art from the literature of Romanticism to Diaghilev's Russian Seasons but also popular mass culture, and our past is an inexhaustible source for fantasies about the future.
This striking gift edition with a collection of rare illustrations is addressed to everyone who loves history, mythology, art, pop culture, and wants to understand how myths continue to shape our cultural code. It is a long-awaited must-read for fans and authors of fantasy, illustrator artists, gamers and game designers, researchers, and creators of original universes.

Fyodor Panfilov is a Candidate of Historical Sciences, museum employee, exhibition curator, lecturer, and creator of the Panfilov FM project on history and mythology in mass culture.