Russian Folktales from the Collection of A. Afanasyev

“The Cockerel and the Handmill” “Right and Wrong”
In these two tales, the motif of the conflict between the righteous vs the wicked emerges. This imagery draws heavily, if not explicitly, from from the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.

In “The Cockerel”, the poor peasant couple is (predictably) cast in the role of the righteous, while a wealthy lord plays a wicked soul.

“Right and Wrong” also operates in parable. It may be read as a dialogue between parts of the soul - Good and Evil forces - or between God and the Devil.
Unsurprisingly, the long suffering “righteous” man becomes the “King's son” (Christ).
The tale is also full of striking and charming “real-world” details. Such as the quarrelling muzhik's encounters with the three exponents of utterly native crookedness (who echo the three friends of Job, who mistakenly try to convince Job that he must have done something to warrant his fate). Here, they take the form of the serf, the merchant, and the priest.
Another detail: after rubbing elbows with royal family, eating their food and dressing in royal garb, of all people, the uncouth rustic surf “pretty much gets the knack of it”. The egalitarian idea behind this is that the distinction between the highest and lowest classes is strictly a matter of constructed appearances, and with practice, anyone can play the king. This idea could only have sprung from the peasant imagination (this was long before the Slavophile movement that planted the seeds of romanticizing the purity of the souls of the serfs, which eventually develops into the ideas of Tolstoy).
Another motif, one pervasive in folktales, is the conflict between family members. This drives many “fairy / magic” folk tales, particularly - which begin with the hero's expulsion from his home, thus launching them on their quest. This echoes the Biblical account of Abraham, who is commanded by God to leave his birthplace and idol worshipping family, to go to the “land which I will show you”.
In Russian folklore, daughters are especially susceptible to this sort of difficulty. They are typically driven out by the “wicked stepmother”.
The story also features some of extravagant elements of oral style, with the action frequently recounted in “loops”—thus, after he did X, he did Y; he did Y, and then he did Z, etc.—and the bizarre refrain y'know, accompanying nearly every statement, whether the storyteller's, a peasant's, or a demon's.

“Baba Yaga”, “Prince Danila” and “The Little White Duck” all feature the motif of daughter's being expelled from their homes, as mentioned above. These three tales all feature a defenseless heroine, driven out of her rightful home. In “Baba Yaga”, our heroine is a daughter, in “Prince Danila”, a sister, and and “White Duck”, a wife.

In “Baba Yaga”, a stepdaughter is sent on an errand to her auntie Baba Yaga, who is actually an enigmatic shapeshifter who takes on a variety of guises - here, she devours undesirable children.
The stepdaughter's escape depends on her passing a series of tests - showing kindness to various animate and inanimate characters in Yaga's service, who Yaga rules through fear, rather than love.
By winning over Yaga's minions, the girl can hope to return to her Father / husband (its ambiguous) intact.

However, reading “Baba Yaga” side by side with “Prince Danila”, a different reading emerges.
In “Prince Danila”, a young girl flees her home to escape the incestous advances of her brother. She too, ends up in Baba Yaga's hut, but to get there she must go underground (eg: a Hades-like adventure into the abode of the dead). This journey to the underworld is an ancient layer of the tale - onto which the motif of the power sturggle in a peasant's household is grafted later.

If Baba Yaga is not a cruel mother in law, who is she? Why does she actively seek out “Russian blood”, and why does she want to shove her guests into her stove? Is she a demon of the underworld? It may a distant echo of initiation by fire - a motif reflected in the myth of Achilles' heel. Is the heroine already dead when she arrives in the underworld?

In this tale, we should also take special note of a distinct episode in which the two girls, pursued by Yaga, toss a comb, a brush, and a hand towel behind their backs in an effort to deter their pursuer. These rather common items of a young girl's toilette invariably turn into a mountain range, a dense forest, and a great body of water, in that order. This “chase scene” recurs again and again from one tale to another in a variety of forms. The great Russian folklorist V. Ya. Propp saw this motif as an echo of the ancient myth of the giver of fire (a proto-Prometheus), whose flight from the abode of the gods becomes the act of creation of our own world— raising up mountains and forests, laying down rivers and seas.
It is very unlikely, if not impossible, that these tales were scripted by anyone Jewish. It is therefore ironically poetic that this “chase scene” reminds me so much of the Kabbalistic idea of creation. First, God is infinite - and precisely because of this infiniteness, there can be no space for anything else to co-exist among God. Therefore, for something to come into existence, God must deliberately withdraw his presence. Second, that God contracted his presence from the Universe intentionally in order to carve out a space for creation. Third, that humans, distinguished from angels by our free will, are paradoxically (1) less holy than angels, because more of God's infinite light is withdrawn from us in order to give us the space for free will (2) infinitely more holy than angels, because it is with free will comes the possibility to become creators in our own right [“creators” in this context means fulfilling Biblical commandments, thus ‘bringing heaven down to earth']. This act of “creation” is what will eventually bring about the Messianic age. These ideas have been clumsily and inaccurately interpreted by subsequent Russian authors (Dostoevsky being the worst offender), but that's an essay for another time.

This same motif appears in the “White Duck” - in an unexpected form. As a punishment for her misdeeds, the Baba Yaga is tied to a horse's tail and “broken across the field”: her severed limbs and head become features in the landscape. Remarkably, like the myth itself, the witch's physical being is completely effaced and thoroughly forgotten, leaving only vague outlines in the landscape—for those with an eye to discern them.
There is a reoccurring focus in Russian literature on the difference between form and content - most commonly seen in the motif of the virtuous serf vs the morally squalid landowner. The idea is that our material forms (our bodies / lives) and possessions are inescapably finite - the only things that are infinite are values, and the integrity of your spirit and soul. The remnants of Baba Yaga's severed remains remaining visible do not just symbolize her physical death - but signify that after death, the content of your soul is the only thing that remains, and, God, seeing everything, sees this too.