Acclimatizing Baba Yaga to the Russian Literature
Baba Yaga, a forest witch and a cannibal, a native of the «land of the dead», a living skeleton («bone leg») - that’s what this character of the Russian fairy folklore looks like in the ﬁrst literary works and manuals on folk demonology. It is presented differently however in the comic opera Baba Yaga (1786) by P. D. Gorchakov. Having analyzed a number of literary works centered on this infernal monster, the bearer of a special moral utopia, the author has identiﬁed the principal historical and literary trends that precondition the perception of Baba Yaga as a semi-comic eccentric old woman, ugly, but somewhat appealing.