The four-volume collection of historical songs, published in 1960-1973 in the academic series "Monuments of Russian Folklore", ends with songs about the Crimean War. The collection of Russian historical songs, published in 1987 in the Large series "Libraries of the Poet", adds several songs about the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878. Judging by the most authoritative publications of recent decades, the appearance of folk historical songs in Russia has ended there. Such ideas are not unfounded. But they relied only on understanding the material that was "on the surface" at that time, having been included in the orbit of research aspirations of Soviet folklore studies for a relatively long time. Meanwhile, even after 1878, historical songwriting continued, especially in the traditional forms of military songs proper. Leaving aside for now a series of works about conflicts that are more or less private or secondary - and even about the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905-let's see how the great war of 1914-1917 was reflected in Russian historical songs. Until recently, printed historical songs about it were counted in units. These are fairly well-forgotten publications of recordings made during the fighting and managed to get into print even then. After the revolution, it became undesirable to record the recent folklore of the "tsarist army", and even more so to publish it. The war itself, which in Russia until October 1917 was called the Great and Second Patriotic War, was officially called "imperialist", and the displays of patriotism shown in it turned out to be an inconvenient object for folklore publications. It is to be hoped that over time records of soldiers 'historical songs of this war will be found and published in the archives - in addition to the relatively few that were discovered quite recently in the self-recordings of the soldiers' handwritten songbook and are now published in a fairly authoritative publication, but not folklore, but historical and archival. ... Read more