Folklore of Russia in the context of "Finnish people"

Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov (18 March 1844 – 21 June 1908) was a Russian composer, a member of the group of composers known as The Five. His best-known orchestral compositions—Capriccio Espagnol, the Russian Easter Festival Overture, and the symphonic suite Scheherazade—are staples of the classical music repertoire, along with suites and excerpts from some of his fifteen operas. Scheherazade is an example of his frequent use of fairy-tale and folk subjects.

Rimsky-Korsakov believed in developing a nationalistic style of classical music, employing Russian folk song and lore along with exotic harmonic, melodic and rhythmic elements in a practice known as musical orientalism, and eschewing traditional Western compositional methods. Rimsky-Korsakov appreciated Western musical techniques after he became a professor of musical composition, harmony, and orchestration at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1871. He undertook a rigorous three-year program of self-education and became a master of Western methods, incorporating them alongside the influences of Mikhail Glinka and fellow members of The Five. Rimsky-Korsakov's techniques of composition and orchestration were further enriched by his exposure to the works of Richard Wagner.

Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp (Russian: Владимир Яковлевич Пропп; 29 April [O.S. 17 April] 1895 – 22 August 1970) was a Soviet folklorist and scholar who analysed the basic structural elements of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest, irreducible structural units.

Russian studies is an interdisciplinary field crossing politics, history, culture, economics, and languages of Russia and its neighborhood, often grouped under Soviet and Communist studies. Russian studies should not be confused with the study of the Russian literature or linguistics, which is often a distinct department within universities.

In university, a Russian studies major includes many cultural classes teaching Russian politics, history, geography, linguistics, Russian language, literature, and arts. Mysticism and folklore are commonly studied, the introduction of Christianity, rule under the tsars and expansion of Russian Empire, later rule under communism, history of the Soviet Union, and its collapse and studies about present-day Russia.