BETWEEN PROPAGANDA AND NATIONAL NARRATIVE: LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD IN SOVIET, RUSSIAN, AND UKRAINIAN POPULAR SONG CULTURE

Abstract

The article offers a comparative analysis of three musical interpretations of the fairy-tale narrative of Little Red Riding Hood: the Soviet “Song of Little Red Riding Hood” (lyrics by Y. Kim, music by O. Rybnikov, 1977), the contemporary Russian musical composition “Rapira – Little Red Riding Hood (New Song 2026)” (text by H. Valovenko), and the Ukrainian reinterpretation “Little Red Riding Hood in Ukrainian Style. Hit of the Season” (2026), created by the creative group “Spas, Random, Producer, Ptakha and AI”. The study is based on comparative literary, cultural, reception, and imagological approaches and focuses on the transformation of the Western European fairy-tale archetype in contemporary popular culture of East Slavic countries. It has been established that the figure of Little Red Riding Hood functions as a flexible narrative archetype capable of representing different models of worldview and social subjectivity. The Soviet version constructs an image of a harmonious and safe world aimed at fostering collective optimism and social integration. The contemporary Russian interpretation represents a militarized game space in which violence is aestheticized and transformed into an element of mass entertainment. In contrast, the Ukrainian version builds a narrative of compelled resistance to external aggression, combining wartime experience with intergenerational solidarity, national memory, and a longing for peace. It has been demonstrated that the traditional fairy-tale plot in the contemporary media environment ceases to function solely as a children’s narrative and becomes an instrument for constructing ideological models that reflect societal understandings of conflict, the Other, violence, and national identity.