ABSTRACT
If in the 1960s Rubtsov helped to set off the oppositional revival movement with his definition of authentic folk music as that which people sing in their leisure time (as opposed to what they sang in officially organized situations), during the post-Soviet period most Russian folklorists and musicologists shied away from such a broad definition. They would not include all songs that any people sing, but only ancient songs sung by rural people – those that have ‘survived the test of time.’ This view is an essential tenet of their revivalist philosophy: if folklore is not by definition something old, there can be no need to revive it.
