A themed periodical on theoretical folklore studies has been long overdue with the academic community. Individual papers on this topic were published in academic almanacs such as “Living Antiquity” (1890-1917), “Siberian Living Antiquity” (1923-1929), “Artistic Folklore” (1926-1929), “Soviet Folklore” (1934-1941), “Russian Folklore” (since 1956) and in journals: “Ethnographic Review” (1889-1916), “Ethnography” (1926-1929), “Soviet Ethnography” (1931-1991), “Ethnographic Review” (since 1992), “Living Antiquity” (since 1992), “Anthropological Forum” (since 2004). Nevertheless, there was no specific journal on general and comparative folklore studies until now.

The project of such a scholarly periodical has been in development with the RSUH Centre for Typological and Semiotic Folklore studies for several years. The memo founding the “Folklore: Structure, Typology, Semiotics” journal dates from December 29, 2017 (registered on May 17, 2018 under PI #FS77-72806, The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media of the Russian Federation). Founder: FGBOUBO Russian State University for the Humanities (OGRN 1037700067118).

The journal is published since 2018.

Volume I (double volume comprised of Issues 1 and 2) is almost entirely dedicated to the centennial of E.M. Meletinsky, the foremost Russian theorist of folklore. Aside from jubilee-related materials (notes on the scholar’s biography, memories by colleagues and friends, publications of recently discovered archive materials), this double issue includes a number of sections (“Anthropological observations”, “Assisting folklore students”, “World folklore”, “Short notes”) that become more or less regular in following issues.