Introduction

CHAPTER I History and current state of the Old Believers in the Ural-Volga region 36

1.1. Old Believers among the Russian population 39

1.2. Old Believers among the Mordovians 66

1.3. Old Believers among the Komi-Zyuzdins 81

1.4. Old Believers among the Komi-Yazvins 99

1.5. General features of the spread of the Old Believers in the non-Russian environment 107

CHAPTER II. Organization of religious life 116

II. 1. Monasteries and parishes 116.

II.2. Old Believer community: structure, hierarchy, status groups 135

CHAPTER III. Preserving Tradition and Maintaining Group Boundaries 148

III. 1. Ethnocultural interaction of Old Believer communities and areas of interaction 148.

Sh.2. Confessional Symbols as Markers of Culture... 166

Sh.Z. Everyday phenomena as markers of a confessional group. 190

Sh.4. Rituals marking confessional affiliation (sacrament of baptism and funeral rite) 204

CHAPTER IV. Features of the worldview of the Old Believers and folklore tradition 233

IV. 1. Sacred History and the History of Schism in Oral Traditions 233

IV.2. Eschatological and Utopian Legends 253

IV.3. Narratives from the circle of "small history" 278

Conclusion 297

List of references 308

List of abbreviations 345

Applications: 347

1. List of settlements where they were held

field research 347

2. Dictionary special terms 350

3. Archival documents 356

4. Cards 381

5. Photo illustrations

Introduction to work

The relevance of research: Until recently, one of the features of the Russian socio-cultural context was the situation of a sharp break in religious traditions, which arose as a result of the radical atheism of the Soviet period. In recent decades, this situation has changed significantly, since the late 1980s, enough time has passed for many traditions to be restored. , and religious institutions have regained their former functions. However, it is perhaps too early to talk about the complete overcoming of this gap. Ethnic groups, in whose traditional culture there is a large confessional component, still feel it in the intergenerational transfer of sacred knowledge, religious practices and their meanings, in the absence of religious socialization In addition, being involved in the dynamic transformational processes taking place in the context of globalization and modernization, such communities are now experiencing difficulties of a different kind.

In addition to the so-called "main" religions - Orthodoxy and Islam, as well as many that appeared in last years"new" trends, in the modern ethno-confessional mosaic of Russia, one can single out a group of traditional religions that do not have mass distribution today, but have played a significant role in national history The latter include, in particular, the Old Believers. Due to objective reasons, they did not retain even a minimal base for growth in the Soviet period (cadres of the clergy, educational establishments, cult buildings) and such groups that do not enjoy external support found themselves in a rather difficult situation. Their survival depends entirely on internal adaptation resources and those developed during historical development self-preservation mechanisms

The Old Believer culture strives for the maximum actualization of the heritage, and tradition is the most important way of structuring the collective experience. type of "ancient tradition" (synonymous with "pure", "unclouded"), which, in contact with modernity, is threatened special value, associate this purity with the need to preserve the faith of their ancestors. For them, the problem of finding new

forms of translation of traditional norms in modern dynamic reality is on a par with the problem of self-preservation of the group as an integrity. Therefore, the absence of such an opportunity threatens for them to blur their identity and lose their "self". (practices) they find their expression and, finally, are they able to ensure the stable existence of such ethno-confessional formations today? It should be noted that the mechanisms of self-preservation in this work are understood as a set of unique states and processes, interdependent and in a certain subordination, aimed at maintaining group integrity and balance between the social system and the environment.

The aspect of the problem of self-preservation of closed religious communities, considered in this dissertation work, and the object of research are of great scientific interest already because of their novelty and little study. public opinion Old Believers are defined only as a Russian religious trend, however, it was quite widespread among a number of Finno-Ugric and some Turkic peoples. various written sources, in particular, the published materials of the All-Russian census of 1897. Similar groups with cultural specificity still exist and need to be comprehensively studied. elements At the same time, it modified itself, pouring into other forms in the process of adaptation to the real environment

Thus, the consideration of the Old Believers as a phenomenon aimed at the reproduction of tradition precisely in various ethno-cultural environments allows, on the one hand, to solve complex theoretical problems related to the interaction, interpenetration and coexistence of ethnic cultures, on the other hand, to identify the general patterns of folding the mechanisms of self-preservation of traditional societies in a modernizing reality

Purpose of the study: identification of mechanisms of self-preservation of Russian and Finno-Ugric Old Believer communities of the Ural-Volga region, ways of preserving and transmitting traditional values ​​and practices in them in a modern dynamic context To increase the degree of repre-

For the purpose of research, the Old Believer groups among Russians, Mordovians, Komi-Permyaks (Yazva and Zyuzda) were considered, who did not go through the same path of historical development and have a pronounced specificity within their ethnocultural traditions

The achievement of this goal was carried out by solving the following specific tasks:

coverage of the history of the formation and nature of the settlement of various ethnic groups of the Old Believers (Russians, Mordovians, Chuvashs, Komi-Zyuzdins and Komi-Yazvins) on the territory of the Ural-Volga region, taking into account historical, geographical and socio-cultural factors,

identification of the main circumstances, causes and general patterns of penetration of the Old Believers into a foreign cultural environment,

characteristics of external intergroup relations, the prevalence of mixed marriages, the nature of social, economic and domestic contacts with non-Christians), the degree of declared and real isolation of the Old Believer communities,

analysis of existing socially-k>"cultural stereotypes, value-behavioral norms, bpvgh prescriptions and ways of their observance by modern Old Believers,

determining the role of confessional symbols and everyday phenomena in maintaining group boundaries,

identification of the degree of preservation of ancient forms of spiritual culture, the level of ownership of them by leaders and ordinary members of the Old Believer communities, ways of their intergenerational transmission (knowledge and observance of the canons, reading skills, hook singing, performance of spiritual verses, etc.),

Consideration of the rites of passage (baptism and funeral
commemorative complex) as a group marker and indicator of intercultures
ny interactions,

study of ways to regulate life and implement the interactions of the Old Believer communities within the framework of separate agreements,

analysis of the internal structure of modern Old Believer communities (gender and age composition, hierarchy, status groups, leaders, social roles),

consideration of traditional narrative forms and narrative structure of modern eschatological legends and historical prose, their interpretive and adaptive function in the Old Believer culture

Timeline of the study in the historical part of the work extend deep into the end of the XUL century, that is, the time

appearance of the Old Believers in the Volga-Ural region, however, in general, they cover the period from the middle of the 19th century to the present day (2006), which is due to the possibility of using an extensive corpus of archival and published sources, as well as author's field material, in relation to this period.

Territorial scope of the study include two vast geographical zones. The first is outlined by the natural boundaries of the Southern Urals - the territory modern Republic Bashkortostan, Orenburg and part of the Chelyabinsk regions (former Orenburg and Ufa provinces) Until recently, this region was little known in the Old Believer historiography and was covered only in single works on the history and culture of the entire Russian Old Believers. For more than ten years, I have been collecting field and archival material about the South Ural Old Believers - Russians (in the bulk) and Mordovians

The complication of research tasks and the need to attract additional materials on the Old Believers among the Finno-Ugric peoples led to the expansion of the geographical scope of the study. Compact groups of Komi-Permyak Old Believers settled in the Middle Urals and the Urals - in the north of the Perm Territory (Krasnovishersky and Solikamsky districts) and the east of the Kirov region (Afanasyevsky district) In addition, material was drawn on the Chuvash Old Believers living in the Republic of Chuvashia (Shemurshinsky district) and in the Ulyanovsk region (Veshkayemsky district) These territories were not isolated from each other and were connected through a network of skete centers of both local and all-Russian significance

Theoretical approaches and methodology research. A characteristic feature of the development of domestic ethnological science at the present, post-Soviet stage has become a critical revision of its theoretical and methodological foundations, primarily the theory of ethnicity and the nature of ethnicity. Numerous discussions on this subject are reflected in the pages of professional publications and author's monographs (E. BE Viner, MN Guboglo, SE Rybakov, VA Tishkov, SV Cheshko, etc.) Great openness in the expression of their own views by Russian scientists and the availability of previously unknown foreign theoretical developments have led, on the one hand, to the absence of a generally accepted system of terms and categories and, research difficulties associated with this, on the other hand, to the recognition of the ambiguity of the nature of the ethnic phenomenon and the impossibility of considering it within the framework of only one methodological model

Today, most researchers recognize the need for a reasonable integration of various scientific theories and concepts and the relevance of complex interdisciplinary methods. context, attracting other, in particular, symbolic and phenomenological interpretations of concepts and phenomena (YuM Lotman, P Berger, T Lukman, AL Gurevich, TA Bernshtam)

Describing the theoretical developments used in this dissertation, I will dwell on some of the main provisions of the adaptation approach and the possibilities of its application to the studies of the Old Believers. The main thing for him is the understanding of culture as a dynamic adaptive mechanism, or the ability to bring oneself in line with a changing environment. the introduction of the concept of "life support system" into the field of scientific research (V. I. Kozlov, S. A. Arutyunov), secondly, stimulated the consideration in many humanitarian disciplines of the problems of socio-cultural and psychological adaptation of various ethnic groups in conditions of social transformations. The optimal ways of this process were determined, various characteristics were given, specific sociological and ethnopsychological studies were carried out (Yu V Arutyunyan, L M Drobizheva, V V Gritsenko, N M Lebedeva, etc.) List all available to date scientific work made in this vein is no longer possible. The most complete and detailed historiographical review of the problem of adaptation is presented in the monograph by L. V. Korol (2005)

For my research, the most important is the understanding of tradition developed within the framework of the adaptation approach. thanks to the selection of life experience, its accumulation and spatio-temporal transmission, it makes it possible to achieve the stability necessary for the existence of social organisms" (E S Markaryan) The tradition understood in this way turns out to be closely connected with the mechanisms of self-preservation and problems of socio-cultural adaptation In Russian humanities for the first time such a view of tradition was

formulated by E S Markaryan, and generally shared by most ethnologists Tradition is interpreted broadly, practically synonymous with the concept of "culture" (in my study also "Old Believer tradition" = "Old Believer culture"), and as a dynamic interdependent process that includes changes and innovations that turn into a tradition in the course of development (S A Arutyunov) In modern foreign science, S Eisenstadt is in close positions, highlighting the conservative and creative components in tradition, and using the theory of E Shils about the "central zone" of culture, which has a semantic meaning, to explain the contradictory nature of tradition. and ordering functions

The paper also used the theoretical approaches to the study of the Old Believers identified by R. Crummy in the context of modern discussions about "folk religion" and the consideration of the Old Believers as a "text community" consisting of many interconnected subcultures with complex synchronous and diachronic connections.

The works of the well-known researcher of the Volga-Ural region and the author of a number of serious theoretical works R. G. Kuzeev also had a great influence on this study.

The research methodology was based on a combination of general scientific methods. A comparative historical method was used with the use of systemic and cross-cultural analysis in the interpretation of the material. My approach can also be described as typological, since I tried to find similarities and differences between similar ethno-confessional groups. Finally, a descriptive approach was used. a method that allows you to more fully convey the specifics of ethnographic material and the real context

The collection of field material was carried out on the basis of a qualitative approach. Participant observation, in-depth and semi-structured interviews with a guide, in which the problem-thematic blocks of the conversation with the study participants were indicated (VV Semenova, VA Yadov) These blocks corresponded to the identified objectives of the study. The survey included two stages 1 ) interviews with the main ("key") informants and 2) subsequent addition of the results obtained on certain questions from secondary informants as well as T. A. Listovaya (according to native rituals) and I. A. Kremleva (according to funeral rituals), supplemented and adapted to the Old Believer material

Another way of collecting information was photography and video filming, which made it possible to fully capture the dynamic processes, material attributes of culture (objects of worship and household use, clothes, the interior of residential and liturgical premises). Alexandrov, which is based on a trusting relationship between the researcher and the bearers of culture.

Historiography. To date, the historiographic heritage on the problems of the Old Believers is quite extensive, in this regard, this review includes only literature that was directly used or had an indirect impact on the dissertation. It is divided into thematic sections 1) general works on the Old Believers, 2) works devoted to non-Russian Old Believers, 3) published studies, in which, to one degree or another, the problems of socio-cultural adaptation of the Old Believer groups and the mechanisms of their self-preservation are raised

The first works on the Old Believers were written by representatives of the official Orthodox Church and Russian historical science and pursued extremely accusatory and missionary goals. Px is attributed to the synodal direction of the Old Believer historiography (Makariy (Bulgakov), A. I. Zhuravlev, E. Golubinsky, N. F. Kapterev) In this regard, it is interesting to compare synodal works with polemical writings of the Old Believers themselves, in which their own interpretations of those that led to the split are given historical events(I Filippov, F.E. Melnikov, I.A. Kirillov, V.G. Senatov, V.P. Ryabushinsky) The polemical tradition continued with the works of the modern Old Believer philosopher M O Shakhov

From the middle of the 1920s, a new, so-called democratic trend in the study of the schism was developing, when the Old Believers were considered exclusively as a social protest movement (AP Shchapov, S. P. Melgunov, A. S. Prugavin, etc.) then - in the Soviet period (V D Bonch-Bruevich) In addition, in the 19th century, the first works appeared in which the Old Believers are characterized as a kind of historical and cultural phenomenon of Russian life (NM Kostomarov, PN Milyukov)

In Soviet times, in accordance with the existing ideological guidelines, the Old Believers were considered either from an atheistic position, or as a form of anti-feudal protest (A Katunsky, VF Mi-

lovvdov) Serious in-depth research appeared at that time among the Russian emigration (S A Zenkovsky, A V Kartashov) Pikhoya)

The most consistent study of the Old Believers, its handwritten tradition was carried out by domestic archaeographers, thanks to which a huge number of monuments of the Old Believer thought were introduced into scientific circulation, their detailed analysis was made (NN Pokrovsky, ND Zolnikova, IV Pozdeeva, EA Ageeva, E B Smilyanskaya, E M Smorgu -nova, IV Pochinskaya, AT Shashkov, VI Baidin, AG Mosin, EM Yukhimenko, etc.) Art critics, philologists and collectors of folklore (ON Bakhtin, SE Nikitina, NP Parfentiev, EA Buchilina, VL Claus and others)

In ethnographic terms, the material and spiritual culture of the Old Believers living in the Perm Territory (IV Vlasova, S A Dimukhametova, I A Kremleva, TA Listova, TS Makashina, GN Chagin), Ust-Tsilma (TI Dronova), Siberia and Far East(Yu V Argudyaeva, F F Bolonev, E E Fursova, etc.) A special category is monographic studies of the Russian population in a particular territory, in which some specificity characteristic of the Old Believer culture was noted (EV Richter, TA Bernshtam, V A Lipinskaya), etc. The selection of only certain aspects of culture and life in the study of other regional groups of Old Believers somewhat complicates the general comparative analysis, but opens up opportunities for comparisons at a particular detailed level (E E Blomquist, N P Grinkova, S K Sagnaeva, V P Fedorova)

Many works of foreign authors are devoted to the Old Believers (R Morris, R Robson, D Sheffel, R Crummy, E Nakamura, E Ivanets, V. Player, V Ryuk-Dravina, P Pascal)

As mentioned above, the next section of the historiographic review consists of works on the Old Believers among the Finno-Ugric peoples. The most extensive historiography belongs to the Komi Old Believers. everyday life Komi-Zyryan, are essays by KF Zhakov and P A Sorokin. Then, in the course of comprehensive studies of the ethnography of the Komi peoples in the 1940-1950s under the leadership of VN Belitzer, the collection of field material was carried out along the way in Old Believer villages, although their confessional affiliation and features of religiosity did not were the subject of special consideration.

LN Zherebtsov and LP Lashuk, their works are united by the conclusion about the conservative influence of the Old Believers on the culture of the Zyryans. Of great interest are the works of Yu V Gagarin, written on the results of a continuous concrete sociological study of the state of religiosity of the rural Komi population in 1966-67

Systematic and consistent research on the Pechora, Vychegda and Vanzha began already in the 1980s, when a folklore and graphic laboratory was created at Syktyvkar University by Syktyvkar scientists (AN Vlasov, TF Volkova, TA Dronova, TA Kaneva, PV Limerov, EV Prokuratorova Yu V Savelyev, V E Sharapov) a series of collections was prepared with materials on the Old Believer book-handwritten tradition, the formation and functioning of individual communities, mentor families, the role of the book in traditional culture. The history and culture of local Old Believer groups among the Komi-Zyryans became the subject of dissertation research A A Chuvyurova and VV Vlasova

The ethno-confessional history of the Tikhvin Karelians-Old Believers over the course of three and a half centuries, based on original field material and identified archeological-documentary sources, is consecrated in a monograph and articles by O. M. Fishman, using a phenomenological approach

Scientific research among the Old Believer groups of Permians began to be carried out already in the 1950s. At that time, VN Belitzer wrote an essay on the material culture of the Komi-Zyuzda people. Modern scientific publications about this group are literally counted in units (I.Yu Trushkova, GA Senkina), the rest belong mainly to pre-revolutionary authors. In this regard, it was interesting to attract materials about the closest neighbors of the Zyuzda Permians - the Yurlin group of Russians, which was subjected to strong Old Believer influence (collective monograph by Bakhmatov A A, Podyukov NA, Khorobrykh SV, Cherny AV, articles by IV Vlasova)

Philologists turned to the culture of the Yazvin Permians, who noted the bright specificity of their dialect, first of all, V. I. Lytkin in the 1960s, then modern scientists (R M Batalova, E M Smorgunova). Numerous works by GN Chagin are devoted to the Yazvins. who, on the basis of many years of research, comes to important conclusions that, due to the specificity of culture and language, the Yazvinians can be considered not as ethnographic group Permyaks, but as one of the Komi peoples The history of the Yazva Old Believers is consecrated in the article by V. I. Baidin. Since 1972, systematic work has been carried out among the Yazvinians by the staff of the archaeographic laboratory

Moscow State University, the research was reflected in a number of publications in the university series of publications devoted to the problems of the Old Believers (articles by E.M. Smorgunova, V.P. Pushkov, I.V. Pozdeeva). all aspects of the history and culture of the Komi-Yazvinians are consecrated quite fully, their comprehensive analysis is also required.

There were practically no separate works devoted to the Old Believers among the Mordovians. Some information about sectarianism among the Mordovians and about the Old Believers of different consents, available in pre-revolutionary publications, was summarized by EN Mokshina. Among other peoples of the Volga region, the Old Believers did not find wide distribution and, accordingly, its influence on their traditional culture was insignificant. of an ascertaining nature about the Old Believers among the Udmurts are available in the book by Yu M Ivonin, E.F Shumilov writes about them in more detail in a monograph on Christianity in Udmurtia. E Kudryashov singled out this phenomenon among the Chuvash as a special type of religious syncretism.

Thus, the problem of non-Russian Old Believers in the Ural-Volga region, which is of great theoretical interest, was considered fragmentarily, there are practically no comprehensive studies, and the degree of study of various groups of Old Believers is not the same. In this regard, new research in this area seems to be very promising.

In the third section of this historiographical review, works are noted that, to one degree or another, raise problems that are also being solved in this dissertation. research This approach is typical, in particular, for the works of E. A. Ageeva, E. V. Smorgunova, I. V. Pozdeeva, E. B. Smilyanskaya, and others. the preservation of the ancient elements of Russian culture in the Old Believers, scientists note "the persistence, activity, dynamism, even just the resourcefulness of the Old Believer movement as a whole", which allow it to always be in accordance with a specific historical context. To the question of the "relative isolation" of the Old Believers

communities and their ability to develop collective ways of responding to external changes that do not destroy their cultures, S. E. Nikitina also repeatedly appealed. R Morris characterizes the Old Believers as a kind of key to understanding the processes of convergence in the modern world.

The problem of adaptation resources of the Old Believers was raised by E. E. Dutchak, who emphasized the important role of the family in the processes of intergenerational transmission of traditional norms.

Source base of the study. An important source for the dissertation research was pre-revolutionary publications, which contain information of varying degrees of information about the split in the study area. The line between sources and historiography seems to be very conditional here.

One of the active figures of the Ufa Missionary Committee, N. P. Tyunin, published in 1889 a collection of personal conversations with the Old Believers, supplemented by the author’s reflections and comments. Ethnographic sketches about the Old Believers were made in the travel notes of M.A. Krukovsky and K.P. about the well-known schismatic sketes located on the territory of the Ural Cossack army can be extracted from the article by P. V. Yudin. is an article by DK Zelenin about fugitives from Usen-Ivanovskoye, Belebeevsky district, Ufa province

The early history of the Old Believers in the territory of the Perm province (from the end of the 17th century to the second half of the 20th century) was described in detail by Archimandrite Pallady (Pyankov), his fundamental work, based on a huge number of almost all documents available at that time and eyewitness information, still remains the most valuable and an objective source of information about the Old Believer communities of various accords in all districts of the province (the appearance of the first sketes, biographies of famous priests and mentors), including the Old Believer center on Upper Yazva. The works of IL Krivo-shchekov, Ya Kamasinsky, travel notes by NP Beldytsky, about the Zyuzda Permians - an extensive ethnographic essay by NP Steinfeld

Some data that allows localizing the Chuvash Old Believer groups on the territory of the Ural-Volga region are available in the articles

NV Nikolsky Fragmentary information about the Old Believers among the Mordovians is contained in the well-known researcher M.V. Evseviev.

Another type of published sources used in this work are various periodicals. First of all, these are regularly published in the XIX century - early XX in the diocesan and provincial statements (Orenburg, Ufa, Vyatka, Perm, Samara, Simbirsk statements were used) In the reports of parish priests printed in them information about existing schisms and sects was mandatory placed. The first publications about the Old Believers among the Finno-Ugric peoples of the Ural-Volga region appeared precisely in church periodicals, these were works written by Orthodox priests and having a predominantly missionary orientation. Permyaks, works by M. Formakovsky, G. Selivanovsky

In addition, the materials of the All-Russian census of 1897 were actively used in the dissertation, which partly contributed to the discovery of a non-Russian element among the Old Believer population of the region.

The fragmentation and insufficiency of the published materials at my disposal predetermined their auxiliary, secondary function.

The first type>" includes archival sources of a statistical nature Throughout the existence of the Old Believers, many orders were issued obliging local city and police departments to provide accurate information about the number of schismatics and their prayer buildings. For a number of reasons, they do not carry objective statistical information, but they allow to localize Old Believer groups by settlements, sometimes to identify opinions and agreements, which was especially important for the almost unexplored Southern Urals in this respect. Such cases, together with modern field material, formed the basis for creating maps of Old Believers opinions and agreements, placed in the appendix, with with their help, the routes of modern expeditionary trips were planned

on the crimes of schismatics against the Orthodox Church, lists of those who were not at confession, court cases on seducing the Orthodox into schism, on the capture of schismatic priests, the discovery of secret monasteries and prayer houses, on marriages, etc.

The next large group of materials was the registration documents of the Old Believer communities. The first stream of such cases is observed in the period from 1906 to 1915, that is, after the Highest Decree on freedom of religion in the Russian Empire. And the second - already in Soviet times, when true goals an atheistic state During the Soviet period, another kind of sources was formed covering directly opposite processes - the cessation of the activities of Old Believer religious associations, the closure and transfer of churches and prayer houses for cultural institutions and economic needs. This also includes petitions for the registration of various groups and correspondence on this occasion

In general, the sources stored in nine archives, the Russian State Historical Archive, were studied. Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg branch), Central State Historical Archives of the Republic of Bashkortostan, State Archives of Public Associations of the Republic of Bashkortostan, current archives of the Councils for Religious Affairs under the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Belarus and administrations of the Chelyabinsk and Orenburg Regions, the Central State Archives of the Orenburg Region and the State Archives Chelyabinsk region More than two hundred cases were involved in the analysis

Ethnographic collections, handwritten materials and photographs from the funds of regional museums of local lore were also an important source for writing the dissertation.

Despite the great importance of archival data, the most extensive group of sources was the materials of the author's field ethnographic research, collected during individual expedition trips. About 80 settlements were covered on the territory of the Republic of Bashkortostan (1996-2005) and Chuvashia (2005), Chelyabinsk (2001). -2005), Orenburg (2001-2004), Perm (2004-2005), Kirov (2004-2005), Ulyanovsk (2006) regions with informants, photographs (portraits of leaders and ordinary members of communities, elements of worship, subject attributes of culture, religious buildings, etc.), video filming of religious rites, the processes of making ritual and household items

Scientific novelty of the research. Fundamentally new is the solution of the task - to identify the mechanisms of self-preservation of the Old Believer communities - on the example of various ethno-cultural environments, since the involvement of material on the Finno-Ugric groups of Old Believers and a multi-level comparative analysis with control groups of Russian Old Believers and representatives of the studied peoples who do not belong to the Old Believer confession is carried out in ethnology for the first time

In many ways, the object of the study is also new - the Old Believers among the Finno-Ugric peoples. In particular, not a single special work has been devoted to the Old Believers among the Mordovians today, and studies among the Komi-Zyuzdins, which were reflected in only a few articles, were carried out in the middle of the past century.

For the first time in the dissertation, previously unknown archival sources and original field material are introduced into scientific circulation, which makes it possible to fill in the gaps in Russian science and provides specific data for scientific generalizations.

Practical significance."Thesis materials can be used to popularize knowledge about the Old Believers, when compiling curricula and manuals on the history and traditional culture of the East Slavic and Finno-Ugric peoples of the Ural-Volga region, be used for compiling confessional maps -cultural societies

Approbation of the study. The main provisions of the dissertation were presented by the author in reports and messages at international, all-Russian, regional conferences and congresses, in printed works, discussed at the Center for the Study of Interethnic Relations of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Dissertation structure. The study consists of an introduction, four chapters, a conclusion, a list of references, a list of abbreviations, and five appendices. The appendices contain a list of settlements in which field research was carried out, maps and photos, excerpts from archival documents, a glossary of special terms.

Old Believers among the Russian population

The territory of the Urals, due to its remoteness from the Russian center, as well as due to natural and geographical features (hard-to-reach mountains and dense forests), seemed convenient for settlement by the Old Believers who were hiding from persecution2. The attractiveness of the region was also strengthened by its low economic and cultural development. In this regard, the repressive measures taken by the state in relation to large Old Believer centers were accompanied by an influx of schismatics here. The beginning of the process is considered to be the time after the defeat of Kerzhenets (1722)3.

The Old Believers who fled from Kerzhenets (mostly priests of the Sofontiev direction4), in addition to secret sketes, also settled in a special settlement of the Yaik Cossack army - the Shatsk Monastery5. The Old Believers were not brought to the Cossacks from outside, but existed from antiquity, as an organic form of their religious worldview. “The isolated position on the far outskirts of Russia contributed to the fact that while in the middle of the 17th century. monotonous and newly corrected rites and books were introduced in Russia, the Ural ... Cossacks continued to live with the customs and rites of the old XIV century, inherited from their ancestors, considering them as if a shrine, deviating from which seemed to be a betrayal and a sin, ”wrote N Chernavsky1.

Only at the end of the 18th century, a certain isolation of the Cossack society was broken by the appearance of a "newcomer element", albeit an insignificant one. The first Orthodox church was erected only in 1831 on the initiative of the Orenburg clergy. Accordingly, the persecuted Old Believers always found a safe haven among the Urals. Apparently, it was precisely with this circumstance that two unsuccessful attempts the establishment of a separate Ufa diocese (in 1666 and 1681), the main argument in favor of which was the struggle against the schism.

The adherence of the Yaik Cossacks to the Old Believers is confirmed both by the testimonies of contemporaries and later archival materials. The “Report of the Orenburg province for 1832 on the part of the Executive Police Department” stated that “... the Cossacks of the Ural Army are all Old Believers with their wives and children”4. And in the statistical reports for 1840, the presence of more than thirty thousand schismatics was recorded in 126 Cossack settlements of the Ural region (villages, outposts, umets and farms). Most of them were in the cities of Uralsk (6,465 people) and Guryev (1,433 people), Sakmarskaya stanitsa (2,275 people), the outposts of Rubizhny (765 people), Genvartsovsky (699 people), and Kruglozernoe (681 people). ), Irtetsky (561 people), Round (405 people), Sakharnaya fortress (501 people). 5 According to the data of 1872, the number of Old Believers in the Ural Cossack army significantly exceeded the number of adherents of official Orthodoxy (in the form of common faith) - 46 347 and 32,062 people, respectively1. In the Orenburg Cossacks, also "quite infected with schism", this correspondence amounted to 8,899 Old Believers for 61,177 Orthodox people2.

The spread of the Old Believers in the region under study proceeded in parallel with the processes of Russian colonization of the region. Migration wave of the 30-40s of the XVIII century. captured the territory of modern Chelyabinsk and Kurgan (Shadrinsk district) regions, i.e. former Iset province3. The center of the Old Believers here in the early period was the Dolmatov Monastery. His abbot Isaac Mokrinsky provided land for the fugitives to live. In 1669, according to some sources, Isaac was even removed from his rank4, and the monastery subsequently played a significant role in eradicating the schism. As the Russian people settled, it penetrated more and more into the depths of the aforementioned province and turned from secret to explicit. So, in the course of the second audit, carried out in 1738 with the aim of entering the schismatics into a double salary, 1116 souls were recorded6.

A powerful impetus for a new influx of the Russian population to the South Urals was the activity of the Orenburg expedition in the 30-40s. XVIII century, when six lines of fortresses were built with the center in Orenburg7. The inhabitants of the latter were soldiers of garrison regiments, Ufa, Samara, Iset and Yaik Cossacks, as well as servicemen from the abolished Zakamsk line. Exiles and fugitives were also used.

In this motley mass, it was easy for the disgraced Old Believers to get lost. All these people subsequently formed the core of the Orenburg army, a significant part of which was also recruited from newcomer Great Russian peasants.

A curious document has been preserved, clearly illustrating the attitude of the population of some fortresses (in this case, Chelyabinsk) to the official church. From the report of Prince A.A. Putyatin Iset voivode Khrushchev follows that the stone church founded in 1748 in the city of Chelyab "due to failure in the work of people" even in 1764, i.e. after 16 years (!) was not built: "...because the local Cossacks are deviated into Schism, it may turn out that they are not zealous for the construction of that church ..."2.

Along with the movement of the Cossacks to new lands, the Old Believer doctrine also spread. In numerous notes on the state of the split in the Orenburg province, there are remarks about the time and reasons for its appearance: “The priests, mainly Cossacks, came to Sakmarskaya during the settlement of their village from Uralsk; in the 18th century, the schismatics were resettled to Rassypnaya from the Don for indignation; ... from the Don schismatics settled in Buranna and other places along the river. Ile-ku"3; "in Art. The Giryal and Ilyinsky schismatics appeared from the time of the formation of the villages from the Samara province”4; “in the Preobrazhenskaya and Aleksandrovskaya volosts (Troitsky district. - E.D.) a split was brought from the Cossacks of the Sakmarskaya village of the Ural Cossack army, when the peasants went away to Sakmarsk under the guise of work”5, etc.

Monasteries and parishes

The study of any historical and cultural phenomenon within the framework of the adaptation approach involves consideration of the relationship between the subject and the object of adaptation, that is, the external environment and community. The external environment sets the rules and restrictions on which the social system functions, acts as a source of resources, without which it cannot carry out adaptive activities, and, finally, changes in the environment actually initiate the adaptive process1.

The formation of specific features in the Orthodox in essence religious tradition Old Believers was due, first of all, to the peculiarities of historical development. The Old Believers' lack of conditions for its legal, full-fledged functioning directly affected the organization of church life, when the state of religious institutions is not stable and is highly dependent on public policy. Adaptation strategies developed by communities in such an aggressive atmosphere are classified by sociologists as forced or defensive, when maintaining the integrity of the group is associated with an indispensable change in the ways of interacting with the environment while maintaining, on the whole, old, traditional goals and values2.

Government decrees that forbade the construction of prayer buildings, the organization of prayer houses in private houses, restricting the movement of priests, etc., made it much more difficult for confessional communities to exist. If the activities of official Orthodoxy were concentrated around large monasteries, urban and rural parish churches, then with regard to the Old Believers, the question was somewhat different. The functions of religious centers here were performed by sketes or secret monasteries, which, also being banned (since 1745), were subjected to constant destruction.

Initially, the monasteries themselves were distinguished, where only monastics lived, and sketes, small settlements near them, in which laymen of both sexes were allowed to live together. After the abolition of large Old Believer communities (in particular, Vyga), the term "skete" combined these concepts. Many of the monks who lived there went to hard-to-reach forests (“deserts”), then new fugitives, sometimes entire families, joined them, so a secret settlement with its own small household was gradually formed. In the region under study, almost all forest monasteries and solitary cells were called skete.

The spread of the Old Believers, along with the colonization flows of the Russian peasant population, led to the spontaneous formation within the part of the settlers, united by a single creed, of syncretic (church-lay) settlement structures or parish-type communities, consisting of kindred or neighboring groups. Their sacred consolidating centers were small monasteries - sketes. In general, the formation of peasant communities around sacred centers, created on the initiative from below and on worldly dependents, was characteristic of the sparsely populated territories of Russia that were just beginning to be settled. So, T.A. Bernshtam distinguishes two types of parish organizations: church, or canonical, and chapel - folk in origin, but gradually legalized by church custom. Chapel parishes existed for a long time in the North, but their activities did not suit the official church, which, not without reason, feared the use of chapels as Old Believer prayer houses.

Basically, from the sketes, the Old Believer doctrine also penetrated into the foreign environment. As described above, the Old Believers were brought to the Yazva Komi-Permyaks by several monks who arrived from the Nizhny Tagil factories and founded 50 versts from the village. Verkhne-Yazvinsky is a small monastery. In the same way, thanks to the missionary activity of the Old Believer monks from the sketes located in the immediate vicinity of the Permian repairs, the Komi-Zyuzda settlements were also “infected with a split”. Similar processes accompanied the formation of ethno-confessional groups on the basis of the Old Believers and among the Komi-Zyryans1.

The materials concentrated in the regional archives, mainly various investigative cases about schismatics, reports, notes and reports of local administrations contain extensive information about Old Believer sketes and secret prayer houses. Archival documents make it possible to identify their geography, approximate quantitative and social composition, as well as to trace the relationship between remote Old Believer centers.

Most of the sketes were concentrated in the areas of compact settlement of the Old Believers. So, according to the “Report on the movement of the split in the Ural Cossack army for 1848”, at that time there were seven sketes on the territory of the army. They were located in the immediate vicinity of the Cossack settlements: on Rakov Island, one and a half miles from the Borodino outpost, on Kizlyarsky Island, four miles from the same outpost, on Mitryasov Island, seven miles from Iletsk. Five versts from the Budarinsky outpost was the Budarinsky skete, seven versts from the city of Uralsk - Sadovsky, three versts from the Gnilovsky umet - Gnilovsky and, finally, the most famous Sergievsky skete was located twenty versts from the same Gnilovsky umet. They had six prayer houses, as well as wooden huts-cells. In the largest Sadovsky women's skete, there were 40 huts and two prayer houses, in Kizlyarsky - 20 residential buildings, in the rest - from 10 to 15 cells. The total number of inhabitants was 151 people, including 118 women and 33 men, there were novices and novices1. The given statistics, due to known reasons, cannot be considered absolutely accurate.

Secret Old Believer monasteries in the Ural region have been known for a long time and repressive measures have been taken against them more than once. During the persecution of the Old Believers, who were hiding on Yaik and in the Irgiz monasteries, the schismatic settlement in the Yaitsky town - the Shatsky Monastery (about 1741) was destroyed. The Sergievsky Skete, which could “outdo any of the oldest Orthodox monasteries in Russia with its profitability” and, being “the main hotbed of the Ural beglopopovshchina”, was also repeatedly ruined. In 1830, together with the female Gnilovsky skete, it was destroyed, and some of the monks and the rector were imprisoned in an Orthodox monastery. However, the restoration of the cloisters happened, apparently, rather quickly. According to archival data, already in 1848, there were already 16 cells in the Gnilovsky skete, and I3 in Sergievsky. The latter circumstance was also explained by the fact that the split was popular not only among ordinary Cossacks, but also among the "highest Ural aristocracy", which, according to local officials, "was not always convenient and possible to fight." In the event of another threat, the wanderers were immediately warned of the impending danger4.

With regard to the Sadovsky women’s skete, it is known that it “was started by hermits, among others, in places previously sparsely inhabited” around the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries.1 From the correspondence of the Orenburg and Ural military governor with the Ministry of Internal Affairs, it follows that it gradually grew in 1871. consisted of two relatively large settlements. In the aforementioned year, a fire broke out in one of them, with 35 buildings burned down. However, the rest of the buildings survived, and the second neighboring skete was not hit by fire at all2, which made it possible for its further functioning.

Ethnocultural interaction of Old Believer communities and areas of interaction

The place of paradise is determined at the top, high, in the sky. In spiritual verses, the image of paradise, located on a high glass mountain, was established. The road there is comprehended in the context of the Christian concepts of spiritual ascent and asceticism, through fasting and prayer, the fight against sin: “After all, every step is a sin, everything we do, think is a sin. So you need to pray, and everything is as it should be done, then only to heaven. It’s good there, but we won’t get there.” At the same time, the road to paradise can be imagined as overcoming very specific obstacles - a slippery, smooth surface on which you need to climb, the heaviness that presses on your shoulders when lifting (sins) is tangible, almost material (“pull, pull down, heavy like stones "). The need to be prepared for such difficulties is often explained by the custom of collecting cut nails throughout life and putting them in a coffin for the dead: “So that there is something to catch on there, so that it is easier to climb”1. Here, the tendency of the text to enter the sphere of actual beliefs, designed to explain, motivate ritual norms, everyday prescriptions, and reveal their origin, is expressed.

In the popular consciousness, complex multi-layered texts on biblical topics are constructed, including etiological legends that appeal to Holy Scripture. Thus, several such legends are contained in the widespread narrative about the global flood, they justify why different animals that were on the ark should be treated differently. For example; “The mouse, if it gets into the dishes, you need to throw the dishes away. She is a bad animal. In the ark began to gnaw the floor. The tiger sneezed, a cat jumped out of its nostrils and ran after the mouse. And the frog sat on the hole, covered it with itself, so the ark did not drown. They saved people. They must be respected."

The narrative motivation of some religious and everyday prohibitions and prescriptions, their moralizing aspect are also found in the gospel stories. For example, the ban on washing and generally working on church holidays: “Mary Magdalene, a harlot, gathered in a church on a hillock. There was a woman splashing around, and she condemned the sinner, well, mentally condemned. She went into the desert. And the condemning one rinsed on a big holiday. She condemned herself, but she also did not follow the rules. Went to hell." Rites, various ritual actions that accompany church holidays, their appearance and the need to observe them, are also associated with Sacred history and substantiated in folklore texts. For example, the custom of dyeing eggs for Easter: “Christ dyed an egg with his blood and then distributed it to his disciples. He gave and said: “Christ is risen!” Therefore, it is necessary to dye eggs, it went from there. ”2. Thus, the "folk Bible" is thematically much broader than its canonical original, and its structure-forming elements are folk etiology1.

A characteristic feature of oral retellings of sacred texts is the simplification of complex theological concepts, bringing them closer to the realities of peasant life, operating with understandable, simple categories. So the thesis about the immaculate conception and virginity of the Mother of God is transformed as follows: “She (the Mother of God), when she gave birth to Jesus Christ, was a virgin. She was a virgin both by birth and by death. He is not from the place that everyone left, but from here ... (points to the armpit). And after the death of a maiden. Common expressions, common in the village environment, are put into the lips of the holy virgin, with which she explains her surprise at the mission that fell to her: wash her feet and drink water.”

The "simplification" of sacred history sometimes also occurs due to the mixing in oral legends on biblical themes of various narrative genres that determine the manner and style of presentation. So, the story of Lot, told in the Komi-Yazva village, is approaching in terms of genre the everyday tale of a savvy peasant who outwitted the devil: “Lot would ... be, brother Noah. And he went to hell, asked God to help him, and God said to him: "You are cunning yourself, you will jump out on your own." Thought, thought. He took a stick, began to measure hell. One way, the other. Made a cross out of a stick. Satan says to him: "What are you measuring?". "I want to build a church here." "Ah well!" And threw it out of hell like a cork.

In the Old Believer collection of the "folk Bible" a number of especially significant events in sacred history, turning points, crisis stages, symbolically repeating the time of the first creation, are distinguished. At the same time, the set of plots that are subject to interpretation and further translation, the placement of accents in the oral interpretation of written texts seem to be non-random and specific to the Old Believer tradition. The formation of a historical narrative or an autobiographical narrative occurs, according to B.A. Uspensky, thanks to a system of communicative filters that filter out insignificant elements of experience and construct this experience in the form in which it can be suitable for social use1. The described regularity manifests itself, first of all, at the macro level, at the level of selection of written texts included in the communication process. As field materials show, the sacred history is considered by the Old Believers in the same vein as the history of the schism, correlates with it, and the texts are built on the search for analogies between biblical and post-schism events. Thus, the legend of the flood in oral retelling turns out to be directly connected with the Old Believer eschatology, punishment for sins and a new expectation of the end of the world: “There used to be a global flood. People lived as strangely as they do now. Went naked, debauched. That's why the flood, God couldn't stand it. 40 days and 40 nights lasted. Then everything dried up. Then God spoke to such people, but he was not visible. There will be no more flood, there will be a rainbow and the end of the world. The legend about the construction of the Tower of Babel is associated among the Old Believers with the division of faiths after Nikon's reform, and in the biblical Exodus one can see the history of the persecution of the old faith and the scattering of its adherents around the world. We will return to these stories below.

Sacred History and the History of the Schism in Oral Traditions

The bearers of each cultural and religious tradition broadcast a certain type of vision and perception of the surrounding world. Many researchers consider the Old Believer culture as the successor of the Russian Middle Ages, which explains the events of our time from the standpoint of the religious and philosophical worldview of that time, thereby turning the “legacy of Ancient Russia into the property of a new Europeanized Russia”1.

In the course of historical development, the Old Believers were formed as a kind of ethno-cultural phenomenon, on one pole of which there is a book church culture, on the other - folk everyday life. The interaction of these two principles - bookish and folk - as you know, gives rise to structures that are complex in semantic and formal terms.

Field ethnographic materials collected among the Old Believers of the Ural-Volga region (Russians, Komi-Permyaks and Mordovians) include various oral works. These are records of informants' discussions on historical topics, retellings of popular stories from Holy Scripture. Most of them have written analogies, both canonical and apocryphal. However, at the same time, they are examples of a rather free interpretation of well-known texts, built according to the laws of development of traditional or mythologized consciousness.

Almost most of the retold works are apocrypha, with the Old Believers actually associated with the book tradition of their existence. A well-known researcher of ancient literature wrote in this regard: “The Old Believers copied word for word into their notebooks non-canonical works from ancient collections, which were valued like everything pre-Nikonian. Of course, the Old Believers from the people were close to simply and clearly stated - and besides, colored with fascinating fantastic details - the plots of bookishness passed from their grandfathers.

The use of even the most “historical” folklore genres (epics, historical songs, etc.) for the reconstruction of real events of the distant past has always been debatable, since creativity is based on special artistic patterns, primarily on the repeated repetition of archaic models, their typological continuity in later transformations. In this regard, the “historical” texts of the Old Believers, including plots from the sacred history and the history of the schism itself, I consider exclusively as sources for studying the specifics of their worldview, as well as the features of the functioning of the Old Believer culture as a whole.

The Old Believers, like other confessional groups, see the world around them through the prism of Holy Scripture, which they turn to in various situations to explain certain phenomena, make important decisions, confirm their own judgments, etc. In this case, secondary texts (metatexts), SE are formed. Nikitina calls them “hermeneutic”1, which, through the individual characteristics of the narrator (informant), through the rhetorical devices used by him, the choice of plots, keywords, and emphasis on certain events, reflect the mental characteristics of the entire community.

Two types of sources can be distinguished, on the basis of which modern historical traditions are created. These are traditional stable plots, which were fixed by the collectors of the 19th - early 20th centuries, gleaned from sacred texts (the Bible, Lives of the Saints, Menaia, etc.), various apocrypha, handwritten stories, spiritual poems, popular prints. Another type of springs is already modern and has a huge variety. TV and radio broadcasts “about the divine”, sermons of priests, newspaper and magazine articles, illustrations in textbooks, etc. can become an impulse for living folk art. In addition, stories from secular literature and ordinary everyday situations heard from fellow villagers, acquaintances or neighbors can be interpreted in a “divine” key. The composition of primary sources, on the one hand, testifies to the stability of the tradition, on the other hand, to its flexibility and adaptive abilities.

The ratio between written and oral text may be different. As a rule, it depends on the personality of the narrator. The greatest degree of closeness to the original text is characteristic of narratives recorded from mentors, priests, or ordinary members of communities who are well acquainted with the Holy Scriptures. The stability and similarity of images is fed by the book tradition, however, as observations show, the methods of their intergenerational transmission are largely based on a developed oral culture. Often the narrators make only indirect references to written sources. Their acquaintance with the texts occurred not through independent study (reading), but in the process of communication. Information could have been received many years ago, in childhood, from older relatives: “Grandfather read such a book to us, they write a lot of interesting things there, but now we don’t have those books”; “The old people told us, they had such books, special ones,” etc.

Actually, for the folk tradition it does not seem essential in which book the story being retold was recorded. Reference is made to the book in general, the book containing any knowledge in the field of Christianity. The epithet "old" is usually added to the description of such a "Book". “It is written in old books” is the most common rhetorical device that precedes the narrative or interspersed in its outline. In the Old Believer culture, the old, in contrast to the new, is equivalent to unconditionally correct, authoritative, time-tested. To confirm the truth of the story, a double appeal to the “old” is often used: “this is all taken from old books. The old people were talking. After all, they were a bliss to the divine, not like we are now.

Danilko Elena Sergeevna- Specialist in the history and culture of the Old Believers, the peoples of the Ural-Volga region, visual anthropology, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor, Head of the Ethnographic Scientific and Educational Center of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology named after. N. N. Miklukho-Maklay of the Russian Academy of Sciences, member of the editorial board of the journal “Bulletin of the Chuvash State University.

In 1996 she graduated from the Faculty of History of the Bashkir State University, in 2002 she defended her thesis on the topic "Old Believers in the Southern Urals: a historical and ethnographic study." From 1996 to 2003 she worked at the Center for Ethnological Research of the Ufa Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 2007 she graduated from the full-time doctoral studies at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology named after V.I. N. N. Miklukho-Maclay of the Russian Academy of Sciences and defended her doctoral thesis on the topic “Mechanisms of self-preservation of Russian and Finno-Ugric Old Believer communities of the Ural-Volga region”. From 2005 to 2009 she was the Executive Director of the Association of Ethnographers and Anthropologists of Russia. Currently, he is in charge of the Ethnographic Scientific and Educational Center of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology named after A.I. N.N. Miklukho-Maclay RAS.

Author of over a hundred scientific publications and about ten visual-anthropological films. He is a member of the International Commission for the Study of the Old Believers at the Congress of Slavists. Executive Director of the Moscow International Festival of Visual Anthropology "Intermediary Camera". In 2013 she was a member of the selection committee of the International Festival of Visual Anthropology in Chicago (SVA Film and Media Festival in Chicago) and a member of the jury of the International Festival documentaries Astra in Sibiu, Romania (Astra Film Festival of Documentary Film). She worked as an editor-analyst for a series of programs about the peoples of Russia “Russia is my love” on the Kultura TV channel.

Area of ​​scientific interests: history and culture of the Old Believers, the peoples of the Ural-Volga region, visual anthropology

Major Publications

• Peoples of Russia / E. S. Danilko. M.: ROSMEN, 2015. 80 p. : ill. (My Russia).
• Bashkirs / otv. ed. R.G. Kuzeev, E. S. Danilko; Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology im. N. N. Miklukho-Maklay RAS; Institute of Ethnology im. R. G. Kuzeev of the Ufa Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Institute of History, Language and Literature of the Ufa Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences. M.: Nauka, 2015. 662 p. (Peoples and Cultures).
• Ethno-confessional minorities of the peoples of the Ural-Volga region: monograph / E. A. Yagafova, E. S. Danilko, G. A. Kornishina, T. L. Molotova, R. R. Sadikov; ed. Dr. ist. Sciences. E. A. Yagafova. Samara: PSGA, 2010. 264 p.: tsv.ill.
• Old Believers in the Southern Urals: Essays on History and Traditional Culture. Ufa, 2002. 225 p., illustrations, maps.
• The Old Faith in Chuvash: Book Tradition and Daily Practices of an Old Believer Community // Ethnographic Review. 2015. No. 5. S. 19-32.
• Old Believer communities in the Chernobyl zone: the history of the village of Svyatsk // Studies in applied and urgent ethnology. No. 230/231. pp. 55-71.
• “Svyatsk, because a holy place…”: a story about a village that has disappeared (to the study of biographical and religious narrative). Moscow: Indrik, 2012-2013. pp. 329-362.
• Tatars in ethnically mixed settlements of the Ural-Volga region: features of intercultural interactions // Ethnographic Review. 2010. No. 6. S. 54-65.
• Interfaith interactions in the Ural-Volga region: Old Believers among the “foreigners” // Traditional Culture. 2010. No. 3. S. 72-80.
• A small provincial town in modern Russia (based on field research in the city of Davlekanovo, Republic of Bashkortostan) // Studies in Applied and Urgent Ethnology. No. 216. M., 2010. 24 p.
• The relationship of folklore tradition with adaptation processes in modern Old Believers (on the example of eschatological and utopian legends) // Ethnographic Review. 2007. No. 4. P.43-53.
• Historical memory in the oral traditions of the Zyuzda and Yazva Komi-Permyaks // Ethnographic Review (online). 2007. No. 2.
• Social Mechanisms for the Preservation of Traditional Values ​​(on the Example of the Old Believer Community of the City of Miass, Chelyabinsk Region) // Ethnographic Review. 2006. No. 4. P. 98-108.

As a manuscript

ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE CHILDHOOD OF RUSSIAN BASHKORTOSTAN

(the endXIX- middleXXin.)

Specialty 07.00.07. – ethnography, ethnology and anthropology

for the degree of Candidate of Historical Sciences

Izhevsk - 2016

The work was carried out at the Federal State Budgetary Institution of Science, Institute of Ethnological Research. R. G. Kuzeev of the Ufa Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Object of study - Russian rural population of the Republic of Bashkortostan.

Subject of study - Ethnography of Russian childhood in Bashkortostan. In this study, ethnographic methods are used to study the rituals, customs associated with the birth and upbringing of children in a traditional society, as well as clothing, food, household items, toys, games, folklore, childhood illnesses and ailments, folk ways getting rid of them.

Territorial scope of the study - The Republic of Bashkortostan, which in the past belonged to the Ufa province (sample 1865) and the Bashkir ASSR (1919). The Russian villages of Belokataisky, Birsky, Duvansky, Dyurtyulinsky, Zilairsky, Karaidelsky, Krasnokamsky, Kugarchinsky, Mechetlinsky districts, in which Russians live, were studied in particular detail. – immigrants from the northern, southern and central provinces of Russia.

Timeline of the study cover the period from the end of the 19th century (the completion of the formation of the areas of settlement of the Russian population in Bashkiria; the availability of published information about the world of childhood) to the middle of the 20th century. (interruption of native traditions after the opening of maternity hospitals, the loss of the institution of midwives, the widespread rejection of customs associated with religion and community education). In some cases, the chronology has been extended to the beginning of the 21st century. (2010 – 2014) to identify the dynamics of traditions.

The degree of knowledge of the problem. The ethnography of childhood has become the subject of research by a large number of foreign and Russian authors. Summarizing the body of various sources, we can distinguish three stages in the development of this scientific direction abroad, in Russia and Bashkortostan.

1. Formation of the ethnography of childhood as an independent subject of research in the last quarter of the 19th - early 20th centuries. Information about the ethnography of childhood in Russia was accumulated along with general factual information. V. S. Kasimovsky, describing in the 1860s - 1870s. features of life and culture of the Russian population of the Zlatoust district of the Ufa province, also recorded information about children. N. A. Gurvich in the “Memorial Book” for 1883 in the section “Folk Examples and Beliefs in the Ufa Province” published an essay by R. G. Ignatiev, in which he provided information about prohibitions for pregnant women, customs associated with childbirth, “child place”, about the role of a midwife, etc. Information about the world of childhood is available in the memoirs of a general practitioner, Professor D.I. Aksakov (1791, Ufa - 1859, Moscow), literary works of Nikolai Pallo (1922–2013), a native of the Zlatoust district.

At the turn of the XIX and XX centuries. the formation of childhood ethnography as an independent scientific direction began. At the same time, research approaches were changing, which determined the formation of childhood ethnography as a multidisciplinary scientific direction. The first, earliest approach, the researchers call pediatric. It is characterized by "medical-anthropological studies" of the "bodily-physiological" side of childhood (obstetrics, childhood illnesses, physical education, etc.), dates back to the last quarter of the 19th century. Its representatives were E. A. Pokrovsky, V. F. Demich, G. Popov. Doctors set themselves the task of improving the state of their life through studying the world of childhood and educating the people. E. A. Pokrovsky (1834-1895) - Russian pediatrician, psychologist, organizer and editor of the psychological and pedagogical journal "Bulletin of Education", studied the physical education of peoples. Along the way, he collected children's things and accessories from all over Russia: cradles, wheelchairs, dolls, clothes, as well as recipes for children's food, children's games. In Europe, at the same time, the book of the German anthropologist, ethnographer and gynecologist Hermann Heinrich Ploss (1819–1885), dedicated to the ethnographic, anthropological, cultural and historical characteristics of women, was popular.

The second way of studying the world of childhood is actually ethnographic, marked by the appearance in Russia in 1904 of the "Program for collecting information about native and christening rites from Russian peasants and foreigners" by V. N. Kharuzina (1866–1931). In the work of V. N. Kharuzina, for the first time, the world of childhood became the subject of a special study. A significant contribution to the study of the problem was made by one of the founders of Russian ethnography N. N. Kharuzin (1865–1900) and the ethnographer, local historian, and museum worker V. V. Bogdanov (1868–1949). In May 1904, the famous ethnographer D.K. Zelenin worked in the Belebeevsky district of the Ufa province. Having visited the Old Believer village Usen-Ivanovo, he revealed, on the one hand, the conservatism of the system of raising children, and on the other, the inevitable impact of social changes. Information about the children participating in the event folk holidays and fun, is contained in the provincial press.

Third way - folklore emerged at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. thanks to V.P. Shein (1826-1900), who first singled out children's folklore as an independent section. In the 1920s folklorists G. S. Vinogradov (“the godfather of the new science”) and O. N. Kapitsa defined the world of childhood as a special subculture with its own structure, language, and traditions.

Thus, in late XIX- the beginning of the XX century. approaches to the study of the world of childhood were formed - from the point of view of medicine, ethnography and folklore. Subsequently, they were expanded by the efforts of psychologists, linguists, educators, sociologists, religious scholars, philosophers, culturologists, defectologists, and representatives of other disciplines.

2. "Children's ethnography" / "ethnography of childhood" in the 1920s - 1980s. In the USSR, the development of childhood ethnography (as well as ethnological science in general) was possible within the framework of historical materialism, the class approach, and the need to form a “new” person. The upbringing of children was studied on the example of the Evenks, Kets, Khanty, Chuvash, Estonians, and the peoples of Dagestan. The circle of studied peoples and problems expanded. The customs and rituals of the children's cycle were described, studies of the family and family life different peoples USSR. Profound transformations of relationships in the Soviet family were characterized. Regional studies of the ethnography of Russian childhood were organized, including the methods of field ethnography.

I. S. Kon (1928–2011) made a significant contribution to the ethnography of childhood in Russia. He is called the "ancestor" of the domestic direction of childhood ethnography. Many materials on the ethnography of childhood were presented by I. S. Kon, being the executive editor of the serial publication Ethnography of Childhood. For the first time, these books collected and compared the ways of socializing a child in a number of Asian cultures, studied ways of caring for babies, labor and sex education, forms of encouragement and punishment, relations between parents and children. Collections have ethnographic, cultural, pedagogical, psychological value.

Publications in the Traditions section

Sacred History and Schism in Old Believer Narratives (Based on Field Research among the Old Believers of the Ural-Volga Region)

Oral traditions of the Old Believers of the Ural-Volga region, discussions on historical topics, unique retellings of popular stories from the Holy Scriptures.

Field ethnographic materials collected by us in 1996–2006. among the Old Believers of the Ural-Volga region (Russians, Komi-Permyaks and Mordovians) on the territory of the Republic of Bashkortostan, Orenburg, Chelyabinsk, Perm and Kirov regions of the Russian Federation, include various oral works. These are records of informants' discussions on historical topics, retellings of popular stories from Holy Scripture. Most of them have written analogues of both canonical and apocryphal nature, however, they are examples of a fairly free interpretation of well-known texts, built according to the laws of development of traditional or mythologized consciousness.

The Old Believers as a social and religious movement arose at the end of the 17th century. as a result of the church reform initiated by Patriarch Nikon (1652-1658) and aimed at unifying the rites according to the modern Greek model. In the course of the reform, changes were made to old printed books, and the charter of the church service was changed. Nikon's reforming activities aroused sharp resistance from part of the clergy and laity. Against the background of the concept that developed in the public consciousness of that time about the special mission of Russia as the only guardian of Orthodoxy (the theory of "Moscow - the Third Rome"), innovations were perceived as a refusal to observe the purity of the Orthodox faith. In 1666, by the decision of the Council, all Nikon's innovations were legalized, and supporters of the ancient worship (Old Believers) were anathematized.

Already at the end of the XVII century. Old Believers faced the need to solve a number of ideological and organizational problems. With a decrease in the number of confessors of the pre-Nikonian setting, the question arose about the attitude towards the institution of the priesthood itself, dividing the Old Believers into two areas - priesthood and priestlessness. The priests considered it possible to accept "runaway priests" from the dominant church, while the non-priests, who considered the post-reform church devoid of grace, preferred to completely abandon the sacraments, for the performance of which a priest was required. As a result of further dogmatic disputes, these currents, in turn, broke up into many interpretations and agreements.

Since its inception, the Old Believers have been formed as a kind of ethno-cultural phenomenon, on one pole of which there is a bookish church culture, on the other - folk everyday life. According to N.I. Tolstoy, the interaction of these two principles - bookish and folk - gives rise to structures that are complex in semantic and formal terms.

The question of using even the most “historical” folklore genres (epics, historical songs, etc.) to reconstruct real events of the distant past has always been debatable, since creativity is based on special artistic patterns, primarily the repetition of archaic models. In this regard, we would like to consider the “historical” texts of the Old Believers, including plots from the sacred history and the history of the schism itself, exclusively as sources for studying the features of their worldview.

Nikolsky Church of the Old Believers-priests in the village. Vankovo.

The Old Believers, like other confessional groups, see the world around them through the prism of Holy Scripture, which they turn to in various situations to explain certain phenomena, make important decisions, confirm their own judgments, etc. At the same time, secondary texts (metatexts) are formed, which, through the individual characteristics of the narrator (informant), through the rhetorical devices used by him, the choice of plots, keywords, emphasis on certain events, reflect the mental characteristics of the entire community.

Two types of sources can be distinguished, on the basis of which modern historical traditions are created. These are traditional stable plots, which were recorded by the collectors of the 19th - early 20th centuries, gleaned from sacred texts (the Bible, Lives of the Saints, Menaia, etc.), various apocrypha, handwritten stories, spiritual verses, popular prints. Another type of springs is already modern and has a huge variety. TV and radio broadcasts “about the divine”, sermons of priests, newspaper and magazine articles, illustrations in textbooks, etc. can become an impulse for living folk art. In addition, stories from secular literature and ordinary everyday situations heard from fellow villagers, acquaintances or neighbors can be interpreted in a “divine” key.

The ratio between written and oral text may be different. As a rule, it depends on the personality of the narrator. The greatest degree of closeness to the original text is characteristic of narratives recorded from mentors, priests, or ordinary members of communities who are well acquainted with the Holy Scriptures. The stability and similarity of images is fed by the book tradition, however, as observations show, the methods of their intergenerational transmission are largely based on a developed oral culture. Often the narrators make only indirect references to written sources. Their acquaintance with the texts occurred not through independent study (reading), but in the process of listening and fixing in memory. Information could have been obtained many years ago, in childhood, from older relatives:

“Grandfather read such a book to us, they write a lot of interesting things there, but now we don’t have those books”; “The old people told us, they had such books, special ones.”

Actually, for the folk tradition it does not make a significant difference in which book the retold story was recorded. A reference is made to a book in general, a book containing sacred information about everything, any knowledge in the field of Christianity. The epithet “ancient” is usually added to the characteristics of such a “Book” - “it is written in ancient books”. In the Old Believer culture, the old, in contrast to the new, is equivalent to unconditionally correct, authoritative, time-tested. To confirm the truth of the story, a double appeal to the "old" is often used:

“It's all taken from old books. The old people were talking. After all, they were closer to the divine, not like we are now.

As our field materials show, evangelical stories predominate in the Old Believer "folk Bible". Old Testament traditions are represented by stories about the creation of the world, man, the origin of good and evil, motives about the flood and the construction of the Tower of Babel are widespread. It can be quite difficult to single out and somehow classify individual motifs, since the texts tend to combine plots of different content and origin into a single narrative.

Here is one of the typical stories about the creation of the world, recorded by the Komi-Zyuzdins, where the motifs about the creation of the world, the creation of the first people and the fall into sin are rather succinctly combined:

“There was nothing at first. The Holy Spirit created everything. He created heaven and earth, distinguished water, divided it. And then people, Adam and Eve. From the earth of Adam he created and breathed into him a soul. And then he fell asleep, and he took out his rib and created Eve. And so they began to live. He created a garden, a paradise and some kind of fruit was there. Apple. And he forbade them: “You don’t eat this, it’s evil.” And the demon pretended to be a snake or something, I forgot. Or a person. The snake was there. "Eat an apple." She refused at first. And then she ate. She ate this fruit, and her eyes opened and she began to see herself naked, she began to close. She ate and fed Adam. And then God cursed them and sent them to the ground: “You will earn money with your labor, you will give birth to children in illness.” Compare with the text recorded by the Russian Old Believers in the same region (Afanasyevsky district, Kirov region): “That's how he created our whole land. Out of nothing... Why, God himself, he's so omnipotent. Our sun did not appear by itself, no, not by itself. His God our Lord created, and after all, even before he created man ... "

The cited texts, like many others, are almost identical to the written original (the Bible, the Book of Genesis), but their continuation is quite far from the canon and contains elements of archaic dualistic beliefs. According to this version, God had a brother, with whom relations did not develop quite smoothly. In the first example, the brother demanded for himself a part of the world, “his share”, the result of a quarrel was the appearance of hell: “The Lord from created heaven. And this brother flew even higher and created the sky. The Lord flew even higher and created the sky. Then he moved this brother, and he went deep into the earth. And he leaves, leaves, leaves, and remembered, he made a prayer. Isusov. And stopped. And God told him: “The living people will be mine, and the dead ones will be yours.” Though sinners, though not sinners, all were with the demon. Here, ancient mythological ideas (the creation of the world by demiurge brothers) are closely intertwined with the Christian tradition: the creation of the Jesus Prayer as a means of salvation in a difficult situation. (Compare: “Jesus' prayer will get it from the bottom of the sea.”) Further, according to legend, Jesus descends into hell and leads people out of there, promising the owner of hell to fill his possessions with drunkards and harlots. Similar motives exist among the Komi-Zyryan Old Believers on Upper Vychegda and Pechora, only hell is filled with people who use tobacco. Thus, the well-known ban on smoking among the Old Believers is substantiated. The second (Russian) text also contains a description of the confrontation between two brothers (God and Satanael), the appearance of evil on earth (from a hole made by a bad brother), their rivalry due to the influence on a person.

Chapter Old Believer Church Metropolitan Cornelius

Quite common among various groups of Old Believers are oral variations on the theme of the flood and Noah's ark with a characteristic motif about the penetration of evil or a demon onto the ark because of Noah's quarrel with his wife. The motif, apparently, goes back to the Tolkova Paley (XV century). The narrative contains several etiological legends explaining why different animals that were on the ark should be treated well or, conversely, badly. For example: “The mouse, if it gets into the dishes, you need to throw the dishes away. She is a bad animal. In the ark began to gnaw the floor. The tiger sneezed, a cat jumped out of its nostrils and ran after the mouse. And the frog sat on the hole, covered it with itself, so the ark did not drown. They saved people. They must be respected."
The narrative motivation of some religious and everyday prohibitions and prescriptions, their moralizing aspect, are also found in the gospel stories. For example, the ban on washing and generally working on church holidays: “Mary Magdalene, a harlot, gathered in a church on a hillock. There was a woman splashing around, and she condemned the sinner, well, mentally condemned. She went into the desert. And the condemning one rinsed on a big holiday. She condemned herself, but she also did not follow the rules. Went to hell."

A characteristic feature of oral retellings of sacred texts is the simplification of complex theological concepts, bringing them closer to the realities of peasant life, operating with understandable, simple categories. So the thesis about the immaculate conception and virginity of the Mother of God is transformed as follows: “She (the Mother of God), when she gave birth to Jesus Christ, was a virgin. She was a virgin both by birth and by death. He is not from the place that everyone left, but from here ... (points to the armpit). And after the death of a maiden. Common expressions, common in the village environment, are put into the lips of the holy virgin, with which she explains her surprise at the mission that fell to her: I washed my feet and drank water. Among Nikon's innovations was a change in the inscription of the name of God, they began to write it with two "and", the Old Believers retained the pre-reform form (Jesus).

The events of sacred history for the Old Believers are directly connected with the history of the schism itself. Orthodox Church. The split seems to be the starting point of world history, according to which the vector of the further development of mankind is determined. The beginning of Christianity and the appearance of the old faith coincide. It is the antiquity of the Old Believer doctrine that irrefutably testifies to its truth:

“By which faith Jesus Christ was born, by such faith we live”; “The worldly faith has been going on since 1666, and our Pomeranian faith has been going on for two thousand years. Noted recently"; “Our Fedoseev faith was even before the crucifixion of the Lord God. And then there was the struggle with Satanail. We fought for three days. They were angels, they became demons.

A fairy-tale motif is again woven into the fabric of the narrative - the struggle between good and evil principles, demiurge brothers, numerical symbolism (“we fought for three days”).

Head of the Old Believer Church, Metropolitan of Moscow and All Russia Kornily

The above plots also speak of a developed sub-confessional self-awareness. Informants can present in this way not only the history of the Old Believers as a whole, but also the history of their consent, Pomor, in one statement, and Fedoseevsky in another. The essence of dogmatic disagreements, which at one time led to the formation of agreements and interpretations, is known for the most part to clergy and literate Old Believers, “scribes”, therefore among the laity one can meet various interpretations. Some can identify only two main directions - priests and bespopovtsy. A “geographical” etymology is possible: “When the persecution of the faith began, some went to Pomorye, they began to be called Pomeranians. Kerzhaks went to the Kerzhensky forests, that's why they are called so. The rejection of the pejorative name "schismatics" is manifested in the following plot: "There was a faith -" schismatics ". Then under Nikon. They were inclined towards the Old Believers, but so that they would not be killed, but, for a bleziru, a little bit there too. Apparently, we are talking about co-religionists who administratively belonged to the official church, but retained the Old Believer charter.

The main reason for the split is the correction of church books, which is perceived as an encroachment on the shrine, which has irreversible consequences for true Christians: “They changed all the books. Printed with errors. You can’t change a word, the apostle Paul also said, neither add, nor subtract, not rearrange. If you change, you will be anathema. If they have changed, you are no longer a Christian, but a heretic.”

The “facilitation” of faith, its simplification, distortion, as well as self-interest characterize the perpetrators of the reform, Nikon and Peter I, in the view of the Old Believers: “Earlier, some Patriarch Nikon softened the faith, it seemed hard to him. Who also wanted to take it easy, they followed him, but the Old Believers did not. The Nikonians say, and there is no need to observe fasts”; “Peter I did it all. I wanted a lot of income, but we have everything for free, we don’t have it.” The actions of the reformers, described in modern language, are completely blasphemous, the main thing in them is the profanation of holiness, neglect of the most important, inviolable things:

“Nikon began to change the old laws. I planted illiterate people to write, drunk, illiterate, punctuation marks were missed, prayers were mixed up. Places were missed. Someone, maybe, wrote in good conscience, a person will drink like that. How could they have been entrusted with a sacred work? Is it possible to do so?"

Consider one of the examples of Old Believer historical prose, recorded in the city of Miass, Chelyabinsk Region, from a mentor of chapel consent. It is the ministers of worship - priests, mentors or active laity - who show special awareness of the history of the Old Believers, knowledge of the factual base, exact dates and names of persons who played an important role in it. The range of their reading is quite diverse and, as a rule, is not limited to liturgical literature.

The story begins with a description of the "terrible times" that Christians experienced with the advent of Patriarch Nikon. They were the result of the correction of books, because the holy fathers said: "Not a single letter can be changed." Nikon had an assistant - "Arsen the Greek", who tempted the patriarch to increase distortions, saying: "Correct as much as possible." And it is added: "Like Lenin." To the question "Why like Lenin?" An explanation follows: “He also said this: “The more priests we destroy, the better.” The comparison is based on the similarity of goals (destroy the faith) and even the sound of statements (“I also said so”). Thus, the desire inherent in traditional consciousness to search for analogies to single and extraordinary events or to typify phenomena, their endless repetition, is manifested here.

The following is a rationale for the idea, popular among the Old Believers, of the election of Russia (“Moscow is the Third Rome”). The narrative is built according to a well-known principle: first, Rome fell away from Orthodoxy, then after the Union of Florence, Constantinople, and only “Moscow, the Russian state, retained the faith until Nikon. Avvakum was burned because he did not agree with the new introductions.” The narrator calls the facts that really took place, the exact dates. The system of argumentation of one's vision is based on appeals to categories, primarily of a moral order, and, characteristically, is confirmed by references to Holy Scripture. So, in his opinion, the retreat of Rome from the true faith was due to the fact that "it is a rich country", and wealth is devoid of holiness. Here, for persuasiveness, the gospel insert is given: “Rather a camel will crawl through the eye of a needle than a rich man will go to paradise.”

The content of other recorded plots is not distinguished by such historical accuracy, the sequence of events in them is periodically disturbed, and the participants may be people who lived in different eras. So, Nikon and Peter I are sometimes called the main culprits for the division of churches, they appear as accomplices acting at the same time. Folklore motifs often sound: “People from all over Russia have gathered to decide which faith is correct. We thought for a long time, wondered how to write, faith hung by a thread. And then, at the instigation of Antichrist, they decided to write as Nikon said.

A curious narrative was recorded among the Komi-Yazva people, in which the local history (the origin of the local religious community) and the history of the schism as a whole are closely intertwined and mythologized. In addition, the text can serve as a source for analyzing the specifics of the ethnic and confessional identity of the Yazvinians: “In fact, we are Old Believers refugees. There was a big church somewhere on the Don. She was very big. There was an exclamation from heaven: “Tomorrow a man will come to you with books, icons. You cut off his head." They began to pray. A man is coming. He should have cut off his head and burned his books. If this had been done, their (Orthodox) Nikonians would not have existed. They started arguing. They (the Nikonians) stayed there. And those who wanted to cut off the head ran away, here we are. The Komi-Permyaks are different, they didn’t run away, they have the Nikon patriarchal faith.”

The story of the Solovetsky rebellion, which was reflected in a number of documentary and artistic monuments, also received a peculiar interpretation: “An angel came to the king and said to him:“ You will destroy the monastery, you will burst. The king did not obey, sent troops, the monastery was destroyed, and King Herod burst. Interestingly, the main character here is King Herod, a biblical character.

As one of the patterns of functioning of traditional consciousness, researchers identify a special attitude to the category of time, when only time is linear. own life narrator. The events of this segment logically line up one after another, some milestones are indicated - internal borders (marriage or marriage, the birth of children or another plan - war, for example, etc.). And everything that was before is in a certain “spatio-temporal field”, easily changes places and becomes mythologized. Hence the unexpected, it seemed, the neighborhood of Nikon and Peter I and the reincarnation of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich into Tsar Herod. In the latter, the principle of identification is also manifested, when only one concept is assigned to one word. In this case, the key concept is "king", that is, the persecutor of faith. They can also say about Nikon "king" - "king Nikon". The wrong external incarnation of the word entails an absolute change in its meaning, as, for example, in writing the name of God: "Jesus is Christ, and Jesus is different, this is Antichrist." The same thing happens in the above story about the "schismatics", by which they mean people of a different, "intermediate" faith.

A special place in the repertoire of Old Believer historical legends about the schism is occupied by stories about its “culprits”, which are unambiguously endowed with negative characteristics - ambition, cruelty, pride. However, their biographies can be comprehended within the hagiographical genre, in which there is often a motive of sincere repentance for committed atrocities. So in one of the oral histories, the main tormentor and persecutor Nikon appears repentant and lonely:

“Tsar Nikon announced to Tsar Alexei and everyone: “I will be the most important.” Tsar Alexei did not like it, did not accept it at the feast, pushed it away 100%. Nikon went to the monastery. Was there for seven years. He waited for Tsar Alexei to forgive and bow to him. There he died. But before his death, he arranged lynching for himself: “I was wrong, I betrayed the holy faith, I destroyed many people.” He apologized to himself."

The text of the legend is replete with specific details designed to give the narrative historical authenticity, and the modern language of the story ( “pushed 100% away”, “arranged lynching” ) removes the distance between the events of previous centuries and today's narrator. In another text written at the end of the 19th century, Nikon's wife took over the cross of repentance. Learning about the unrighteous deeds of her husband, she took the veil as a nun and devoted the rest of her life to prayers for the persecuted and unjustly offended.

On the whole, the path of the old faith appears to be a martyr's one. In the eyes of its modern adherents, the numerous sufferings that their predecessors were subjected to serve as confirmation of the special mission of the "old faith". Belonging to it requires courage and constant readiness for trials: “Nikon introduced bodily anger, killed and burned”; "True Christians will always be persecuted." The motive of "escape" is found in almost every narrative about the history of the split: "They fled from persecution to the forests, to the outskirts"; “There were persecutions. Everyone wandered off somewhere. Especially the priests, they got more”; “The 12 tribes from Jacob are scattered throughout the universe. Each tribe has its own generation from the creation of the world. When there were persecutions, the Old Believers fled to 14 countries, lived in communities in the forests. The source of the last statement is a TV show.

An echo of messianism is also heard in the ideas about the Old Believers as having been from the beginning of the world, underlying all religions that arose later: “Our elders say that there used to be one faith. Our old one. And then everything changed. Now they are looking for an easier place to pray. Where you don't have to pray much, they go there." In the next plot, the messianic idea is consonant with eschatological motives. In addition, despite the brevity, the text is very rich, it contains both the transformation of the Old Testament tradition about the Tower of Babel and the origin of languages, and Soviet rhetoric, and the main characters in it are the New Testament apostles: “There are Old Believers in all republics. The apostles smashed. I found the holy spirit, they began to know languages, and dispersed to all countries. And the apostles passed on the Old Believers to everyone. That is why they are in all countries, the Old Believers. And the Antichrist will also send his enrages to all countries.”

The Old Believers’ awareness of their own mission is present in most historical narratives: “Our true faith has been preserved only in Russia”; "only 77 faiths, and the correct one is ours." Accordingly, belonging to it imposes a great personal responsibility on each of them: “There are few of us faithful left. Until then there will be no Judgment, as long as at least one faithful remains. estrangement last day Thus, the Old Believers consider it a personal duty, and see the ways of saving the world in zealous religious service: “You need to pray, keep the commandments of the Lord, then the Lord will wait.” This is seen as one of the reasons for the stability of the tradition. The messianic idea is directly related to the eschatology of the Old Believer worldview, which contributed to the formation of ideas about the greatest personal responsibility of each Old Believer as the last custodian of true Orthodoxy.

Religious procession in Gary to the Michael-Arkhangelsk sketes. Old Believers

Since the emergence of the Old Believers and throughout its history, there have been marked dates on which ideas about the approaching end of the world were updated. Their identification was based on the “number of the Antichrist” (666), the starting point could be the time of the creation of the world or some special events. Documents from the beginning of the 20th century record the presence of peculiar interpretations of theological literature among the South Ural Old Believers. So, in the report of the Ufa Diocesan Brotherhood of the Resurrection of Christ it was said:

“In the Peschano-Lobovsky repair there is a strong mentor Nestor, who, interpreting the Revelation of John the Theologian in his own way, preaches about the end of the world and in the fall of 1898 appointed his day.”

Modern Old Believers rely on the same source: "John the Theologian called the number 666, and Nikon's reform was in that year, in 1666."

Similar expectations were associated with 1900 (the change of centuries), with 1992: “The prophecies were fulfilled five years ago, now wait any minute”; “Already the eighth thousand has gone, as it is written in the Books.” Until recently, 2000, the turn of the millennium, was most often used as the final date. As is well known, an increase in the tension of eschatological expectations, their more pronounced and sharpness are observed during periods of historical and social upheavals (wars, reforms), the appearance of unusual natural phenomena and climate changes (severe drought, comets, meteorites), as well as in connection with rare calendar events. dates (turn of the century, change of millennia), etc.

Despite the existence of marked turning points, the majority of respondents tend to think that "the end of the world cannot be experienced - a sin." “Jesus said: “My father did not give me the understanding to know when the death will be, only he knows.” The Holy Fathers wrote that on the eighth thousand... We can only wait, prepare for this.”

The descriptions of the last day, recorded by us in the course of field research, are generally identical among priests and bespopovtsy. The main characteristic is suddenness, surprise, events begin to unfold with unusual speed, rapidly. Natural elements are sharply activated - a strong wind, a terrible thunder. The direction from which shocks should be expected is clearly defined: "A fiery cross will appear on the eastern side of the sky." The source of destruction is fire, destroying everything in its path: “A fiery river will open from east to west.” At the same time, the fire serves as a symbolic border, sinners are on one side of the fiery river, and the righteous are on the other. Their number is insignificant: “Out of a thousand men, one will be saved, and only one woman out of darkness.” The main protagonist of the drama, the Lord (Judge) is located on the seventh of the heavenly spheres, gradually unfolding one after another. Thus, popular ideas about the Last Judgment in general, they repeat both the particulars and the general scheme of biblical prophecy. There are also more free retellings: "Besya will fly like angels, wreaths will burn on them, the Lord will lower Elijah the prophet."

The eschatological expectations of the Old Believers, correlated with the modern world, find a figurative embodiment in the fantastically comprehended surrounding reality. In sacred texts containing descriptions of the second coming, as indispensable attributes of the day of judgment, there are cosmic turmoil, natural disasters. Therefore, sharp weather changes, unusual atmospheric phenomena and environmental shifts that have occurred in recent years are also perceived by the Old Believers as confirming signs. These kinds of statements are often heard:

“The water in the rivers has become poisoned, and before the very end it will not be at all. Gold will be lying around, no one will need it, and there will be no water. The roads turned purple. The tractor crimsons them (spoils them, makes them bad. - E.D.)”, “The summer is now cold, and the winter is warm. Everything is the other way around, which means we are close to the end now,” etc.

The description by the Old Believers of the last times, given by researchers of the early 20th century, for example, is as follows: “It is said: there will be smoothness on earth, the sky will be copper, the earth will be iron, sorrow will be great,” coincides with the modern one: “The sky will be copper, and the earth will be iron . Nothing will grow. Everyone will die, there will be stench and grief.

Both among priests and bespriests, one of the signs of the approach of the last times is the appearance of false prophets. As you know, the dispute about the time of the coming of the Antichrist and his appearance served as one of the main reasons for the division of the once unified Old Believers into two directions. Priests, literally perceiving the biblical texts, expect the arrival of a sensual, that is, physically real Antichrist, immediately on the eve of the death of the world. Bespopovtsy tend to understand it allegorically, in a "spiritual", "inflow" sense, that is, as any deviation from faith, canon, commandments. This implies that the advent has already happened and the world surrounding the Old Believers is the kingdom of Antichrist.

Differences in the interpretation of eschatological ideas and symbols can also be traced in modern field material. So, among the priests, the Antichrist is “a living person, an unbeliever, a false prophet.” Among the non-priests, he appears in many guises and is embodied in various phenomena of real life: “everyone who does not believe in God is the Antichrist”, “doing evil to people, cursing, baptizing is wrong - this is all the Antichrist”, “everything around is the Antichrist, time now it's like this." There are also such statements: “The Antichrist came out of the sea. The sea is people, human vices. As you can see, the Bespopovites use more lengthy, non-specific explanations.

In the marginal, in fact, chapel agreement, there were supporters of both priestly and non-priestly views on this issue. Understanding the nature of the Antichrist as dualistic is also characteristic of modern chapels: “The last times, as the holy fathers say, have already come with the advent of Nikon. Not Nikon the Antichrist, but those who spread his teachings. We look forward to it both sensually and spiritually. Sensually he is a personality, but spiritually he already reigns - all laws are twisted.

In accordance with the book texts, the worshipers of the Antichrist were marked with a special sign - a seal on the hand or on the forehead. Passports, money, National emblem. Many attributes of modern reality are also perceived by the Old Believers as sinful and forbidden. Until now, some informants refuse to be photographed themselves and do not allow taking pictures of their belongings, considering the photo to be “the seal of the Antichrist.” Satanic signs were food coupons that were introduced during the period of perestroika, social numbers, etc.

The fact of long rejection of electricity, radio, television, railways by the most radical consents is well-known. Until now, especially religious Old Believers consider it a sin to watch TV, calling it a "demonic box", they avoid listening to the radio: "Someone says, and who is not visible - demonic temptation." A direct parallel is drawn with apocalyptic predictions and electric wires: "a network that entangled the sky, an iron web." Planes are called "iron birds": "It was said that iron birds will fly everywhere in the last times."

Traditionalism, adherence to antiquity as distinguishing feature Old Believers was noted by all its researchers. Such an idealization of the past is naturally accompanied by a critical look at the present. Modern reality is assessed as a turbulent, disturbing time, confirming the prophecies: “Before the end of the world, life will be bad, wars. Because of the wars, there will be few people left: out of seven cities, they will gather into one city. So it is, around the war.

The actions of the authorities also evoke negative emotions: “Recently, the heads of the leaders will become like a child, nothing will work out, the state will collapse. That's how it works." Analyzing relations between people, the Old Believers come to the conclusion that they have changed in a negative direction: “People hate each other, swear among themselves”; "There is hatred all around, brother against brother, son against father." The general decrease in the level of morality, ignoring the rules of morality, the absence of fear of punishment for sins are emphasized: “They are not afraid of sin, they do what they want”, “Women have no shame, they have abortions, they wear everything masculine”; “There is discord and strife all around, there is no agreement between people.”

So, the specificity of the Old Believer culture, like any other, is largely determined by the worldview of its bearers. It focuses on traditionalism main principle and is based on the interweaving of oral and written traditions. The interpretation of book texts and the transformation of any information from the outside world occurs among the Old Believers in the categories of traditional consciousness. All this is embodied in the existence of utopian legends and apocrypha, and can be traced in oral historical stories.

A large place in the religious and philosophical system of the Old Believers, developed by its ideologists, is occupied by messianism and eschatology. This has found expression at the everyday level and can be recorded by the methods of ethnographic science on regional material.