Issue 3 (68)

IDENTITY AND CONFESSIONAL MARKERS OF PRIESTLESS OLD BELIEVERS OF THE LOWER KAMA ON THE MATERIALS OF ETHNOGRAPHIC EXPEDITIONS
Year 2020 Number 3(68)
Pages 26-34 Type scientific article
UDC 39(470.4+470.5) BBK 63.5(235.55)
Authors Chernykh Alexander V.
Vostroknutov Artyom V.
Topic VISUALIZING ETHNICITY
Summary The study is devoted to one of the rarest and almost uninvestigated groups of Priestless Old Believers of the Volga Region and the Urals. Basing on field ethnographic sources and taking into account published sources and literature it discusses the specificity of confessional identity including linguistic naming of priestless religious groups. The study defines the blurring of their modern image and the use of the term “Old Believer” to mark one’s confessional identity in the conditions of complex multi-confessional community of the territory. It also defines the main confessional markers discussing in detail the functions and specificity of underwear crosses as well as wooden crosses and icon cases, the most typical and the most significant attributes of a priestless religious group. Ethnographic studies and gathered materials broadened the understanding of priestless religious groups considerably expanding the existing information from earlier sources and literature. The revealed and analyzed complex of objects allows to suppose the absence of a unite tradition and the existence of several local variants of not only use and placement of wooden crosses but also of the specificity of dogmas and confessional life. The article analyses the peculiarities of modern religious communities functioning in the Lower Kama. It acknowledges certain crisis in transferring confessional traditions and the destruction of communities’ considerable activity during recent decades.
Keywords Old Believers, Lower Kama, priestless religious groups, confessional identity, confessional borders
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