LIFE DEDICATED TO STUDY THE TRADITIONAL UDMURT CULTURE: ON THE SIXTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ETHNOLOGIST TATIANA GILNIYAKHMETOVNA MINNIYAKHMETOVA

Abstract

The article is devoted to the anniversary of Tatyana Gilnyakhmetovna Minniyakhmetova, the prominent ethnologist and Candidate of Historical Sciences, Doctor of Philosophy, Excellence in Public Education of the RSFSR (Moscow, 1987). The author focuses on her formation stages as a researcher, her scientific, popularizing and organizational activities and her contribution to the study of Udmurt traditional culture. During the period of the scientific research T. Minniyakhmetova published eight single author and multi-author monographs and more than two hundred articles in Udmurt traditional culture. Her research works are in demand by the professional academic community and universities, and researchers of the Higher School, and by everyone who is interested in the culture and history of the Udmurt people. She has organized and conducted more than seventy folkloristic-ethnographic and folkloristic-dialectological expeditions, the geography of which in addition to the Trans-Kama region and Udmurt Republic which covers the neighbouring territories of the Volga and Ural area, as well as some regions of Siberia. T. Minniyakhmetova has collected the solid bank of information on ethnography, culture and life of the Udmurts as well as other ethnic groups of the Volga-Ural region. There is the large fund of photographic materials, video and audio recordings in her collection. The name of the Udmurt ethnologist is known not only in Russia, but also outside of the country. The Udmurt origin and her experiences of tendencies of European ethnology allow T. Minniyakhmetova to act both as a researcher who knows ethnic culture from the inside and in the context of the development of modern ethnic processes. Through her scientific and teaching activities, she contributes to the wide popularization of Udmurt ethnography and folklore in the European and global scientific community. According to the traditional concepts of the Udmurts, Tatiana Minniyakhmetova developed anthropological theories on ethnic self-consciousness, concepts of ritual and doubled ritual time, peculiarities of the orientation in space (spacial intimacy and spacial contradiction), real and symbolic boundaries, the concept of clean/pure and unclean/impure, the birth of life and the creation of souls, interactive methods of communication between the living and the dead, methodology of field researches.