Strategies of Constructing a Group Identity: the Sectarian Community of the Subbotniki in the Staniza Novoprivolnaia

Abstract

This article considers mechanisms of identity construction in one of the present-day communities of Subbotniki in Southern Russia. The study is based on the field recordings made in 2000 among Subbotniki in Stavropolskii krai. The sect of Subbotniki appeared in the 18th century, when some Russian peasants, ancestors of contemporary Subbotniki, repudiated the New Testament as well Christianity and created on the basis of the Old Testament a denomination similar to Judaism. In the 19th century the members of the sect were displaced from Russia to the Transcaucasian areas where they established a number of mono-confessional villages. In the last decades of the 20th century some Subbotniki came back to Southern Russia and organised their communities in larger poly-confessional villages where they made up a minority. In these new circumstances the Subbotniki recognise their identity as an uncertain one regarding their ethnicity as well as religiosity – they are both Russian and Jewish, neither Russian nor Jewish. To escape this uncertainty Subbotniki try to find “others” who can confirm the particular identity of