The Way of Life of the Old Believers of Buryatia: the Crisis of Religious Identity in the 1920s.

Abstract

The subject of the research in the article is the problem of transformation of the way of life of the Old Believers of Buryatia before and in the 1920s and their reactions to the increasingly increasing intrusion into the life of the structures of Soviet power. The object of the study is the Old Believer population of the Verkhneudinsky district of the Trans-Baikal region (since 1923 - the Buryat-Mongolian ASSR). The article considers such aspects of the topic as: comprehension of the decline of the spiritual life of the Old Believers, noted by researchers until the 1920s (the tendency of the transition of religion into a heterogeneous complex of household rituals, the increasing rejection of prohibitive practices) and the study of the degree of real influence of the Soviet government on the objectively changing worldview of the Old Believers since the beginning of the XX century. The comparative-historical method necessary for comparing the sides of various phenomena and highlighting the common and special was necessary when analyzing the unequal attitude to the Soviet government on the part of the Old Believers of different settlements. The historical-genetic method used to study changes in the phenomenon over time was used in the analysis of the transformation of the Old Believer identity in the XIX – early XX centuries. The main conclusions of the study are as follows. For the Old Believers of Buryatia, the 1920s were a time of crisis of their religious identity caused by the gradual transformation of its meanings, their adaptation to the reality in which it was difficult to maintain their foundations from generation to generation in an unchanged state. The Soviet government and its concept of atheization and the "cultural revolution" in the countryside became only an additional factor for the identity crisis. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that information from archives and newspapers are introduced into scientific circulation, allowing to show the indirect nature of the actions of the Soviet government in relation to the decline of the traditional way of life of the Old Believers.