Orthodox Regulations of the Celebrations and Entertainment Culture of Russians: Individual and Personality Factors
DOI: 10.33876/2311-0546/2023-2/124-140
Keywords:
anthropology of religion, celebrations and entertainment culture of Russians, the reception of Christianity by the people's consciousness, individual and personality factors of tradition formation, mechanisms of cultural traditions transformationAbstract
In national science there is a constant interest in the celebrations and entertainment culture of the Russian people, in the processes of its formation and the reasons for variability and locality. In addition to the obvious factors that determine the appearance of culture (geographical, socio-economic, political), there are hidden ones that have an equally important impact on it. Based on the author's published, archival, and field materials, the paper examines the transformation of the Russian celebrations and entertainment as a result of the reception of Christian dogma, while the emphasis is placed on describing individual-personal factors and assessing their role in the emergence of new cultural phenomena and forms. The existing corpus of sources makes it possible to reconstruct in detail this process in the imperial period, when the Orthodox worldview had been dominating the peasant consciousness for several centuries. This era can be regarded as a special, more advanced stage of reception compared to the previous time, the content of which was not the initial acquaintance with the Christian religion, but already a deeper assimilation of it and building everyday life on this basis. Within the microhistorical approach, the article analyses the activities of a large social group — the rural clergy, which were closest to the peasantry and could directly influence the consciousness of the majority of the country's population, shaping their worldview. The author considers the methods of influence of the Church leaders, thanks to which the Christian postulates and regulation of behavior were perceived at the «grassroots» level and led to transformations in the field of festive and game culture. Thus, the analysis of individual activity and the description of specific events in everyday and festive life leads to an understanding of macrohistorical processes.
