Establishment of the Soviet power in Buryatia was another and the most painful factor in the decline of the lifestyle of one of the communities living here – the Old Believers. Having appeared in the region in the second half of the XVIII century, they managed to preserve their religious identity and cultural specifics, although already at the beginning of the XX century researchers noted trends of breaking with the most orthodox traditions and discontinuity of generational ties. In the 1920s, the Bolsheviks skillfully supported the protest wave of young people against the power of their parents, the desire to change their lives by leaving the confines of a closed community, as well as the idea of Old Believers about everyday life (built around the basis of their identity, the Old-Orthodox religion) as about the dark and hopelessly outdated. Already in the 1930s, the messages of the main newspaper of the republic – “Buryat-Mongol Pravda” – reported on the new happy life of not only young, but also elderly Old Believers who had abandoned religious prejudices and were in the forefront of building the Soviet society in the villages of Buryat-Mongolia.
The article considers the issue on what caused such a change in people’s mentality: the ideological victory of the Soviet propaganda or a socially approved behavior (including cases of active and continued general passive resistance to a new life)? Hence, taking into account the desire of the current Old Believers to return and develop old traditions, the tasks of analyzing the external (everyday) changes of the 1930s in working life and searching for attempts to preserve (for further continuity) the identity of the social group are set.
The object of the study is the Old Believers’ community of a part of the former Verkhneudinsky uyezd (since the 1930s – Tarbagataisky and Mukhorshibirsky aimaks of the Buryat-Mongolian ASSR), the subject is the ideological, cultural and religious processes that took place in their environment during the indicated period.
As a brief conclusion, it follows that the ideological campaign in Buryat-Mongolia, which continued in the 1930s, had a formal character in the Old Believer districts, which took place in the adoption of changes in the way of life while preserving the foundations of religious identity.
THE NEW WAY OF LIFE OF THE OLD BELIEVERS IN BURYATIA: “LIFE HAS IMPROVED, LIFE HAS BECOME MORE JOYOUS”? (1930s)
