Russian people: culture, traditions and customs

The Russian people are representatives of the East Slavic ethnic group, the indigenous inhabitants of Russia (110 million people - 80% of the population Russian Federation), the most numerous ethnic group in Europe. The Russian diaspora has about 30 million people and is concentrated in such states as Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, in countries former USSR, in the US and EU countries. As a result of sociological research, it was found that 75% of the Russian population of Russia are followers of Orthodoxy, and a significant part of the population does not identify themselves with any particular religion. national language Russian people is the Russian language.

Each country and its people have their own meaning in modern world, concepts are very important folk culture and the history of the nation, their formation and development. Each nation and its culture is unique in its own way, the color and originality of each nation should not be lost or dissolved in assimilation with other nations, the younger generation should always remember who they really are. For Russia, which is a multinational power and home to 190 peoples, the issue of national culture is quite acute, due to the fact that over the recent years its erasure is especially noticeable against the background of cultures of other nationalities.

Culture and life of the Russian people

(Russian folk costume )

The first associations that arise with the concept of "Russian people" are, of course, the breadth of the soul and fortitude. But national culture people form, it is these character traits that have a huge impact on its formation and development.

One of distinguishing features The Russian people have always been and are simple, in the old days Slavic houses and property were very often plundered and completely destroyed, hence the simplified attitude to everyday life. And of course, these trials, which befell the long-suffering Russian people, only tempered his character, made him stronger and taught him to get out of any life situations with his head held high.

Kindness can be called another of the traits that prevail in the character of the Russian ethnos. The whole world is well aware of the concept of Russian hospitality, when "they will feed and drink, and put to bed." The unique combination of such qualities as cordiality, mercy, compassion, generosity, tolerance and, again, simplicity, very rarely found in other peoples of the world, all this is fully manifested in the very breadth of the Russian soul.

Diligence is another of the main features of the Russian character, although many historians in the study of the Russian people note both her love for work and huge potential, as well as her laziness, as well as complete lack of initiative (remember Oblomov in Goncharov's novel). But all the same, the efficiency and endurance of the Russian people is an indisputable fact, against which it is difficult to argue. And no matter how scientists all over the world would like to understand the “mysterious Russian soul”, it is unlikely that any of them can do it, because it is so unique and multifaceted that its “zest” will forever remain a secret for everyone.

A person all his life - from birth to death - is surrounded by household items. What is included in this concept? Furniture, dishes, clothes and more. with items folk life associated with a huge number of proverbs and sayings. About them in question in fairy tales, they write poems about them and come up with riddles.

What items of folk life in Russia do we know? Have they always been called that? Are there things that have disappeared from our lives? What kind Interesting Facts associated with household items? Let's start with the most important.

Russian hut

It is impossible to imagine the items of Russian folk life without the most important thing - their homes. In Russia, huts were built on the banks of rivers or lakes, because fishing has been one of the most important industries since ancient times. The place for the construction was chosen very carefully. The new hut was never built on the site of the old one. An interesting fact is that pets served as a guide for selection. The place that they chose to rest was considered the most favorable for building a house.

The dwelling was made of wood, most often of larch or birch. It is more correct to say not "build a hut", but "cut down a house". This was done with an ax, and later with a saw. Huts were most often made square or rectangular. Inside the dwelling there was nothing superfluous, only the most necessary for life. The walls and ceilings in the Russian hut were not painted. For wealthy peasants, the house consisted of several rooms: the main dwelling, a canopy, a veranda, a closet, a yard and buildings: a flock or a corral for animals, a hayloft and others.

In the hut there were wooden household items - a table, benches, a cradle or cradle for babies, shelves for dishes. Colored rugs or paths could lie on the floor. The table occupied a central place in the house, the corner where it stood was called "red", that is, the most important, honorable. It was covered with a tablecloth, and the whole family gathered behind it. Everyone at the table had his own place, the most convenient, the central one was occupied by the head of the family - the owner. There was space for icons.

Good speech, if there is a stove in the hut

Without this subject, it is impossible to imagine the life of our distant ancestors. The stove was both a nurse and a savior. In extreme cold, only thanks to her, many people managed to keep warm. The Russian stove was a place where food was cooked, and they also slept on it. Her warmth saved from many diseases. Due to the fact that there were various niches and shelves in it, various dishes were stored here.

Food cooked in a Russian oven is unusually tasty and fragrant. Here you can cook: delicious and rich soup, crumbly porridge, all kinds of pastries and much more.

But the most important thing is that the stove was the place in the house around which people were constantly. It is no coincidence that in Russian fairy tales, the main characters either ride it (Emelya), or sleep (Ilya Muromets).

Poker, grip, pomelo

These household items were directly related to Kocherga, who was the first assistant at work. When firewood burned out in the stove, the coals were shifted with this object and they looked so that there were no unburned logs. The Russian people have composed many proverbs and sayings about the poker, here are just a few of them:

• In the bath, a broom, gentleman, in the oven, a poker.
• No candle to God, no poker to hell.
• Black conscience and the poker seem like a gallows.

The grip is the second assistant when working with the stove. Usually there were several of them, of different sizes. With the help of this item, cast-iron pots or pans with food were put into and removed from the oven. The grips were taken care of and tried to handle them very carefully.

Pomelo is a special broom with which they swept excess garbage from the stove, and it was not used for other purposes. The Russian people came up with a characteristic riddle about this subject: “Under the floor, under the middle, it sits. Usually, the pomelo was used before they were going to bake pies.

A poker, a fork, a broom - they certainly had to be at hand when food was cooked in a Russian oven.

Chest - for storing the most valuable things

In every house there had to be a place where the dowry, clothes, towels, tablecloths were put. Chest - items of folk life They could be both large and small. Most importantly, they had to meet several requirements: spaciousness, strength, decoration. If a girl was born in the family, then the mother began to collect her dowry, which was put into a chest. A girl getting married would take him with her to her husband's house.

There was a large number of curious traditions associated with the chest. Here is some of them:

• The girls were not allowed to give their chest to someone, otherwise they could remain an old maid.
• During Maslenitsa, it was impossible to open the chest. It was believed that in this way one could unleash one's wealth and good luck.
• Before marriage, the bride's relatives sat on the chest and demanded a ransom for the dowry.

Interesting names of household items

Many of us do not even imagine that the usual things that surround us in everyday life were once called in a completely different way. If for a few minutes we imagine that we are in the distant past, then some items of folk life would remain unrecognized by us. We bring to your attention the names of some of the things familiar to us:

Broom - naked.

A closet or small closed room was called a cage.

The place where large domestic animals lived is a flock.

Towel - rukoternik or utirka.

The place where they washed their hands is a washstand.

The box where the clothes were stored is a chest.

Place to sleep - bed.

A wooden bar with a short handle, designed for ironing linen in the old days - a rubel.

A large cup for pouring drinks - valley.

Folk household items in Russia: interesting facts

• The city of Tula is considered the birthplace of the samovar. This item was one of the favorites among the Russians, it was difficult to find a hut in which it was not. The samovar was a source of pride, it was protected and passed on by inheritance.
• The first electric iron appeared at the beginning of the 20th century. Until that time, there were cast-iron irons in which coals were put or heated. long time over the flame of the furnace. It was very inconvenient to hold them, they could weigh more than ten kilograms.
• One of the most prestigious household items was the gramophone. In the villages, you could exchange a cow for him.
• A large number of folk traditions and rituals are associated with the table. Before the wedding, the bride and groom had to walk around the table, the newborn was carried around the table. These customs, folk beliefs, symbolized a long and happy life.
• Spinning wheels appeared in Ancient Russia. They were made of wood: birch, linden, aspen. This item was given by the father to his daughter for the wedding. It was customary to decorate and paint spinning wheels, so none of them looked like another.
• Household items for children - rag homemade dolls, balls made of bast and wool, rattles, clay whistles.

home decoration

The decor of folk household items included wood carving and artistic painting. Many things in the house were decorated with the hands of the owners: chests, spinning wheels, dishes and much more. The design and decoration of household items concerned, first of all, the hut itself. This was done not only for beauty, but also as a talisman against evil spirits and various troubles.

Handmade dolls were used to decorate the house. Each of them had its own purpose. One drove away evil spirits, the other brought peace and prosperity, the third did not allow squabbles and scandals in the house.

Items that have disappeared from everyday life

• Chest for storing clothes.
• Rubel for ironing linen.
• A bench is an object on which they sat.
• Samovar.
• Spinning wheel and spindle.
• Gramophone.
• Cast iron iron.

A few words in conclusion

Studying the objects of folk life, we get acquainted with the life and customs of our distant ancestors. Russian stove, spinning wheel, samovar - without these things it is impossible to imagine a Russian hut. They united families, next to them grief was easier to endure, and any work was argued. Nowadays, special attention is paid to household items. Buying a house or country cottage area, many owners tend to purchase them with a stove.

According to the famous scientist Yu. M. Lotman, “life is the usual course of life in its real-practical forms; life is the things that surround us, our habits and everyday behavior. Life surrounds us like air, and like air, it is noticeable only when it is not enough or it deteriorates. We notice the features of someone else's life, but our own life is elusive for us - we tend to consider it "just life", a natural norm of practical life. So, everyday life is always in the sphere of practice, it is the world of things first of all” (Lotman 1994, 10).

The phrase "traditional life" literally means the course of a person's daily life in the forms defined by tradition - in a society where accepted and established rules of behavior, skills, and a system of ideas are passed on from generation to generation. Naturally, traditional life always has an ethnic coloring. That is why the phrase "traditional life" is often replaced by the words "national life", "national way of life", "traditional everyday culture", etc. The book deals mainly with the everyday way of life of peasants and the population of small provincial towns countryside. This is due to the fact that in Russia XVIII- first quarter XIX in. it was the peasantry that was the bearer of traditional forms of culture and life.

Russian nobility most of merchants, workers of large industrial enterprises lived within the framework of European culture, urbanistic at its core and supranational in essence. The way of life of a nobleman and a peasant was so different that it made it possible to speak about the presence of two different civilizations among Russian people: noble and peasant. According to the famous historian A. A. Zimin, “the differences between civilizations in the XVIII and XIX centuries was so striking that one could get the impression of two worlds, each living its own life” (Zimin 2002, 11). Such a gap in the everyday culture of the Russian people occurred in the Petrine era, at the turn of the 17th-18th centuries. Until that time, representatives of all strata of Russian society lived within the framework of traditional culture, characteristic features which were static, isolated, faithful to antiquity.

The reforms of Peter the Great and his successors in the economic and political spheres of life, the development of industry, trade, the establishment of strong contacts with European countries revolutionized the cultural consciousness of the country. The renewal of Russian life was associated with an orientation towards secular culture. Western Europe- the upper strata of Russian society and the townspeople turned out to be ready for its perception and assimilation. Russian peasantry, on the contrary, for the most part gravitated towards the traditional patriarchal way of life. Archpriest Avvakum in the 17th century expressed this attitude as follows: “I hold it to death, as if I had taken it; I do not lay down the limit of the eternal, it has been laid down before us: lie it like this forever and ever!” The desire to live as fathers and grandfathers lived was supported by faith in the once and for all acquired “truth-truth” of Orthodoxy, adopted by Russia in the 10th century.

The appearance of any innovations was considered as a rollback to the side, a violation of the world order established by God. The closedness of the Russian medieval consciousness, unwillingness to communicate with other cultures grew out of faith in the special mission of Russia, in being chosen. Orthodox people. In the peasant environment, a gradual departure from traditions began in the middle - second half of the 19th century. New trends that originated in trade and craft villages, whose population had strong contacts with the city, then reached many villages, including the most remote from large industrial centers. Today, the way of life of Russian peasants is built according to the urban model, but they also have many “remnants of sweet antiquity” that have irretrievably disappeared from the life of the townspeople.

The world of the Russian village is presented in the book through the description peasant dwelling and things that people used in their daily practice. This approach is entirely legitimate. Both the house and any household item are endowed with “memory”, and therefore, by studying them, one can learn a lot about the social, religious, and economic aspects of the life of their owners. The house was the focus vitality man, here he was protected from bad weather and enemies, from the dangers of the outside world. Here, generations of ancestors succeeded each other, here he continued his family, here for centuries Russian traditional life was formed, which included many items necessary for a person to live and work.

First of all, these were tools of labor: arable and for harrowing the soil, harvesting and further processing the crop, with the help of which daily bread was obtained; livestock care equipment; tools used in crafts and trades. Of considerable importance was the winter and summer transport. Life was in the house interior decoration which was organized for work and leisure. The house was filled with things used to decorate it, give it comfort, objects of religious worship, as well as various utensils. A person could not do without clothes: everyday and festive, without shoes, hats, etc. All these items of folk life were created either by the peasants themselves, or by village or city artisans, who took into account the needs and tastes of their customers.

The things that came out of the hands of the master were well thought out and often struck with amazing beauty. V. S. Voronov, a well-known specialist in the field of Russian folk decorative art, wrote: “All the diverse abundance of everyday monuments - from a powerful carved platband and painted sleigh to a carved pointer, colored clay toys and a top-inch copper figured castle - amazes with the richness of a mature creative imagination, wit, invention, observation, decorative flair, constructive courage, technical dexterity - the fullness of artistic talent, in which it was easy and simple for a peasant artist to construct and richly decorate any household item in a variety of ways, turning everyday life into a deep and quiet celebration of living beauty " (Voronov 1972, 32-33).

The objective world of the Russian peasants was comparatively uniform throughout the space they occupied in Russia. This is especially true for agricultural, handicraft tools, Vehicle, furnishings and decoration of the dwelling, which, with rare exceptions, were the same everywhere, which is explained by similar natural and climatic conditions, the agricultural type of the peasant economy. Local originality was distinguished by objects that had little to do with the production activities of people, such as, for example, clothing or festive utensils. So, the costume of a married peasant woman from the Vologda province was not similar to the costume of a woman from the Kursk province; the vessels for serving beer from the Vyatka province were not the same as in the villages of the Voronezh province.

Local differences were due to the vast expanses of Russia, the disunity of its individual territories, the influence neighboring nations and etc. characteristic feature the objective world of the Russian peasant was its relative immutability, stability. In the XVIII - early XX century. it was basically the same as in the 12th-13th centuries: the plow with two coulters and a folding plow, a wooden harrow, a sickle, a scythe, a bucket, a yoke, clay pot, bowl, spoon, shirt, boots, table, bench and many others necessary to a person of things. This is due to the age-old stability of the living conditions of the Russian peasants, the immutability of their main occupation - agriculture, which determined material needs. In the same time object world peasant farmers was not once formed and frozen.

Over the centuries, it gradually included new things, the need for which was determined technical progress and, as a consequence, an inevitable, albeit relatively slow, change in lifestyle. So, at the beginning of the XV-XVI centuries. appeared spit-Lithuanian, in the XVII-XVIII centuries. in peasant everyday life, such an arable tool as a roe deer began to be used in the 19th century. peasants began to drink tea from a samovar, cook food in a cast-iron pan, women began to tie their heads instead of an old ubrus with a square scarf, put on a couple instead of a shirt and sundress - a skirt with a blouse. What once seemed alien, gradually took root, became our own, traditional. In parallel with this, things that had become obsolete left out of use.

In the first half of the XIX century. stopped using chests-headrests for storing money and valuables on the road. AT late XIX in. the stapler disappeared from festive use, which from the 12th century. served to serve beer on the table. The change of objects took place imperceptibly; some things were parted without regret, others, losing their functionality, turned into ritual ones, others were left “for a wake” of people who left this world. Every subject of Russian traditional life had a dual nature: in everyday practice, things were used for their direct, utilitarian purpose, in ritual practice they showed the meanings of symbols.

For example, a hut was swept with a broom, on Good Thursday a broom was used to protect the house from evil spirits: a woman mounted her and with certain spells went around her house. In a mortar, cereal grains were crushed with a pestle; in the hands of a matchmaker, a mortar with a pestle turned into a symbol of male and female intercourse. A fur coat was worn in the cold season - a fur coat spread out for the newlyweds on a bench became a sign of their fertility in marriage. The pot was an indispensable attribute of the wedding and funeral rituals, it was broken as a sign of a change in the status of a person. After the wedding night, it was broken by a friend on the threshold of the newlyweds' room, thereby, as it were, showing those present that the night went well. In the funeral ritual, the pot was broken when the deceased was taken out of the house so that the deceased could not return to the world of the living. The kokoshnik remained a women's festive headdress and a symbol of marriage. "Thingness" and "significance" were present in all objects of folk life.

Some objects had a greater semiotic status, while others had a lesser one. High degree Significance was endowed, for example, with towels - panels of ornamented fabric, designed to decorate the interior. In the native-baptismal, wedding, funeral and memorial rites, they acted mainly as signs of a person's belonging to a certain family - "clan-tribe". In some situations, some objects, turning into symbols, completely lost their material nature.

So,. Yu. M. Lotman in the same book gave examples when bread from the usual sphere of use for us passes into the sphere of meaning: in the words of the famous Christian prayer “Give us our daily bread today”, bread turns into food needed to sustain life; in the words of Jesus Christ given in the Gospel of John: “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will not hunger” (John 6:35), bread and the word denoting it form a complex symbolic combination. Traditional Russian life is so rich and vibrant that it is virtually impossible to present it in its entirety in one book. In that encyclopedic dictionary combined articles on the arrangement of a peasant dwelling, on transport, on tools of labor and on the main objects of peasant use, which make it possible to tell about the life of many generations of people who have gone into the past.

"Oral folk art" - Lyrics - a kind of literature in which the author expresses his feelings. (c) Maksimova G.G. Russian language teacher GOU secondary school №156 2007. Folklore of the peoples of Russia. Ed. N.I. Kravtsova. Content: Oral literature, oral poetic creativity. Folklore genres. Any folk art(dance, music, woodcarving, etc.).

"Russian folk art" - Proverbs and sayings (compiled. Fundamental question: How in Russian folk art reflected moral qualities? What are jokes? Didactic tasks: Authors of the project: Kudryavtseva Anastasia Nikolaevna Popova Irina Vyacheslavovna. The work of children to discuss the tasks of each in a group. - 5 lesson.

"Life of the Russian people" - Autumn. EXCELLATION about the holiday of the Exaltation of the Honest and Life-Giving Cross Lord's. Haymaking. Winter. Project. FORTUNE about one of the most ancient rites of the Russian people. Spring. Director of the school "POSSIBILITY" in Dubna, Moscow Region Ignatovich Svetlana Nikolaevna. Spinning. Collection of berries and mushrooms.

"Russian Traditions" - Target: Russians folk traditions. Results of our work. What traditions did our ancestors have in the fall? Photo report. The decoration of the Russian hut. Carols carnival. Large table Samovar Long benches Homespun rugs Russian oven. Spring traditions. Winter traditions. Traditions. We learned a lot about the life of our ancestors and tried to tell you.

"Russian epics" - Dobrynya Nikitich, Ilya Muromets and Alyosha Popovich. Alyosha Popovich and the beautiful girl. Avdotya the Ryazan. Volga Vseslavevich. Heroes of Russian epics. Svyatogor and Ilya Muromets. Volga and Mikula Selyaninovich. Dobrynya liberates Fun from the serpent. Ilya Muromets and the Nightingale the Robber. Svyatogor. Sadko and the king of the sea. Svyatogor and the blacksmith of fate.

"Russian Writers" - Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. Samuil Yakovlevich Marshak. Pavel Petrovich Bazhov. Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky. Anna Andreevna Akhmatova. Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva. Nikolai Nikolaevich Nosov. Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin. Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy. Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov. Agnia Lvovna Barto.

There are 11 presentations in total in the topic

Folklore

Important integral part ancient Russian culture folklore appeared - songs, legends, epics, proverbs, sayings, aphorisms, fairy tales. Many features of the life of people of that time were reflected in wedding, drinking, funeral songs. So, ancient wedding songs also spoke about the time when brides were kidnapped, “kidnapped” (as a rule, with their consent) or ransomed, and in the songs of the Christian time, it was about the consent of both the bride and parents to marriage. The whole world Russian life opens in epics. Their main character is a hero, a defender of the people. The bogatyrs had a huge physical strength. So, about the beloved Russian hero Ilya Muromets, it was said: “Wherever you wave, here the streets lie, where you turn away - with alleys.” At the same time, he was a very peaceful hero who took up arms only when there was no other way out. Folk heroes they also possessed great magical power, wisdom, cunning. So, the hero Volkhv Vseslavovich could turn into a gray falcon, gray wolf. In the epic images of enemies, real foreign policy opponents of Russia are also guessed, the struggle against which has deeply entered the consciousness of the people. Under the name of Tugarin Zmeevich, a generalized image of the Polovtsy with their Khan Tugorkan is visible. Under the name of Zhidovin, Khazaria is displayed, where Judaism was the state religion. Russians epic heroes faithfully served the epic Prince Vladimir. They fulfilled his requests for the defense of the Fatherland, he turned to them at crucial hours. The relationship between the heroes and the prince was not easy. There were resentments and misunderstandings. But all of them - both the prince and the heroes - in the end solved one common cause - the cause of the people. Scientists have shown that under the name of Prince Vladimir, the generalized image of both Vladimir Svyatoslavich - a warrior against the Pechenegs, and Vladimir Monomakh - the defender of Russia from the Polovtsy, and the image of other princes - brave, wise, cunning, merged. And in some epics reflected legendary times struggle of ancestors Eastern Slavs with Cimmerians, Sarmatians, Scythians. Epics, telling about the ancient heroes of those times, are akin to the epic of Homer, the epic of other Indo-European peoples.

Life of the people

culture of the people inextricably linked with his life, everyday life, and the life of the people, determined by the level of development of the economy of the country, is closely connected with cultural processes. People lived both in large cities for their time, numbering tens of thousands of people, and in villages with several dozen households, and villages in which two or three households were grouped. by the most big city Kyiv remained for a long time. In terms of its scale, many stone buildings - temples, palaces - it competed with other European capitals of that time. No wonder the daughter of Yaroslav the Wise, Anna Yaroslavna, who married in France and arrived in Paris in the 11th century, was surprised by the wretchedness of the French capital compared to Kyiv. Here golden-domed temples shone with domes, the palaces of Vladimir, Yaroslav the Wise, Vsevolod Yaroslavich amazed with grace, they surprised with monumentality, wonderful frescoes Saint Sophia Cathedral, The Golden Gate is a symbol of the victory of Russian weapons.

And not far from the prince's palace were bronze horses taken by Vladimir from Chersonesos; in the old city of Yaroslavl there were courts of prominent boyars, here on the mountain were the houses of wealthy merchants, other prominent citizens, and the highest clergy. The houses were decorated with carpets, expensive Greek fabrics. In palaces, rich boyar mansions, Difficult life- Vigilantes, servants were located here, servants crowded. From here came the administration of principalities, cities, villages, here they judged and ordered, tributes and taxes were brought here. Feasts often took place in the hallways, spacious gridirons, where overseas wine and their own, native “honey” flowed like a river, servants carried huge dishes with meat and game. The women sat at the table along with the men. Women generally took an active part in management, farming, and other affairs. Many women are known - activists of this kind: Princess Olga, sister of Monomakh Yanka, mother of Daniil Galitsky, wife of Andrei Bogolyubsky, etc. At the same time, food and small money were distributed on behalf of the owner to the poor. The favorite pastimes of rich people were falconry, dog hunting. Races, tournaments, various games were arranged for the common people. An integral part of Russian life, especially in the north, was a bathhouse. Below, on the banks of the Dnieper, a merry Kyiv market was noisy, where products and products were sold not only from all over Russia, but also from all over the world, including India and Baghdad. On the slopes of the mountains to the Podol descended diverse - from good wooden houses to wretched dugouts - the dwellings of artisans, working people. At the berths of the Dnieper and Pochaina, hundreds of large and small ships crowded. Temples, palaces, wooden houses and semi-dugouts stood on the outskirts in other Russian cities, there were noisy auctions, and on holidays smart residents filled the narrow streets. His life, full of work, worries, flowed in Russian villages and villages, in log huts, in semi-dugouts with stoves-heaters in the corner. There, people persistently fought for existence, plowed up new lands, raised livestock, beekeepers, hunted, defended themselves from "dashing" people, and in the south - from nomads, again and again rebuilt wooden dwellings burned down after enemy raids. Moreover, plowmen often went out into the field armed with spears, clubs, bows and arrows to fight off the Polovtsian patrol. Long winter evenings by the light of the splinters, women spun yarn, men drank intoxicating drinks, honey, remembered days gone by, composed and sang songs, listened to storytellers and storytellers of epics.