Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2014 number

The post-revolution history of the Chasovennye Old-Believers in Tuva is analyzed in the light of two different cultural systems. One system is antireligious literature. It was usually produced on the instructions of the relevant authority; its super-task was to counteract the religious views and to introduce “the Soviet way of thinking”. It was based upon a scheme which regarded the Old-Believers and especially the monastic Old-Believers as enemies to the Soviet government. They were considered to be in league with anti-Soviet gangs, to oppose to the Collectivization and to induce resistance to authorities among ignorant peasants. It was also considered that authorities have never persecuted them. The information gathered both from the secret files of the archives of the Ministry of the State Security and from residents’ interviews was interpreted and sometimes even modified according to the scheme. The system of Old-Believers’ culture is represented as Old-Believers’ literature, in this instance by Uralo-sibirsky paterik (“Ural and Siberian collected patristic writings”) created by the Chasovennye Old-Believers of the Lower Yenisei in hermitages and neighboring villages in the 1940s - 1990s. The Dopolnenie (annex) to the Paterik (1991) contains a number of hagiographic biographies of the Tuvian monastic Old-Believers and the laity Chasovennye. It also uses the data from A.F. Emeliyanov’s antireligious book of feature stories “Ot mira ne uiti” (“No escape from the world”) based on the documents of crime investigations of 1920 - 1940s and the Tuvian monastic and laity Chasovennye Old-Believers’ personal interviews. The compiler of the Annex to the Paterik ignores A.F. Emeliyanov’s conception entirely; he chooses separate facts, deprives them from the context and introduces them in the course of the hagiographic biographies. The facts are used in such a way as to create the images of hermits usually in accordance with the system of toposes of saints or righteous laity Christians. The negative facts from the “foreign” source are interpreted as positive ones. Supplemented with evidences of the miracles performed by those hagiographical heroes (who are portrayed by Emeliyanov as being rather unattractive) and with descriptions of their ascetic deeds etc. these blocks of facts acquired a new cultural meaning different from the original source.