Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2017 number

The traditional culture of Russian inhabitants of the Minusinsk hollow is not a deeply studied subject. It concerns mainly immigrants of the second half of the XIX - early XX centuries. The article objective is studying the architectural customs of the Upper Syda basin inhabitants. The article is based on the field research carried out during the author’s expedition organized by Minusinsk Museum of Local History in 2016, as well as the text materials kept in Minusinsk State Archive concerning the history of villages foundation, statistic data, and materials of the expedition of Minusinsk Museum of Local History headed by E.V. Leontyev in 2009. The Russians have developed the Upper Syda river region since the mid XIX century. The major part of immigrants was from Perm-Vyatka region, it was fixed in villages’ names, inhabitants’ nicknames, archives data and informants’ memories. The country people of the Syda river basin had enough wood. The cribbed houses of pine-tree, cedar, silver-fur and larch were typical for them. There were four- and five-walled houses, cross-shaped houses. Huts often had saddle and hipped roofs. Gates usually had butterfly type sheds. Windows (four or five of them facing the street) were mostly big and decorated with floral and solar ornaments. The rooms’ names were traditional: izba (a hut), gornitsa (a chamber), seni (a sort of an entry, a hall), kazenka (a cabin, a log deck). A stove was usually placed on the right to the door with its mouth next to the window; the far left corner was “red” (krasny ugol). The superstitions connected with choosing of a building place, the process of building, moving rituals are not numerous nowadays because there aren’t many informants left who can tell about pre-revolutionary traditions. We can only assert that the elder generation still believe in domovoy (a bogie). Many customs were lost in Soviet times. Now the majority of informants are people born in 1920s-1940s. Hard life conditions such as collectivization, war and need to restore the economics advanced the loss of traditions promoting the survival matter.