Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2016 number

The purpose of the article is not only to revive interest in a controversial issue of prevalence of exogamy or endogamy practices in the selection of marriage partners in Siberian villages, but also to substantiate the author’s position on this subject on the basis of new ethnographic materials of the early XX century. Of interest is mapping the circles of marital relations of the members of the Russian ethnos, especially Siberians, due to the fact that neither pre-revolutionary, nor Soviet ethnographers produced any comprehensive studies on this topic. Mapping the marital relationships allows to confirm or deny the data on the territory of settlement of ethnic groups (especially groups of Old Believers) obtained from the oral reports of the informants; to complement the whole wedding ritual complex with necessary materials. While historians on the basis of historical data concluded that exogamy was typical of the XVIII century, ethnographers based on field materials of the late XIX century wrote about the wide-spread endogamy, which contributed to isolation of certain ethnic groups (such as the Cossacks, peasants). Expeditions organized by the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences obtained field data that proves, regardless of the work of predecessors, that in the late XIX - early XX century representatives of specific ethnic and cultural (ethnographic) groups created local groups, whose members avoided intermarriages. Endogamous marriages were supported by the older generations of villagers. Hence, the tradition of matchmaking brides from neighboring and even remote villages reflected the commitment of the villagers to the custom of exogamy, while commitment to “our” brides from the culturally similar group points to endogamy. Persistence of these practices contributed to the preservation of ethnic and cultural groups in the southern part of Western Siberia through to the early 1930s when in line with the state’s policy of the “new life” the youth was oriented to take advantage of the right to choose their own destiny.