And a number of other countries (about 1.4 million people in total).
Russians speak Russian Slavic group Indo-European family. The Russian alphabet is a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet. Most believers are Orthodox, including Old Believers.
Ethnic history
The origins of the history of the Russian people go back to the era of the Old Russian state, which arose in the 9th century as a result of the unification of the East Slavic tribes. The territory of the Old Russian state extended from the White Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south, from the Carpathian Mountains in the west to the Volga in the east. The state included Finno-Ugric, Baltic and Turkic tribes. Under the leading branch of the economy - agriculture, which was engaged in by the Eastern Slavs, agricultural development of land took place in the Old Russian state, which led to integration processes, during which the Old Russian people took shape.
Population migrations across the East European Plain were a factor that, after the collapse of the Old Russian state, influenced the economic, political, ethnic and cultural situation. In the 9th-10th centuries, in the Volga-Oka interfluve, where the core of the historical-ethnic territory of the Russians was created, the Finno-Ugric tribes - the Ves, Muroma, Meshchera, Merya, as well as the Golyad of Baltic origin, lived interspersed with the East Slavic population. Several streams of Slavic settlers rushed to this territory in search of favorable conditions for agriculture, who, intersecting in the Volga-Oka interfluve, created a permanent East Slavic population there. Already in the 9th century, areas of compact settlements took shape, the most ancient cities emerged - Beloozero, Rostov, Suzdal, Ryazan, Murom.
The process of assimilation of local tribes by Slavic settlers was explained by the small number of Finnish tribes and more high level social development and material culture of immigrants. Assimilating, the Finno-Ugrians left as a legacy to the Slavic settlers certain anthropological features, toponymic and hydronymic nomenclature (names of rivers, lakes, villages and localities), as well as elements of traditional beliefs.
The migrations of the Slavic population were organically connected with the expanding development of territories and the inclusion of the Volga-Oka interfluve in the system of inter-princely relations. Developed interfluve at the end of the 10th - beginning of the 11th centuries. entered the political structure of the Old Russian state, as evidenced by the establishment of the princely table in Rostov for the sons of Prince Vladimir in 988. In fact, this region went beyond the boundaries of the interfluve and from the second half XIII centuries was perceived as North-Eastern Rus'. In the 12th century, North-Eastern Rus' was part of the Old Russian state. If during the heyday of Kyiv the concepts of “Rus” and “Russian land” extended primarily to the Kyiv and Chernigov lands, then from the XIII-XIV centuries. they were associated with the northeastern region. In the 12th century, Vladimir Monomakh and his son Yuri Dolgoruky, in the struggle for the Kiev princely table, relied on North-Eastern Rus', carried out urban planning there, strengthened and protected it from military threats and devastation. In the 11th century, there were more than 90 cities in the Old Russian state; in the 12th century there were 224 of them; this growth continued despite the Mongol-Tatar invasion.
The second half of the 12th century was a turning point in the history of the Old Russian state. The process of its collapse began, the era of many political centers began, which brought changes to the ethnopolitical and demographic situation in Eastern Europe. After the death of Vladimir Monomakh (1125), the dependence of the northeastern lands on the southern Russian princes ceased. The political center of the ancient Russian lands moved to Vladimir, and the sons of Yuri Dolgoruky, Andrei and Vsevolod, actively strengthened the political significance of the principality, which contributed to the strengthening of the colonization movement of the Krivichi from the west and the Vyatichi from the southwest to the northeast. New cities appeared - Ustyug, Kostroma, Nerekhta, Sol Velikaya, Unzha, Gorodets, and in 1221 - Nizhny Novgorod.
The Mongol-Tatar power over Russia changed the political situation on the East European Plain. The connection between the northeastern Russian principalities and the southern Russian lands was broken, the Novgorod Republic and Pskov became isolated from other Russian regions. After Genghis Khan devastated the most populated lands with their centers - Vladimir, Suzdal, Rostov, Pereyaslavl and Yuryev, and the subsequent invasions of Mongol-Tatar troops there in the second half of the 13th century, the Russian population began to flow from the east and from the center of North-Eastern Rus' to a more wooded and safer west, into the Moscow River basin and to the upper reaches of the Volga. This contributed to the strengthening of Moscow and Tver by the end of the 13th century. Internal colonization of the Volga-Oka interfluve was encouraged by the boyars, princes and monasteries.
Colonization covered not only the outlying areas of the Volga-Oka interfluve; it went beyond its borders to the northwest, north and northeast, in the Volga region, it could be traced even to the south, beyond the Oka, within the Ryazan principality. Ryazan settlers descended along the Don and settled along its tributaries Tikhaya Sosna, Bityug, and Khopru. New cities, centers of rural volosts and centers of new principalities arose. There were 55 cities between the Volga and Oka rivers.
During the second half of the XIII-XV centuries. There was a restructuring of agriculture, the introduction of field arable farming, the development of virgin forest land for agriculture, the construction of many thousands of villages and the spread of three-field farming in North-Eastern and North-Western Rus'.
The change in the territorial basis of the political consolidation of Russian lands depended not only on the internal colonization of North-Eastern Rus', changes in crop farming systems and the benefits of the position of Moscow, Tver and Nizhny Novgorod. In the Volga-Oka interfluve people from different regions converged, and this intensified the process of formation of the main core of the Russian people. In subsequent centuries, the expansion of its ethnic territory captured the northern regions from Karelia to the Ural Mountains, which received the collective name Pomorie. They adjoined the White Sea and the Arctic Ocean and formed the basins of the Northern Dvina, Onega, and Pechora rivers. In Pomorie, Russian settlers met with an ethnically complex population - Karelians, Vepsians, Komi-Zyryans, Komi-Permyaks, Nenets, etc.
After the invasion of Batu and the devastation of North-Eastern Rus', the flow of population to the north sharply intensified; The XIV-XV centuries became the period of the most intensive development. By the 1620s there were 22,226 residential settlements in the north.
By the 16th century, the southern regions of Pomerania were the most populated, and arable farming was intensively developing there. The Sukhona-Dvina river route from Vologda to the White Sea was of decisive importance in its economic development. Salt production in Totma, Sol Vychegda and on the White Sea coast contributed to the development of crafts in the volosts and cities. The northwestern part of Pomerania was the center of the iron industry and blacksmithing. In the northeastern part of Pomerania, the Russian population was engaged in hunting fur-bearing animals and marine fisheries in the coastal zone; Salt making and blacksmithing also originated there. The development of coastal areas marked the beginning of polar shipping to Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya in the 14th century.
The settlement of western and central Pomerania was a stage in the creation of Russian ethnic territory, and the settlers and their descendants became a special ethnocultural part of the Russian people - Northern Great Russians with their inherent characteristics of material and spiritual culture.
The Mongol-Tatar rule over Russia delayed the unification of the Russian people into a single Russian state. The economic destruction of cities and settlements, the extermination of the population, and systematic raids were aggravated by the policy of the Golden Horde khans in relation to the Russian princely families. They undermined the existing order of patrimonial transmission of the Vladimir grand-ducal dignity, established their right to issue a label to the grand-ducal table, which led to constant rivalry and wars.
The defeat of Khan Mamai on the Kulikovo field in 1380 did not liberate Rus' from Horde rule, but was of decisive importance for national consolidation, which ended during the reign of the Grand Duke of Moscow Ivan III (1462-1505). The overthrow of Horde rule (1480) and the unification of the main part of the lands of the Central Russian Plain were of decisive importance in the history of the Russian people.
A radical change in the political situation led to a reorientation foreign policy united Rus'. Despite the constant raids from the east and south by the Crimean, Kazan and Nogai khans, the Russian government from the end of the 15th century and during the first two decades of the 16th century set the task of fighting the Grand Duchy of Lithuania for the Smolensk principality and the Chernigov-Seversky lands, the population of which gravitated towards Moscow . The wars with Lithuania ended with the successful assault on Smolensk in 1514 and the annexation of the Chernigov-Seversky lands. This completed the unification of the lands inhabited by the Russian people into a single state.
During the years of government Vasily III(1505-33) Pskov (1510) and Ryazan (1521) lost their independence, several appanage principalities disappeared. In the 16th century, the concept of “principality” finally died out. Along with the administrative system of territorial government (volosts, camps, districts), concepts of a regional nature emerged that corresponded to those regional characteristics that were characteristic of the Russian people in their material and spiritual life. They were based on certain cities (or groups of cities) - the centers of a vast district. Thus, the territory of the former Grand Duchy of Vladimir and the appanages surrounding it were called “cities beyond Moscow”; Novgorod and Pskov were considered “cities from the German Ukraine,” and part of the territory of the former Smolensk principality and the area of Nevel and Velikie Luki were considered “cities from the Lithuanian Ukraine”; The huge northern territory of the Onega, Northern Dvina basins and further to the Urals was called Pomorie or Pomeranian cities. This concept also included the lands of Vyatka and Perm the Great. To the southwest of Moscow, Kaluga, Belyaev, Bolkhov, Kozelsk constituted the district of “Zaotsk cities”, and Karachev, Orel, Kromy, Mtsensk - “Ukrainian cities”. From Serpukhov, Kashira and Kolomna on the Oka south to the upper reaches of the Don, the region of “Ryazan cities” stretched. Finally, the territory of the former Novgorod-Seversky principality was considered the region of “northern cities”, and to the east of them Kursk, Belgorod, Stary and Novy Oskol, Livny and Yelets were considered “Polish cities” (from the word “field”). Cities from Nizhny Novgorod to Kazan and further down the Volga all the way to Astrakhan became part of the “grassroots” ones.
In the middle of the 16th century, after the defeat of the Kazan and Astrakhan khanates and the strengthening of defenses along the entire course of the Volga, the constant threat from the east was eliminated. The struggle with the Crimean Khanate and the Ottoman Empire dragged on until the end of the 18th century. The resolution of these political problems was largely determined by two waves of population migrations, as a result of which the Ural and Volga regions and Siberia, on the one hand, and the forest-steppe and steppe part of the East European Plain, on the other, were economically developed.
In Pomerania, from the second half of the 16th century, the most characteristic phenomena were the expansion of internal colonization in general in the east and the outflow of the population, especially in the 17th century, through the Urals to Siberia. In the lands of the Upper Kama region, a settled Russian population appeared relatively late - in the 14th - early 15th centuries. At the end of the 15th and first half of the 16th centuries. Russian colonization of the Urals has not yet taken on a mass character.
By the second half of the 17th century, Russian development of the Perm land was very intensive, which was facilitated by the development of local crafts. The population growth in the Urals occurred due to immigrants from different regions of Pomerania.
In the Perm land, Russian settlers encountered the Finno-Ugric population - Komi, Khanty and Mansi, but their ethnic interaction had its own characteristics. If in Western and Central Pomerania, as in the center of the East European Plain, natural assimilation of the Finns by the Slavs prevailed, then in the Urals the ethnic situation was more complicated. Thus, according to Vishera, the Mansi lived during all periods of Russian development of the region. The territory of the Solikamsk district, with the exception of the Obvensky river, was less developed by the Komi-Permyaks, and Russian settlers often occupied empty places there.
The most important consequence of mass migration movements in eastern Pomerania (or the Urals) was the formation in the 17th century of the historical and ethnic territory of the Russian people in the north of the East European Plain from Karelia to the Urals.
The defeat of the Kazan Khanate created the preconditions for the mass settlement of the Russian people in the Urals. Migration movements beyond the Urals continued its development. The Russian state, which extended its power over a vast territory right up to the Pacific Ocean by the middle of the 18th century, became a Eurasian state. The Russian settlement of Siberia and its economic development - the introduction of arable farming as the leading branch of the economy in the 17th century, the formation of the mining industry in the 18th century, the formation of local regional markets with their involvement in all-Russian trade and economic relations - were a consequence of the administrative activities of the state system and spontaneous migrations of the population to Siberia.
Ermak's campaign and the defeat of Kuchum led the Siberian Khanate to collapse. The fight against Kuchum continued until the end of the 1590s; the Russian administration erected strongholds (Tyumen - 1586; Tobolsk - 1587; Pelym - 1593; Berezov - 1593; Surgut - 1594, etc.). The entry of Siberia into the Russian state occurred over the course of decades as it was developed by Russian settlers. State power, establishing strongholds in Siberia - forts, which then became cities with a trade and craft population, attracted new settler farmers with various benefits. Such strongholds grew into villages, and then settlements, which in turn became centers uniting the rural population. Such agricultural areas gradually merged and larger areas of Russian settlement were formed. The first of these regions in Western Siberia was the Verkhoturye-Tobolsk region, which formed in the 1630s in Western Siberia in the basin of the Tura River and its southern tributaries. Siberia's self-sufficiency in bread as a result of the economic activities of settlers became possible from the 1680s. By the end of the 17th century, four Western Siberian districts - Tobolsk, Verkhoturye, Tyumen and Turin - became the main breadbasket of Siberia. The more eastern region of agricultural development by Russian settlers of Western Siberia was the territory between Tomsk and Kuznetsk, founded in 1604 and 1618, respectively.
The penetration of Russian fishermen into Eastern Siberia began in the 17th century. As the Yenisei basin was developed, in its middle reaches up to the mouth of the Angara, the second most important grain-producing region began to be created, which extended to Krasnoyarsk, founded in 1628. To the south, until the end of the 17th century, agricultural development of the land was prevented by the Mongol state of the Altyn Khans and the Kyrgyz and Oirat rulers.
Further commercial development of Eastern Siberia began to cover Yakutia and the Baikal region. A grain-producing region was created in the upper reaches of the Lena and along the Ilim. On the largest rivers - Indigirka, Kolyma, Yana, Olenyok and especially at the mouth of the Lena, some industrialists began to settle permanently, and local groups of permanent old-time Russian residents formed there.
During the 17th century, vast areas of Russian settled agricultural population developed in Siberia, and local groups of fishing populations formed in the tundra zone. By the 18th century, this population began to outnumber the local mixed-tribal population. According to official data, in 1710 there were about 314 thousand Russian settlers of both sexes in Siberia, which exceeded the local population by 100 thousand; of these, 248 thousand lived in Western and 66 thousand in Eastern Siberia. The overwhelming majority of settlers were concentrated in the agricultural belt - Tobolsk, Verkhoturye, Tyumen, Turin, Tarsk, Pelym districts (106 thousand males).
In the 18th century, the settlement of borders with China along Mongolian lands and the construction of defensive lines in Western Siberia and Altai contributed to the “sliding” of the agricultural population from the taiga zone to the south, to more fertile lands.
During the 18th century, to the south of the old West Siberian agricultural belt, a new one emerged - Kurgan, Yalutorovsky, Ishim, and Omsk counties. The same process took place in the 18th century in the Tomsk-Kuznetsk region, the Barabinsk steppe and in the southern Altai lands, where not only agricultural production expanded, but also the mining industry developed. The Siberian administration began to take advantage of the flow of migrants and forcefully send them to Altai. At the beginning of the 18th century, intensive Russian development of territories began up the Yenisei up to the confluence of the Abakan and Tuda, along the Kan and especially in the Chulym basin.
The construction of the Siberian Highway and the general Siberian outflow of population to the south had an impact decisive influence for the redistribution of the Russian population in the Baikal region, in areas along the banks of the upper Lena, around Ilimsk, Irkutsk, Bratsk, Belsk. Free migrants remained the main source of recruitment, but exile also began to play a significant role in the 1760s-80s.
Unlike other regions of Siberia, in Transbaikalia, population growth in the 18th century depended primarily on resettlement organized by government authorities to supply the Nerchinsk silver smelting plants with labor and the settlement of tracts, especially to Kyakhta. The territories of the Selenga basin and the area between the Shilka and Argun rivers were redeveloped.
During the 18th century, the Russian population as a whole increased in Siberia not only due to new settlers, but also due to natural growth, which was higher than in the European part of the country. At this time, it was the old-timer Siberian who began to play a leading role in the development of Siberia. In absolute numbers, the Russian population of Siberia (male) tripled from 1710 to 1795 - from 158 thousand people to 448 thousand, and with females it reached 1 million; 328 thousand men lived in Western and 122 thousand in Eastern Siberia.
Simultaneously with spontaneous migration movements in the Northern Urals and further to Siberia, in the second half of the 16th century, a powerful movement began from the central regions of the country to the southern Russian forest-steppe. Here the organizing role of state power came to the fore.
The shift of the Russian population to the south in the 16th century was associated primarily with the cessation of internal civil strife in Rus' by the 16th century, the rapid growth of the population on poor loamy lands, and the need for agricultural products in connection with the revival of the economy.
Unlike other regions to which Russian settlement extended, the economic development of the “wild field” was extremely hampered by political circumstances. After the fall of the Kazan Khanate, the Crimean Khanate and the Nogai hordes remained a source of constant danger for the emerging Russian state on the southern and southeastern borders. This danger was complicated by the fact that the Crimean Khanate fell into vassal dependence on Ottoman Empire. The inviolability of the existence of the Crimean Khanate was the basis of Turkey’s policy in the Black Sea region, and the raids of the Crimean khans on Russian lands formed the basis of the economic system of the existence of the Khanate, which excluded the possibility of any agreement with Russia. This circumstance gave rise to the need for Russia to wage a difficult struggle, which became more complicated after the region of the so-called “Zaotsky cities” came under Moscow rule from Lithuania at the turn of the 15th-16th centuries, which required constant protection from Tatar raids. The Ryazan land was even more important - one of the most important agricultural centers.
From the middle of the 16th century, the Moscow government began to advance significant military forces beyond the Oka, near Tula and further to the Dnieper and Don. In the 1580-90s, a whole network of fortified cities was erected in the southern “Ukraine”, on which field regiments relied (Livny, Voronezh, Yelets, Belgorod, Oskol, Valuyki, Kromy, Kursk, etc.). The need to replenish local garrisons forced the administrative authorities to take military service free migrants, and often runaway peasants and slaves. As a result, two main groups of the Russian population emerged in the southern districts - the peasantry and service people. In the 1620s, in connection with the restoration of the southern fortresses, a “relocation” of the military service population began to occur through administrative transfers from the Oka cities to the south. In the 1640s, resettlement to the basin of the upper Don and Voronezh and the Kozlovsky and Tambov districts adjacent to them from the north intensified.
With all the losses from the Crimean Tatar raids in the first half XVII century, the Russian peasant population of the southern outskirts numbered 230 thousand people in the middle of the century. The number of service people living in the territories of the Belgorod and Sevsky military districts reached 84 thousand people by the end of the 17th century.
Migrations of the Russian population to the forest-steppe and steppe strips of the East European Plain, on the territory of the former “wild field”, in the east merged with migrations to the Middle Volga region and in the southeast, constantly replenished the Cossack population, which had been developing the basin of the lower Don and the Azov region since the 16th century. In the second half of the 16th century in the Middle Volga region, the Russian agricultural population concentrated in the areas of cities built on the Volga right bank in the second half of the 16th century - Cheboksary, Tsivilsk, Kozmodemyansk, Kokshaisk, Sanchursk, Laishev, Tetyushi, Alatyr, where they settled among the Chuvash and Tatars. In the Middle Volga region, Russian settlement was not threatened by the same dangers that the Crimean Tatars posed in the “wild field”. However, the Moscow government in the second half of the 16th - first half of the 17th centuries. also erected abatis lines, and when creating the Belgorod line, it continued it from Tambov to Simbirsk (Korsun-Simbirsk line), and in the Trans-Volga region, slightly below Simbirsk, in 1652-56 it erected the Zakamsk line to prevent raids by Nogai and Bashkir detachments. In the XVI-XVII centuries. The Middle Volga region was populated mainly spontaneously. However, “transfers” began to appear in this region, that is, dependent peasantry, whose owners - secular feudal lords and monasteries - were given land.
The settlement of the Trans-Volga region (meadow side) by Russians on a mass scale began to occur only in the 18th century. In Bashkiria and down the Volga, Russian villages until the 18th century appeared only near the cities of Ufa, Samara, Tsaritsyn, Saratov. To protect them, in 1718-20, the Tsaritsyn defensive line was built between the Don and Volga rivers.
According to various estimates, in the Russian state in the middle of the 15th century there were 6 million people, in the first half of the 16th century - 6.5-14.5, at the end of the 16th century - 7-15, in the 17th century - up to 10.5-12 million . Human.
Deep socio-political transformations of the second half of the 80s - early 90s. on the territory of the former USSR, including the Russian Federation, had a huge impact on many aspects of Russian life. Economic reforms have caused the growth of market relations and private entrepreneurship, especially in cities; a layer of farmers is appearing in the countryside along with existing farms. The crisis in industry and inflation had a negative impact on the financial situation of the general population of Russia, unemployment, strikes of workers and employees appeared, and the level of crime and corruption increased. As a result of the collapse of the USSR, about 2 million refugees and migrants appeared in Russia, mainly from among Russians in the near abroad.
IN recent years positive changes have occurred: in rural areas and suburbs major cities The construction of individual comfortable housing began, the number of personal cars increased, experience in entrepreneurial activity and active participation in political life was formed, contacts with the outside world, including with foreign compatriots, expanded. Traditional crafts, spiritual values and social institutions. Hundreds of churches and dozens of monasteries, some sacred relics and objects of worship have been returned to the Russian Orthodox Church, and the main church holidays (Christmas, Easter) are celebrated more widely. The historical and cultural heritage of the Russians is being restored with the return of the former names of cities and streets, the publication of the works of forgotten Russian thinkers, scientists, and writers; religious literature. Hundreds of new periodicals appeared, especially in the regions of Russia. The crisis of some prestigious elite institutions (professional creative unions, Academy of Sciences, official media) due to the reduction of state support is compensated by the emergence of independent teams of creative workers and scientists, a variety of forms of activity and expression. The Russian people are going through a complex and difficult period of transition from totalitarianism to open society, searching for a new identity based on a combination of traditions and the highest values of democracy and civil liberties.
Historical and ethnographic groups. One of the most important factors that influenced the state of Russian folk culture with its characteristic diversity was the development of the ethnic territory of Russians and resettlement movements. In connection with the economic development of the outskirts and the resulting mass migrations of the Russian population in various historical periods from one region to another, on the one hand, there was a mixing of various regional groups formed earlier, on the other, the formation of new groups in the course of the immigrants’ adaptation to new living conditions and as a result of their contacts with the local population (related or unrelated). In new places, in the course of complex ethnic processes in the culture and life of the newcomers, some specific features are developed, although the old ones, brought from their “native” places and serving as a kind of historical milestones in the memory of the people, continue to be preserved. The continuity of this process is one of the characteristic features ethnic history of Russians. In a single Russian massif with a pronounced commonality of self-awareness, language and culture, there are constantly differences at the level of ethnic divisions, which arose at different times under the influence of various reasons and differ more or less noticeably from each other. These divisions (zones or groups - regional, local, historical and cultural) were distinguished by significant durability and could be traced with varying degrees of clarity at the beginning of the 20th century. So the descendants of the ancient indigenous Russian population of Carpathian Rus, partly Kievan Rus (self-name Rusyns, i.e. “son of Rus”; Rusichs, Rusnak, Carpatho-Russians, Ugro-Russians, Russian Galicians, Ugric Rusyns, Galician Rusyns, Bukovinian Rusyns, another name is Rutens) - residents of the main historical regions of modern Western Ukraine (Carpathian Rus and Transcarpathian Rus; also live in Poland, Slovakia, Serbia, France, USA, etc.), who, despite centuries of existence as part of various states (especially Austria-Hungary), are isolated from Russia and Ukrainization preserved Russian ethnic identity, the Russian language and the Orthodox faith.
Significant differences in culture and way of life were observed between two historically established large ethnographic zones of the Russian people: Northern Russian and Southern Russian, i.e., between the so-called Northern and Southern Great Russians. Northern Great Russians occupied a vast territory approximately from the Volkhov basin in the west to the Mezen and the upper reaches of the Vyatka and Kama in the east, southern Great Russians - inhabitants of the southern black earth strip of Russia from the Desna basin in the west to the right tributary of the Volga Sura in the east, from the Oka in the north to the Khopr and middle currents of the Don in the south.
This discrepancy in the traditional culture of Russians was the reason for the existence in Russian ethnography for some time of the opinion that the northern and southern Great Russians can be mistaken for separate independent peoples. However, they have a single Russian identity.
The wide strip between the northern and southern Great Russians, mainly in the area between the Oka and Volga rivers, is considered the transitional Central Russian zone. It was here that in the 14th century Russian statehood began to take shape and the formation of the Russian nationality subsequently took place. In various aspects of the traditional culture of the Central Russian group, northern and southern Russian traits seemed to be fused into a single whole, which were crossed and processed in new conditions and on a local basis. In the process of changes, they often acquired not a local, but an all-Russian character, for example, a traditional women's costume with a sundress and kokoshnik and a dwelling on a basement of medium height, which spread among Russians everywhere. At the same time, many features of Moscow’s cultural influence were felt at different times in the everyday life of the population of both northern and southern Russian regions. Moscow dialects formed the basis for the formation of the Russian language, thus playing a huge role in the process of national consolidation and development of the Russian national culture.
A special group with transitional characteristics between the northern and middle, middle and southern Great Russians in the west of the ancient territory of Russian settlement - in the area of the Velikaya River, the upper reaches of the Dnieper and Western Dvina.
The Russian population of the Middle Volga region stands out as a unique subgroup of the average Great Russians, formed mainly in the 16th-18th centuries from people from different Russian regions. In local geographical conditions in close proximity to a diverse national composition By the non-Russian population of the Volga region, it acquired special features that distinguish it from the population of other Central Russian regions (the existence of certain types of ornaments, similar in shape and color to the decorations of the peoples of the Volga region, the specifics of the interior decoration of the home, the use of a special type of plow - the saban for plowing the soil, etc.) .
The Russians of the northeastern region of the Urals are adjacent to the northern Russian group both in their regional dialect and in many features of material and spiritual culture (including in the field of agricultural technology, food, and wedding rites). But at the same time, they are also characterized by some features characteristic of the inhabitants of the Central Russian zone (in housing, in clothing, in ornaments). This combination is associated with the history of colonization of these areas from the north, from the central regions and from the Volga region.
The Northern Russian ethnographic zone is characterized by the greatest monolithic character, but even here a group of Pomors stands out, settling on the northern outskirts of the indigenous territory inhabited by the Northern Great Russians on the shores of the White and Barents Seas. The Pomors were formed from people from the Northern Russian and partly Central Russian regions, assimilating some local groups of Finno-Ugric, Sami and Nenets origin. The main occupation of the Pomors has long been fishing and hunting sea animals, under the influence of which their unique economic life developed.
The population of the forest-steppe and steppe zones of the European part of Russia, the most diverse in their origin, was distinguished by the diversity of local originality. In the western part of the southern Russian zone, researchers, according to data from the 19th - early 20th centuries, were able to identify a number of small groups, possibly genetically related to the ancient local population that survived the domination of Mongol-Tatar nomads in these areas. These include the so-called polekhs - possibly residents of woodland, that is, some old settlements of wooded and swampy areas in the Desna and Seim basin; Goryuns who lived according to the modern administrative division in the Sumy region of Ukraine, former monastic peasants - Sayans (Kursk region), Tsukans (Voronezh region) and others. Archaic patterns can be traced in their language and traditional forms of culture. features indicating the southern Russian origin of these groups and the connections of some of them (Polekhs, Goryunov) in the distant past with Belarusians and partly Lithuanians (among the Sayans). Like the Polehs, some southeastern groups of Russians living in the Zaoksky part of the Ryazan and Tambov regions, back in the 20s of the 20th century, in various aspects of folk culture, especially in the ornament, in the colors of the costume, in the decoration of the home, old connections with peoples of the Volga region, which is clearly noticeable in the example of a group known as the Russian Meshchera, which arose possibly as a result of the assimilation of the aboriginal Finnish population by the Slavs. The Russian Meshchera was localized in the northern parts of the Ryazan and Tambov regions. Part of the Meshchera from here in the 16th-18th centuries moved further to the southeast: islands of this population, which had long been Russified, were found on the territory of the Penza and Saratov regions.
The Cossacks stood out for their significant cultural and everyday life - the population of the southeast (from the Khopr basin to the Kuban and Terek basin - mainly the former region of the Don Army, the eastern part of New Russia, the Kuban, Terek regions, etc.), territorially and historically connected with the population southern Russian regions and neighboring Ukraine. In language, in terms of culture and way of life, the Cossacks, in turn, were far from uniform. The reasons for its heterogeneity lie largely in the history of its formation. (Among the Cossacks there were representatives of non-Russian peoples).
In the main part of the Russian population of Siberia, several large and small groups also stood out. In general, among the old-timers of Western Siberia, the Okaya dialect and Northern Russian features in traditional culture prevailed, while among the old-timers Siberians of Eastern Siberia, groups with Akaya dialect and South Russian traditions in culture and life are also found.
Among the Russians of Siberia there are also small groups that are clearly distinguished by certain features of their life. These include, for example, the Bukhtarma people, or masons, living along the Bukhtarma and Uimon rivers in Altai - descendants of the Old Believers, some other fugitives who settled here in the mountains (“in the stones”) since the 18th century. In the region of Ust-Kamenogorsk (also in Altai) the so-called Poles are localized - descendants of the Old Believers who were resettled here in the second half of the 18th century after the partition of Poland. In Transbaikalia (in Buryatia) and in the Chita region, the descendants of the same Old Believers are also known as Semeisk (maybe because they moved as whole families). The dialect of the Semeiskies and Poles is Akaya, and that of the masons (Bukhtarmintsy) is Okaya. Due to the well-known isolation of life of all these groups, until recently, they persistently retained their unique features, in particular, there were strong remnants of patriarchal mores and customs, the old traditional costume was in use for a long time, etc. At the same time, some of these groups, for example, Bukhtarminians, under the influence of neighboring non-Russian peoples, women's clothing underwent changes (harem pants appeared for women), ornaments and many other elements of everyday life.
Small groups of Russians beyond the Arctic Circle who moved here from the European part of Russia in the 16th-18th centuries, the Rusko-Ustye people (the village of Russkoye Ustye on Indigirka) and the Markov people (the village of Markovka at the mouth of Anadyr), being in special natural conditions, adopted a lot from the local population: methods of hunting and fishing, dog breeding and reindeer herding, some types of clothing, but retained their national identity, their folklore and language. From mixing with the indigenous peoples of Siberia, such unique Russian groups arose as the Yakutians (residents of coachman villages along the Lena River), Kamchadals (in Kamchatka), Kolyma residents (on the Kolyma River), tundra peasants (on the Dudinka and Khatanga rivers), who adopted many features of everyday life and the Yakut language. By now, all these groups have almost merged with the local Russian population. The compact groups of Russians in Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, the Baltic states and Transcaucasia, the republics of Central Asia and Kazakhstan are also unique. Such, for example, are the Urals - the descendants of the Cossacks-Old Believers, resettled in the 18th century from Yaik after the defeat of the Pugachev uprising and living in Karakalpakstan, in Kazakhstan on the banks of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya. In cultural and everyday terms, other groups of Russians from Kazakhstan and Central Asia are also of interest. A special group consists of the descendants of Russian Old Believers, who since the 17th century settled beyond the then “Swedish border” on the Estonian lands of the western Chud region, etc.
In the areas of resettlement of Russians, including in such areas as the Volga region, the North Caucasus, Northern Kazakhstan, southern Siberia and the Far East, active processes of ethnic rapprochement between those who came and the local peoples took place, expressed mainly in various cultural mutual influences.
In general, Russians of peripheral groups, finding themselves in new natural and economic conditions and in close contact with other peoples, as a rule, did not lose their language and self-awareness. Mainly preserving their traditional cultural and everyday appearance, in the process of adaptation they developed new features of life, sometimes borrowing many elements of culture, especially economic, from the local population. The Russians brought with them and disseminated among the local population economic skills and techniques that turned out to be useful, contributed, for example, to the development of agriculture and the spread of sedentism among previously nomadic peoples, the creation of industry, the construction of cities and the growth of culture. Despite the diversity of its manifestations, Russian folk culture remained unified: it was based on strong ethnic traditions, which, together with innovations that entered everyday life at different historical stages, constituted national identity.
Traditional activities. Tools and techniques
Agriculture among the Russians, like other Eastern Slavs, has been developed since ancient times. Farmer traditions determined the development of many specific features of their culture.
In different landscape zones of the territory of Russian settlement, depending on natural and socio-economic conditions, the farming culture had its own characteristics. The most common farming system, especially in the old agricultural areas, was the steam grain system, which became dominant among the Russians in early times. The introduction of steam indicated significant achievements in the development of the productive forces of society. This system was most adapted to life in subsistence farming and met the climatic conditions of the central zone of the European part of Russia. In the 19th century, three-field crop rotation was most often used, although in some places two-field crop rotation was also encountered, when fallowing was used only for two fields. With a three-field system, the land was divided into three fields, on which, as a result of centuries of selection, the most rational crops for the Russian peasant were grown. The fields were allocated for spring grain, winter grain, and fallow, followed by their alternation. The fallows were manured and left free. Local timing of sowing, harvesting and other work, verified by centuries-old tradition, played a big role in running such an economy.
The transition from three-field to more intensive systems was carried out through the introduction of new crops, including those that improved the soil structure, the transition to occupied fallows, as well as through increased fertilization of fields with manure, peat, silt, and sometimes artificial fertilizers.
In some places, the departure from three-field farming and the peasant’s orientation towards the production of marketable products led to the development of the so-called monoculture, that is, a culture that turned out to be the most effective in local conditions. Field cultivation and the entire economy as a whole were subordinate to her.
Along with the steam system, in the second half of the 19th century, in certain forested areas of the north, forestry or slash-and-burn agriculture still existed, used in newly developed areas.
In Siberia, the unacceptability of three-field farming leads to the development of a fallow system in combination with fallow farming, and in taiga areas with shifting farming, which was the result of the settlers adapting their traditions and skills to new ecological ones. conditions.
In the southern steppe regions of European Russia, fallow-fallow farming also developed. At the same time, virgin soil was raised and used for sowing a fairly wide range of different crops, which gave good yields for several years.
The main direction of agriculture was the cultivation of grain crops (rye, wheat). The main fodder crop was oats. It was also exported to other countries. Peasant farms usually sown so-called simple oats, which were numerous local variations of different varieties. Barley was divided into fodder and beer barley. By the beginning of the 20th century, demand for Russian barley increased foreign market, which stimulated the expansion of his crops. Oats and barley were usually sown in a spring field. Feed barley and oats were partly used as food, but the main cereal plants were buckwheat and one of the oldest cereals, millet. Buckwheat different types sown mainly in the middle zone in the European part of Russia and Siberia.
In the Volga and Urals regions in the 19th century, spelt was cultivated, which was used as food, but produced grain of worse quality than wheat. They sown it in a spring field. Peas were sown everywhere. It was valued not only as a food crop, but also as a good precursor for cereal plants.
Since ancient times, Russians have cultivated flax and hemp, which provide fiber and oil. By the 19th century, entire regions specializing in the cultivation of these crops had historically developed. Russian flax and hemp made from hemp were previously known far beyond the borders of the country. TO end of the 19th century century, more than half of the flax produced in the world was Russian flax, while hemp production was in first place in Europe. “Ordinary” hemp was cultivated - up to 1.5 m in height. Male hemp stems produced coarse fiber (“poskon”, “habits”), female stems were used to make “hemp”. Oil was made from hemp seeds, which, like flaxseed, was consumed as food. The importance of Russian flax growing at that time was indicated by the fact that almost all varieties of flax cultivated in the world originated from Novgorod flax.
Potatoes were new to the Russians. With difficulty, overcoming the resistance of the people, at the end of the 18th century the government began to introduce it into agricultural culture. But then it spread very quickly and by the end of the 19th century it took a prominent place among productive plants. Potatoes were used for food and also as technical raw materials for the production of starch and distillation of alcohol.
Agriculture of Russians, like Ukrainians and Belarusians, belongs to the plow type, in which the preparation of the soil for sowing is carried out using arable tools. The main arable tool for the Russians has long been the plow - a light wooden, largely universal, tool that loosens but does not overturn the layer. The classic Russian plow is considered to be a two-toothed feather plow with a crossbar that served as a blade. Among the improved arable tools of the plow type, the roe deer with a larger ploughshare, plow cut and moldboard has been known since the 18th century (northeast of European Russia). She also had many options. On the sticks during slash-and-burn farming, in combination with other loosening tools (for example, with an ancient drawing or a chisel), high stake plows without a blade were used, easily jumping over roots and stumps (tsapukha, tsapulka, cherkusha). In Siberia, along with other types of arable tools, a wheel was used - a plow with a wheeled limber. At the end of the 19th century, improved plows spread in the Urals and neighboring provinces - single-toothed, one-sided ploughshares, kuroshimki, etc., made by Ural craftsmen.
In the south of Russia, in the forest-steppe and steppe zones on fertile, heavy soils, for a long time, when raising virgin soil or fallow lands, a Ukrainian-type plow was used, which ensures deeper tillage of the soil with inversion of the layer. On lighter lands they plowed with plows. In the Urals there was a lighter plow - the saban, which was widespread among the non-Russian peoples of the Volga region. It was used here along with the plow. Since the end of the 19th century, homemade tools have been replaced by handicraft and factory ones. Agricultural implements of foreign brands were also used. They often purchased machines (seeders, winnowers, and reapers) by pooling money. A kind of cooperation was created for the purchase and use of agricultural machinery. Old tools, pushed to the periphery of agricultural production, along with improved ones, still continued to be used for a long time.
The timing of sowing, as well as other agricultural work, in different regions is fixed by tradition on certain dates of the economic and holiday calendar, but varied depending on weather fluctuations. In most cases they sown by hand. Harvest time has always been joyful, but at the same time difficult. It is no coincidence that it was called “strada”. Most of the work was done by hand. Among the Russians, women mainly reaped bread with sickles, like all Slavs, with a serrated notch along the working edge. Their forms were very stable and resembled ancient Russian ones. In the southern Russian steppes on wide fields, the main harvesting tool was the scythe. Everywhere the scythe was used for harvesting buckwheat and peas, and in case of poor harvest - rye and oats. By the end of the 19th century, harvesting machines began to enter village life: first on landowner farms, then among peasants in areas of commercial development of grain growing. Most often these were reapers - “lobogreyki”.
Compressed or mown bread was tied into sheaves, which were placed on the field for drying in various ways (“worts”, “piles”, “grandmothers”, “sacrums”, “shocks”) and then into quadrangular “germs” or rounded “ondos” . Barns were widespread - in most cases, log buildings with a ground (in the upper barn) or underground firebox - a hearth and an upper heating chamber with grates - "sadilo". Sheaves were placed on the grates to dry overnight. They threshed mainly with flails. The Russian flail differed somewhat from the Ukrainian and Belarusian in the way the beat was attached to the handle, which made it possible to make the circular movement of the beat over the head, characteristic of Russians, during threshing. To obtain the best seeds and unbroken straw, they used a sheaf against a barrel. At the end of the 19th century, all these methods began to be replaced by threshing using threshers that were horse-powered or steam-powered. A special trade was created for threshers who worked on their machines for hire. The threshing of grain did not always happen immediately; sometimes it was delayed into the autumn and even part of the winter. After threshing, the grain was winnowed - usually standing in the wind with a shovel. Sitting in the west, closer to the Belarusians. In the southern Russian provinces, large wire sieves were used - “screens”. Hand and horse-drawn winnowing machines were also used. Work on them also served as a latrine trade for the southern Russian peasants.
Grain reserves were stored in barns (granaries) - capital specialized buildings. The barn was usually single-chamber and had a “barn area” under a canopy with a door to the barn. The grain was ground in water or wind mills. Water mills, known in the territories of settlement of the Eastern Slavs since the time of Kyiv. Rus' had a different structure. Along with water mills, windmills were common and in most cases predominated. They appeared among the Russians in the 17th century and are known in two main versions: rod-type (pole, common in the north), turning the whole body to the wind around an axis, and tent-type (in the central part, south and west), in which only the roof was movable with wings. In addition to mills for obtaining small amounts of flour and cereals, almost every peasant household had hand millstones and foot and hand mortars, known since ancient times.
The transition of peasants in the second half of the 19th century to the production of marketable products led to the search for new management techniques. Modernization and improvement of existing farming systems and crop rotations took place. For example, a fourth field (“novelty”) was introduced into a three-regiment, the selection of crops was improved, for example, clover was sowed as a precursor to flax, busy pairs and fall plowing were practiced. In general, the progress of Russian agriculture was also facilitated by migration, the resettlement of Russian peasants to new places, where they adapted to life in new conditions. Currently, most agricultural work is mechanized. Tractors of different brands with arable, loosening and sowing implements work in the fields. Some traditional tools are sometimes used in special natural conditions or in a subsidiary farm (plow, roe deer or plow of an old design) for hilling potatoes. Harvesting methods have also changed. Nowadays, reaping with a sickle or mowing by hand is rarely used (for example, among forests and swamps). With the transition to mechanical methods of harvesting and threshing bread, the need for air and fire drying of sheaves disappeared.
Along with field cultivation, Russians have long had vegetable gardening and horticulture as one of the necessary branches of agriculture, although they had an auxiliary significance. Everywhere in cities and villages, various garden vegetables were grown on estates, and sometimes outside them. They planted especially a lot of cabbage, cucumbers, as well as onions, garlic, radishes, carrots, beets, dill, etc. Sometimes special places were allocated for cabbage in the lowlands near the water. In the 19th century, there was still a custom of joint collective work on “cabbage gardens”. Turnips were sown a lot back in the 18th century, especially when clearing forest areas. In the 19th century, it was replaced by potatoes and began to be planted in children's gardens. In the south, watermelons and melons were grown. The arrangement of vegetable gardens and the range of cultivated crops were determined by climatic conditions and traditions. When moving to new places in the process of economic development of new territories, the Russians first of all tried to sow the seeds they brought with them and apply their usual techniques and accumulated knowledge not only in field cultivation, but also in gardening. In the 19th century, in addition to estate gardening, essentially food gardening, there was also industrial gardening, producing garden products for the market. In the southern regions, commercial melon growing began to develop in the 60-70s. The incentive was the construction of railways, which ensured reliable sales of marketable products. They grew melons, watermelons, and pumpkins. Hop growing had a food and industrial character. The most famous was Guslitsky hop from the Bronnitsy and Bogoroditsk region of the Moscow province.
Russians, like other Eastern Slavs, do not belong to the so-called pastoral peoples. Breeding domestic animals, known to them since ancient times, was always ancillary on the farm, although necessary, closely related to agriculture. They kept cows, horses, sheep, goats, pigs, and poultry (mostly chickens). In the field of livestock farming, over the long period of its existence in Rus', many general and local traditions have developed regarding livestock breeds, methods of keeping and caring for them, storage and primary processing of the resulting products, reflecting the peculiarities of geographical and socio-economic conditions. The peasants' cattle were mainly of local breeds. The horse was necessary for the peasant for agricultural work and as a means of transport. The absence of a horse or the presence of one or more horses on a farm determined its viability and power. Horses predominated from local breeds. The Russians also developed the breeding of purebred animals, but mainly at state stud farms for the needs of the army and for the royal stables. The most famous plant was in the village of Khrenov, Voronezh province, where Oryol trotters were bred. In the Voronezh and Vladimir provinces, heavy draft horses have long been bred. The Don horse was highly valued as a riding horse.
In recent decades, livestock farming has become the second leading branch of Russian agriculture. On common farms, livestock are kept in specially equipped premises. Usually they form a kind of livestock “town”, landscaped and equipped with the necessary mechanisms, located at some distance from the village.
The diversity of natural conditions, the presence of vast forests, steppes, numerous rivers and lakes in the territory of Russian settlement, the large length of sea coasts have long contributed to the development, along with agriculture, of industries for hunting animals and fish, collecting nuts, etc. The main direction of hunting for Russians has long been commodity -fur. Initially, the main game animal was the sable; in the 19th century, the squirrel began to be hunted most of all, its range was extensive, and the hunting time covered autumn and a significant part of winter. They also caught fox, arctic fox, ermine, and sable.
Depending on natural conditions, the nature of hunting, its significance and traditions, Russians have developed different types of hunters, differing in hunting clothing, weapons, auxiliary equipment (for example, means of transportation) and hunting techniques. The main type of hunting was hunting with a gun and a dog. Old traps, traps, and rubble were also used.
Currently, commercial hunting continues to retain economic importance. Many remain traditional types and hunting techniques. But the technical equipment of the hunter has increased significantly.
Even more than hunting, in the 19th - early 20th centuries. Fishing was widespread. Fish were caught wherever there were bodies of water containing them. But the basins of large rivers, sea coasts, and large lakes had especially large reserves of fish, including valuable species (“red fish”). The mouths of northern rivers, the Far East, were famous for salmon fish, the Volga, Ural, Ob - for sturgeon. Species of fish (pike perch, carp, bream) were caught everywhere. Taimen, grayling, and omul were found in Siberian rivers and lakes. Some lakes in European Russia (Galichskoye, Chukhlomskoye) were famous for fishing smelts, which in dried form were highly valued as lean food, etc. Since the end of the 19th century, fishing for herring and deep-sea cod and flounder has developed widely. Fish processing was one of the most important parts of the fishery. In the north, it was customary to smoke fish, dry it in special ovens, and freeze it. In the south, fish were dried and dried in the sun. Where there were salt mines nearby, fish were mainly salted. In some places in the north, due to the lack of salt, Russians used pickling fish for their own consumption - a method borrowed from local peoples. Tackles and fishing gear were mostly traditional. The most widespread were various traps and nets.
For mass catching of fish going to spawn, “strings” and “longlines” were used - hook tackles built on the basis of an ancient fishing rod, a stockade. Peasants usually owned and used fishing grounds jointly - by the whole community. They worked as an artel, which was usually formed on the basis of kinship, neighborhood, and community.
A significant role was played by various small manual productions, processing of natural raw materials and making from them things needed in the household and in everyday life. In the XIX - early XX centuries. Some of these activities provided only the needs of the family of the producers themselves (the so-called home production), others provided the demand of the customer (craft), and others supplied goods to the market (handicrafts). In the cities, crafts and various handicrafts were the main occupations for a large part of the population; in the village, as a rule, they had an auxiliary role. Home production was especially characteristic of the peasantry of the black earth provinces, which, to a greater extent than, for example, in the center, was focused on arable farming.
Most of the small industries had their own historically established centers. In the forest and forest-steppe zones of the territory inhabited by Russians, woodworking industries were highly developed. Due to the great importance of horse-drawn transport in the economy and everyday life, the manufacture of transport equipment and crews was very widespread. From the first quarter of the 19th century, the carpentry trade for furniture manufacturing began to develop widely. At the beginning of the 20th century they began to paint it with oil paint.
A lot of wooden utensils were produced and consumed. The most common were cooperage products made of wooden staves (tubs, tubs, barrels, kegs, tubs, gangs, tubs, less so - buckets, vats). Tues were used for carrying and storing berries, dairy products, honey, cereals, etc.
In the second half of the 19th century, the production of lathe-turned utensils (plates, bowls, spoons, trays) began to develop rapidly. Woodworking also includes basket fishing. They made baskets, boxes and other containers, as well as sleigh bodies and furniture. Bast shoes were woven from linden, elm and birch bast - the most common type of work shoes for Russian peasants in the European part of the country. Where there were clay deposits, pottery production developed. Ceramics were produced using a potter's foot wheel using a drawing technique, but some craftsmen sometimes used a hand wheel on which they worked “slapped.” Stove tiles and tiles were also produced, and brick production expanded. They mined building material and stone for crafts.
Of the metalworking trades, the most common was blacksmithing. The forges usually stood at a distance from the villages and two or three people worked in them. Mechanics who used soldering and cold working of metal were almost as widespread as blacksmiths. Metal production was especially widespread in the non-chernozem Center and the Urals. Tula guns, samovars, Pavlovian knives and weapons with engravings from Zlatoust, cast iron from the Urals and the Moscow region have long been famous. Rare, but characteristic of the Russians, was the gold mining industry (Moscow and Yaroslavl provinces), which served the entire country.
Many different industries were engaged in the processing of fibrous raw materials (flax, hemp, cotton, wool, silk). The first place among these crafts belonged to textiles. Women weaved on a horizontal weaving mill made of wood - “krosnakh”. The centers of Russian textile production were the Moscow, Smolensk, Vladimir, Kostroma, Nizhny Novgorod, and Yaroslavl provinces. At the end of the 19th century, to intensify labor, they began to use a weaving loom, which was called an “airplane,” with a device for throwing a shuttle (“drive”). Men worked on it. Home spinning and weaving in cities and in economically developed rural areas continued until the 30s of the 20th century. They wove a simple cloth with a cross-shaped weave of threads (“canvases”, “novinas”) and patterned fabrics. The range of Russian textile products was very wide. In the Moscow and Vladimir provinces they made a lot of checkered motleys; in Yaroslavl and Kostroma, in addition to linen, tablecloths and towels; in Saratov, “sarpinka” (checkered or striped paper canvas), etc. Woolen and semi-woolen fabrics, sashes, shawls, cloth, and blankets were woven from wool yarn. Felting felt boots was widespread everywhere, except for the southernmost regions; they also made felts, hats, etc. One of the oldest leather crafts among the Russians was furriery - the dressing of animal skins and sheepskin. In the 19th century, it developed in the northern part of European Russia, the Urals, and Siberia.
Ways and means of transportation. A specific area of traditional everyday culture was the methods and means of movement and transportation of goods.
The most common method among the Russians was land transportation using a horse. Riding a horse under saddle and transporting goods with packs and saddle bags in the 19th - early 20th centuries. no longer played a significant role. The exceptions were mountainous areas, taiga and swampy areas. Horseback riding played a particularly important role in the life of the Cossacks. Everywhere and most often, riding and transporting horses was carried out using skids and wheeled vehicles. The horse was the main draft animal. At the same time, the existence of a shaft harness with a clamp and an arc was typical. The harness and harness were made of wood, leather, linen cords, ropes, various braids, braids, etc.
The most common was the one-horse team, but a double team was also used. In this the latter case one horse (the root horse) walked under the arch, the other - tied - next to him on the lines; Among wealthy peasants, the favorite way out was a threesome with a root and two attached ones. Riding in a train with a root under the arc and tie-downs in front of it was used relatively rarely.
The winter cart was a sleigh, which belonged to the category of skid vehicles. In special conditions of mountainous or swampy areas, sleighs were also used in the summer - for example, to carry hay from a slope or from swampy forest clearings, and sometimes during funerals. Sleighs varied greatly in size, design features and decoration. The simplest of them - firewood - did not have a body and served for the transport of firewood, timber, hay and for other needs. Firewood with a wicker, bast or plank body was called a sledge. They were the most used type of sleigh in peasant life: they transported both goods and people.
In the tundra, Russians, like local peoples, rode dogs harnessed to sledges. In the Onega region and on the White Sea coast, at the end of the 19th century, fishermen used dog sleds in the form of a plank boat on one runner (“kerezha”), borrowed from the Sami. Skiing played a major role in the life of Russian northern, forested and mountainous regions in winter.
In summer, autumn and spring, the land means of transportation were carts on wheels - two-wheeled and four-wheeled. The most common was a four-wheeled cart with a body made of planks or wicker. A cart without a body - a drog - was used to transport bulky heavy loads. A cart consisting of a front end with wheels and a pair of free wheels attached to it was called wheels. They carried timber on it. In the lower reaches of the Don and Volga, in the Southern Urals and in the Northern Caucasus, a large cart, similar to the Ukrainian mazhara or cart, was used for long-distance freight transportation. Two-wheeled carts, better suited for people's travel, were also varied - from the shaker or tarataika to the more convenient spring cart, britzka, and bidarka.
IN modern life Horse-drawn transport among Russians has lost its former importance. Currently, technical vehicles dominate the national economy. Traditional horse carts, carts, sleighs, “wheels” are preserved in small numbers in rural areas for some domestic travel and transportation.
Rivers, lakes, and seas have long served as Russian routes of communication on boats, ferries, and rafts. In the XIX - early XX centuries. waterways continued to retain their importance in the economic life of the people, in their daily life. The boats were especially varied and numerous. They had different sizes, device, load capacity, names. In some places you could still find decks made of thick wood. More often, ancient steamed dugouts with sides separated by steaming were used (shuttles, skiffs, plows). Plank boats were more common. In shallow water they used small punts. They sailed on large punts with paired oars in oarlocks and under sail. Huge punts with decking were used to construct ferries. From the mid-18th to the second half of the 19th centuries, before the introduction of shipping, during the period of rapid development of trade relations and shipbuilding, a wide variety of forms of cargo ships could be observed on the river and lake routes of the country. Some of these ships were rafting - they went only downstream, while others rose with oars. The sea, cargo and fishing fleet was sailing. On large waterways, for example on the Volga, the force of barge haulers was used as traction for large barges, which pulled the strap and walked along a whip (i.e., a path along the shore). In a number of places, even at the beginning of the 20th century, rafts were used. Small rafts of two logs with flooring were used for one person for fishing and for transporting goods. Sometimes large rafts were used.
Currently in water vehicles many traditional forms have been replaced by technical modern devices. But despite all this, old traditional boats, rafts, ferries still continue to exist, especially in specific natural conditions.
Settlements. Rural settlements of Russians in the 19th - early 20th centuries. continued to retain some previously established features. Differences in natural conditions, in the nature of settlement and economic development of individual areas continued to affect, for example, the location, size and layout of many settlements. The form of rural settlements was also influenced by government measures aimed at streamlining development and redevelopment of villages, undertaken many times since the 18th century. As a result, the correct quarterly layout became widespread. But most villages, especially old ones, continued to largely retain their former appearance. The most common among the Eastern Slavs are multi-yard (or group) type settlements. For Russians this is a village and a village. In the 19th century they differed little from each other, but historically they developed differently. The oldest name for a rural settlement - selo (from “to settle”, “to settle”) once meant not only the settlement, but also the lands belonging to it. The village presumably appeared later (around the 14th century). This term itself is associated with the word “tear”, “rip out”, which meant clearing forest land for arable land. The village was the most common type of rural settlement among Russians. Villages among villages, as a rule, stood out large sizes, often by the presence of a church and its administrative or administrative functions.
The Russians also had other types of rural settlements. For large villages in former Cossack territories (for example, on the Don, Kuban, Terek) the name stanitsa was used; in the north and northeast, the ancient name pogost was still used in everyday life, denoting in the past the administrative and cultural center of a group of villages. Repairs and loans appeared in the northern forest belt and in Siberia in connection with the initial development of free lands. Settlement settlements are also known - relatively new formations near a settlement, usually located on its land. In the northwestern part of European Russia there were many farm-type settlements. Farms, like villages, were characteristic of Cossack regions. The spread of farmsteads on “cuts” allocated from communal lands was the result of land reforms at the beginning of the 20th century (Stolypin reforms).
In many northern and central Russian villages, barns, barns, and grain barns were removed separately from houses to free space (for fire-fighting purposes); the baths were closer to the water. In the open space behind the village there was a windmill, which was used by the entire population. Water mills were usually built outside the village. Public buildings, such as a bakery store, dairy, and shops, were rarely separated from peasant buildings. Only in large villages was there a public center - usually near the church, where the volost government, school, shops, and houses of wealthy villagers were located.
In recent decades, Russians have developed an essentially new type of rural settlement. Its main difference is the division of rural settlements into residential and industrial parts. The growth of such centers at the expense of small villages was the main direction of their development, which negatively affected the life of the rural population.
Russian urban settlements differed from each other specific features, determined by their history, economic, geographical and cultural characteristics. Most of the cities were old and retained traces of a distinctive layout - most with a fortified center and streets radiating from it, which were intersected by other streets. Newer cities were planned as neighborhood settlements, while cities that grew out of industrial villages largely continued to retain the features of rural settlements.
Housing
Characteristic of Russian housing was the widespread use of wood as a building material and the log-frame construction of houses. Only in the south did the Russians, who lived in steppe, treeless areas, like the southern Ukrainians, build houses from other materials: burnt and adobe brick, clay lumps (“rolls”), light wooden structures on a pillar base with the addition of wattle, reeds, straw (turluchnye houses), stone. The development of commodity-money relations contributed to the spread of brick construction in other areas, especially industrial ones, but it did not become widespread by the beginning of the 20th century, even in cities.
The traditional housing of the Russian North developed in a harsh climate, long and snowy winters, and an abundance of forests. The most typical for him were large log buildings, which, if possible, combined residential and utility premises under one roof. Gable roofs predominated; hipped roofs (“kostroma”), more common in cities, were less common. They were covered mainly with wood (timber, shingles, and less often straw). Distinctive feature architectural appearance of a traditional Northern Russian dwelling of the 19th - early 20th centuries. is the abundance of carvings, flat geometric (with low relief) and slotted. The hut was heated by a Russian stove, which occupied the left or right corner at the entrance and had its mouth facing the opposite (front) wall. This layout is known as Northern Central Russian.
The Central Russian dwelling is characterized by smaller size and a lower basement compared to the northern one. The courtyard was closely adjacent to the house and communicated with the hut through a vestibule, but did not form a single whole with it: it was relatively low and was placed under a separate roof. The roofs were gable or hipped, wooden or thatched. Among wealthy peasants, as in cities, houses were built under iron roofs. The facades of houses were decorated with carvings.
South Russian traditional housing has long been developed as a ground dwelling and in the second half of the 19th century there was still no basement with a wooden, often adobe, floor. The dominant form of roof was a hipped thatched roof. The outside of houses in the southwestern regions, parts of the Kursk and Oryol provinces, was coated with clay and whitewashed. Along with log houses, there were brick, adobe, and turluch dwellings, especially in the steppe regions.
On the territory of the Cossack regions of the Don, Kuban, Terek, and Lower Volga, traditions were traced of both a low underground two- and three-chamber dwelling under a hipped roof, and a more extensive and tall house, cut from plates or beams, of an oblong or almost square shape (“round”) with several interconnecting rooms and a gallery outside. On interior decoration The dwellings of the Terek Cossacks were influenced by their long-term relationship with the Caucasian peoples. An open courtyard was common throughout this area, most often with unconnected outbuildings. A characteristic feature of the southern estate was the presence of a summer stove, which was placed in the yard, and more often in the garden.
In most of the territory of Siberia, in the forest and forest-steppe parts, dwellings similar to those of northern and central Russia dominated. In the treeless areas of Altai, houses with low basements and without them, with wooden or adobe floors, predominated. Here houses were built not so much from wood, but from a clay-straw mixture and turf. In the tundra, houses were built from logs, but to preserve heat they were made smaller, with small windows and low doors, and somewhat deeper into the ground.
All variants of Russian traditional housing were characterized by a single principle of internal organization and functional distribution. The main thing was the position of the stove. The corner diagonally from it was considered “red”, the most honorable. Icons hung here and there was a table at which the family ate food. The place near the stove was intended for cooking; at the front door, on a konik (fixed bench), men sat with their work (saddlery, weaving bast shoes); at the windows, near the table, a weaving mill was placed for the winter; Here they spun on a bench located along the wall. They slept on the floors (a boardwalk under the ceiling between the stove and the opposite wall), on a golbtse or karzhin (a boardwalk near the stove, with a hole in the underground).
The modern home of Russians has changed a lot compared to the past. However, ethnic characteristics folk architecture are preserved (especially in villages and in individual residential buildings in cities) in the material, in the features of design solutions, in height, in the nature of the decor, in some features of the interior layout, and room decoration.
Cloth
In the XIX - early XX centuries. Russian clothing was very heterogeneous. From the beginning of the 18th century, under the influence of the reforms of Peter I, the costume of the nobility deviated greatly from folk traditions and was made mainly according to Western European models. The upper and middle strata of the townspeople tried to imitate the nobility in their clothing, as in all their everyday life, to the best of their ability. In provincial cities, many men and women from the merchant community wore old Russian clothes back in the mid-19th century. A special commitment to old clothing patterns was observed among the Old Believer population. Generally traditional features Russian national costume were relatively stable even by the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries. were clearly visible in many local variants. The process of leveling and developing national uniforms affected men's clothing earlier and to a greater extent. Among Russians, men almost universally wore straight, tunic-like, and then cut-out shirts (with or without a collar), with a slit collar on the side (usually on the left), extended over narrow pants (ports) and belted with a belt. The peasants had shirts and trousers as both underwear and weekend wear. The division of clothing into underwear and outerwear began to develop only at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries.
Various caftans with wedges on the sides, wrapped deep on the left side (“sermyags”, “zipuns”) were known as outerwear. They were sewn from coarse homespun cloth, but with the spread of industrial goods - also from factory fabrics, slightly changing the cut and finishing. At the end of the 19th century, the caftan-like jacket with gatherings at the back became widespread among wealthy peasants and merchants. A type of homemade cloth clothing was common in the village - a long, straight-backed robe that widened at the bottom (Armyak, Azam). In winter they wore sheepskin coats, sheepskin coats and long sheepskin coats, belted with bright sashes. The outer clothing of the Cossacks developed under the strong influence of the clothing of neighboring peoples (Circassian, burka, beshmet).
The most common hats were felted wool. The most common was the tall, almost cylindrical brown “sinner” hat, made by artisans. In winter they wore sheepskin hats of various styles (triukhas, malakhais, kubankas, papakhas). Among the Cossacks, fur hats served as headwear in summer and winter. At the end of the 19th century, cloth caps with a visor became widespread.
The most common type of women's and men's shoes were bast bast shoes and, to a lesser extent, primitive pistons (or morshas) made of 1-2 pieces of rawhide. These shoes are considered specifically peasant shoes. Cossack regions and Siberia did not know bast shoes. They wore bast shoes with cloth or canvas onuchs and tied them to their feet with woven braid or rope frills. Boots were the peasants' holiday footwear. Women wore so-called cats in the form of heavy leather galoshes. Felt boots made of sheep's wool served as winter footwear.
Women's traditional clothes retained local characteristics much longer. The main differences were in the features of the Northern Russian and Southern Russian costume. The main part of the women's costume was a long shirt made of white canvas, the sleeves of which had special inserts on the shoulders (polki), and the collar was assembled. Over the shirt in the north they wore a sundress (a long shoulder-length sleeveless garment), which was belted with a woven belt. With a sundress, married women wore various kokoshniks on holidays, and crowns - solid headdresses, richly decorated with embroidery, brocade, and pearls. Women's costume with a sundress and kokoshnik or kika in the 16th-17th centuries. was also used by nobles. On weekdays, they wore a warrior (a small cap with ties) and a scarf on their heads.
The South Russian women's costume consisted of a long canvas shirt with slanted or straight flaps, belted with a woven belt, and a poneva made of checkered woolen fabric, usually made by the peasants themselves. In front, over the shirt and poneva, they put on an apron - an apron. Married women wore a complex, so-called kitty-shaped headdress (magpie), which consisted of several parts and often had the shape of horns.
Food and utensils. Food of Russians in the 19th - early 20th centuries. continued to steadfastly preserve traditional features. The leading place in food was occupied by bread, flour and cereal dishes. Large round bread made from sour dough and baked in a Russian oven on a hearth, less often in metal (round and rectangular) forms. Black bread made from rye flour predominated. In addition to sour dough bread, they baked pies with various fillings, flatbreads, pancakes, and pancakes. Pancakes were especially important to the Russians. In everyday life they often replaced bread. Oatmeal was also used, which was diluted with water, kvass or milk. Traditional dishes also included jelly made from fermented flour sludge - oatmeal or rye; They also made unleavened pea jelly.
Liquid dishes - stews - were cooked from cereals. In the north and especially in the Urals, “thick cabbage soup” made from barley with flour dressing was common, in the south - millet kulesh. In the southern part of Siberia and Central Asia, rice spread among Russians from the local population, which at the end of the 19th century began to penetrate into the diet of wide sections of the population in other regions of Russia. We ate porridge almost every day.
The range of vegetables consumed, as well as the gardening itself that supplied them, had zonal characteristics. Among vegetables, they ate especially a lot of cabbage - fresh, and for most of the year - pickled cabbage, which was prepared in large quantities in the fall. Cabbage soup was made from cabbage. In the north, for a long time, the most important component of the traditional diet, especially among peasants, was turnips, as well as rutabaga. But gradually turnips were replaced by potatoes.
Agriculture also provided such an important product as vegetable (“vegetable”) oil. In the northern and middle lanes In Russia it was predominantly linseed oil, in the south - hemp oil, and later - sunflower oil, which mid-19th centuries quickly replaced other types of vegetable oil. The meat was eaten fresh (in Siberia also frozen), but most of the year it was salted (corned beef). Fish replaced meat during fasting, as it was considered semi-fast.
Traditional drinks included bread kvass and beer. Kvass was also made from beets, especially sugar beets (in the south), and from pears. A hot (sbiten) drink with spices was prepared from honey, which was sold on the streets in cities and at rural fairs. In some places they brewed light beer with honey - mead. On festive table Alcoholic drinks were served: vodka, as well as a variety of liqueurs and liqueurs. In the 19th century, tea came into use among Russians. We drank tea with sugar, or more with a bite, with honey, jam.
Family and family rituals. The Russian family system is characterized by the long-term preservation of large-family patriarchal traditions. A large or undivided family among Russians united several married couples. Russians kept this form of family in their everyday life until the 20th century. The main form of family was the small family, which was predominant among Russians by the 19th century.
Of the family rituals, wedding rituals have received the greatest development among Russians. When entering into a marriage, as a rule, a wedding ceremony was obligatory, formalizing the marriage officially (“legal marriage”). The exception was the so-called step marriages, most often among the Old Believers-bespopovtsy and some sectarians.
One of the characteristic features was the participation in the wedding of a wide circle of relatives, neighbors, and fellow villagers. In recent years, the rite of church weddings has become more often performed, which during the years of Soviet power gradually almost completely dropped out of the wedding rite.
Public life. Community traditions continued to be preserved in everyday life even when the community, under the influence of socio-economic differentiation, gradually lost its unity. The legislative role in public life was played by the gathering - a meeting of heads of families that decided the most important matters. Here decisions were made regarding land management, distribution of land, payment of taxes, distribution of duties, collection of funds for worldly affairs, promotion of recruits to the army, elections to public positions, etc. The most common type of traditional collective work was pomochi - labor neighborly assistance. Other joint work was carried out with the participation of young people: processing flax, cutting cabbage for the winter, etc.
The social life of the village and city was greatly influenced by the church, for the vast majority of the population - Orthodox. Religious and everyday regulations, which concerned the most diverse aspects of life, were a kind of law of public and personal behavior of people. The fulfillment of religious instructions in home life was determined not only by the feeling of the believer (“fear of God”), but also by the control of the family, especially the older generation, who monitored the observance of the proper attitude towards icons, fasts, prayers, etc.
Social life associated with folk calendar rituals manifested itself mainly in joint festivities and festive entertainment. The Christmas and New Year cycle of rituals associated with the winter solstice was called Christmastide. Young people in a cheerful crowd went around the houses wishing the owners every kind of well-being and received rewards for this, most of all food supplies. The first holiday of the spring cycle was Maslenitsa - the week before the long fast that preceded Easter. The Maslenitsa celebration was generally riotous in nature and retained elements of very ancient rituals associated in the past with the cult of fertility and the cult of ancestors. After Maslenitsa social life froze and revived again since Easter. Young people spent Easter week on the street. The most typical were mass games with a pronounced sports element (small towns, lapta). Swings were widely used. Women and children loved playing with colored eggs. In some places, round dances were still held at the end of the 19th century.
The spring cycle of rituals and holidays ended with Trinity (the 50th day from Easter), which also marked the transition to summer. Of all the Eastern Slavs, Trinity ritual and festivity were most developed among the Russians. On Trinity Sunday we walked in the meadows and forests. Churches and houses were decorated with young vegetation and birch trees. The main performers of ritual actions were girls and women.
The summer Kupala ritual was not so expressive among the Russians. It consisted of youth celebrations with the lighting of bonfires and games of dousing with water. Healing herbs were collected at Kupala.
Summer holidays and youth celebrations ended on Peter's Day (June 29, old style). On the night before the holiday, young people walked until dawn - “greeted the sun.” It was customary to collect everything that was not tidied up and play mischief. Many people made noise, sang, beat on the stove dampers, etc.
Folklore. An ancient, gradually fading type of folk poetry among the Russians was ritual folklore, accompanying family and calendar rituals. The basis of ritual folklore was songs. Among the wedding songs, there were majestic, comic-correcting, metaphorical-descriptive, etc. Calendar songs were closely related to rituals. Ritual folklore included conspiracies that were used for a variety of reasons.
The archaic genres of folklore included heroic epic, which the Russians retained in living use until the 20th century. The specifically Russian form of the historical-epic genre was epics. The favorite epic hero was the hero Ilya Muromets, to whom many feats were attributed, as well as Dobrynya Nikitich, Alyosha Popovich, Vasily Buslaev.
From the second half of the 16th century, Russian historical songs, which depicted specific historical events of the 16th-19th centuries, became widely developed. The most specific Russian stories are found mainly in everyday, satirical and anecdotal tales. Fairy tales occupied a particularly important place in family life. Works of non-fairy tale folklore prose - legends and tales in which the memory of real events was intertwined with fairy-tale plots - were widespread. Early East Slavic legends influenced Old Russian chronicle(“The Tale of Bygone Years”) and further reflected the struggle with the Mongol-Tatars (“Mamai”) and other external enemies. There were legends about Ivan the Terrible and about Peter I, about S. T. Razin and about E. I. Pugachev, about the Cossack general Platov. Memories of ancient pre-Christian beliefs contained mythological tales - stories about brownies, goblins, water creatures, and so on. Various aspects of folk life were covered in proverbs, sayings, riddles - these genres have been preserved to this day.
In the 19th century, folk theater became widespread. Of the dramatic performances, the most famous were “Tsar Maximilian” and “The Boat”; my favorite puppet show was “Petrushka”.
A massive folklore genre that embraced all aspects of the life of the Russian people was the lyrical non-ritual song. There are different types of songs: love songs, women's songs, lullabies, valiant songs, coachman songs, burlatsky songs, soldiers' songs, comic songs, play songs, etc. With the development of literature and the spread of literacy among the people, songs based on the words of Russian poets appear in the repertoire; many of these songs have become truly folk (for example, “Korobushka” by N. A. Nekrasov, “Stenka Razin” by A. A. Navrotsky). Close to the song are ditties. A significant achievement of Russian folk musical culture is choral polyphony. The most archaic wind instrument is considered to be the kuvikly, a type of Pan flute. In the 19th century, in some places in the north they still continued to play the ancient harp (plucked), beeps and violins (bowed), and balalaikas, improved at the end of the 19th century. From percussion instruments There were also rattles and tambourines, and “playing” on wooden spoons was common. Since the middle of the 19th century, the accordion has taken first place in the musical life of towns and villages. By the end of the 19th century, the guitar gained recognition among young people in the city as an instrument accompanying the performance of romances.
Round dances were an ancient traditional form of Russian dance art. They served as the basis for the development of diverse Russian everyday dance. Thematic dance has also received great development among the Russians. The system of Russian folklore in its entirety existed until the 20-30s of the 20th century. Currently, certain types of folklore are still widespread among the Russian population, both rural and urban.
Decorative and applied arts. The development of artistic weaving, embroidery, and lace weaving were associated with the decoration of clothes, towels, and bed linen; wood carving - with decoration of homes, utensils and tools (wooden utensils, spinning wheels, etc.), with toys; ceramics - also with dishes, toys; painting - with interior decoration (stoves, benches), spinning wheels, toys. Traditional ornamentation included a variety of geometric (mainly in the southern regions) and plant motifs, as well as images of birds, animals and, later, everyday scenes.
The best traditions of folk art are developing in modern artistic crafts: ceramic production (Gzhel, Skopin, etc.), bone carving (Arkhangelsk region, etc.), Bogorodsk wood carving, silver engraving (Veliky Ustyug, Solvychegodsk), enamel (Rostov ), wood painting (Khokhloma), metal painting. trays (Zhostovo), lacquer miniature(Palekh, Mstera, Fedoskino).
Russian nation
Today, in some media, on forums and other Internet resources, the myth is being discussed that Russians, as a nation, as a people, do not exist. They say that throughout their history, Russians have mixed with everyone before creating a kind of motley mass consisting of representatives of various ethnic groups. The situation is presented in such a way that there are “normal” people living around us, purebred peoples, and we, Russians, are like a patchwork quilt, sewn from many colorful scraps. Supporters of the “anti-Russian theory” (let’s call them that) interpret in a very cunning way the fact and consequences of the formation Russian people on the territory of today's central Russia: they say, if the Russian people were formed on the basis of the East Slavic, Baltic and Finno-Ugric tribes, and besides, for 300 years they were under the yoke of the Tatar-Mongol yoke, then today they consist of the Balts, Finno-Ugric peoples , Tatars, Mongols and other ethnic groups...
To be fair, not all people distort facts due to their ignorance. Most (let's call them that again) supporters of the “anti-Russian theory” do this deliberately. For what? Who can tell them apart... Some are out of envy; others out of hatred; someone is following political goals; someone is just promoting themselves. As they say - and they would have a flag in their hands, but the trouble is - people who have never seriously thought about this issue may well believe in the myth that the Russian people do not exist.
Russian people under scrutiny
In order to understand the issue of “the existence of the Russian nation,” it is enough to turn to freely available sources. In fact, we are now just retelling what was previously published in print or electronic form. Scientists - historians, ethnographers, geneticists - give us an unequivocal answer - there IS a Russian nation. We invite you to pay attention to two very interesting sources: the first is the book “” (authors: Doctor of Biological Sciences Elena Balanovskaya and Candidate of Biological Sciences Oleg Balanovsky), the second is the project of the Laboratory of Population Genetics of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences “”. As part of the large-scale international project “Genography” (The Genographic project), Russian scientists, the authors of the sources mentioned above, conducted a comprehensive study of the Russian gene pool, the results of which clearly indicate its originality, its own history and the almost complete absence of the contribution of the Mongoloid population. Frankly speaking, it never occurred to sensible people that it was necessary to prove the fact of the existence of the Russian people. Evidence is needed by those who mislead people and those who believe false arguments.
How nations were formed
Of course, there cannot be “genetically pure” peoples in nature; there are no Slavic, Tatar or French genes, because the genes are older than the Tatars, Slavs or French. We all have the genes of the first settlers from the African continent, who left Africa about 80,000 years ago. Just about 40-45 thousand years ago, there were no people of a modern anatomical type in Europe at all; only Neanderthals lived there. The formation of the peoples inhabiting Eurasia today occurred much later. All peoples on Earth, including the Russians, were once formed on one territory or another, under the influence of many different factors: for example, they assimilated smaller ethnic groups or, conversely, became part of another people. Let us remember how the modern Russian population was formed: Slavic tribes moved east over several centuries, colonizing the East European Plain and assimilating local Finno-Ugric tribes. As a result, a number of characteristics have emerged that define Russians as a people, these are: common origin, common language, general culture, its own territory of residence, and, what is very important, the consciousness of its unity and difference from all other similar entities. Let's add to this the fact that more than half (as formally requires) of the marriages of the Russian population take place within their own ethnic population.
Russian gene pool on the Russian Plain
So, as long as marriages take place, then populations exist, and each group of people that enters into at least half of the marriages within the group can be called a population. And since populations exist, their gene pools also exist. Nations are also populations. And since these ethnic populations exist, then there are ethnic gene pools - including the Russian gene pool. It, just like all the others - Tatar, Mordovian, Ukrainian or French - really exists as one of many gene pools of small and large populations (from villages to humanity), and at the same time it is connected by thousands of living historical connections with other gene pools. Concern for the “purity” of the Russian gene pool would doom it to extinction. But caring about its merging with all gene pools would doom it to extinction.
Thus, in defense of the fact of the existence of the Russian people, the following come out:
- The centuries-old history of the Russian people
- Russian language
- Russian culture
- Territory of residence of the Russian people
- Self-awareness of the Russian people
- Russian gene pool
The Tatar-Mongol conquest left no trace in the Russian gene pool
Contrary to the common and popular opinion among supporters of the “anti-Russian theory” about significant Asian “admixture,” the Tatar-Mongol conquest did not leave a mark on the Russian gene pool. This was clearly confirmed within the framework of the Genography project.
E.V. Balanovskaya, O.P. Balanovsky. Russian gene pool on the Russian Plain
The share of East Eurasian haplogroups in the Russian population was only 2 percent. That is, a very small amount. Almost as small as in the gene pool of the Poles (1.5) or northern Europe, where there were certainly no “Tatar-Mongol contributions” (Norwegians 0.6, Icelanders 0.7, Karelians 4.8, and so on). The average "background" frequency of East Eurasian haplogroups in Europe is 3.6 percent. That is, in the Russian gene pool it is even less than the “European average”, so the Mongoloid component among Russians turns out to be not just zero, but even with a negative sign. So, we do not see the consequences of the Mongol invasion in the Russian gene pool - or then we should see these consequences in the Polish, and Norwegian, and Karelian, and in other gene pools of Europe.
Whatever sign we take, we see that Russians are typical Europeans, and the Asian conquest left a mark on Russian history, but not on the Russian gene pool. The opinion about the intermediate nature of the Russian gene pool is widespread - but there is no serious scientific evidence for it. Only serious scientific refutations. Biologically (genetically) the Russian gene pool is not intermediate between the typical European and typical Asian gene pools. The Russian gene pool is a typical European gene pool.
The basic, main conclusion that follows from the study of the Russian gene pool is the almost complete absence of Mongoloid contribution to it. Even when examining exceptions, one should never forget this rule.
There is no need to doubt the results of genetic research; they are supported by data from related sciences. Anthropologists, linguists and ethnographers have collected information about almost all the peoples of the world. Huge amounts of information have been accumulated about the physical appearance of the Russian population (the science of somatology deals with this) and about skin patterns on the fingers and palms (dermatoglyphics, which reveals differences among different peoples). Linguistics has long been studying data on the geography of Russian dialects and the distribution of thousands of Russian surnames (anthroponymy). One can list many examples of coincidences between the results of modern genetic research and classical research by anthropologists, but there are not a single insurmountable contradiction.
As a conclusion
The conclusion is clear - Russian people exist. In our spirit, in our blood, we carry the sacred heritage of our fathers and grandfathers. We don’t remember them all, going back in an endless chain of generations into the depths of centuries. But they all live in us thanks to our blood, our spirit. It is in this sense that our blood is sacred to us. Together with it, our parents give us not only flesh, but also our unique consciousness.
Tags: Russian nation, Russian people, Russian people, Russian ethnicity, Russia, Great Russia
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The majority of the population is, of course, Russian – more than 80%. The remaining percentage is made up of Tatars (3.8%), Ukrainians - 3%, Chuvash - 1.2%, Belarusians - 0.8%, Mordovians - 0.7%, Germans and Chechens - 0.6% each, Avars, Armenians, Jews – 0.4% each, etc.
Tatars are the second largest people in Russia, living in the Volga region. Together with the Bashkirs, the Tatars constitute the largest group of Muslim peoples, located almost in the center of Russia. The Chuvash are another Turkic people, numbering about two million people. Altaians, Khakassians, and Yakuts live in Siberia. The peoples of the Abkhaz-Adyghe group live in the Caucasus: Kabardians, Adygs and Circassians; Nekh-Dagestan group: Chechens, Ingush, Avars, Lezgins; Ossetians belonging to the Iranian group.
Finno-Ugric peoples also live in Russia - these include the Finns, Karelians, Sami and Komi in the north of European Russia, the Mari and Mordovians in the Volga region, the Khanty and Mansi, engaged in hunting and reindeer herding, in Western Siberia.
In the Far North live the Nenets who are engaged in reindeer herding.
Evenks live in Eastern Siberia. On the Chukotka Peninsula, the Chukchi are reindeer herders and fishermen. The Mongolian group includes the Buryats in Siberia and the Kalmyks in the Caspian Sea.
Every nation strives to preserve its language, customs and traditions, costume, traditional activities and crafts. Most of these peoples have retained their identity and traditional activities. The wealth of national cultures is the property of the entire country.
Traditions of the Russian people
Age-old traditions and customs of the Russian people
Russia is a truly unique country that, along with a highly developed modern culture, carefully preserves the traditions of its nation, deeply rooted not only in Orthodoxy, but even in paganism. Russians continue to celebrate pagan holidays and believe in numerous folk signs and legends.
Christianity gave Russians such wonderful holidays as Easter, Christmas and the rite of Epiphany, and paganism gave Maslenitsa and Ivan Kupala.
Easter is a bright holiday of the resurrection of Christ. This holiday came to Rus' from Byzantium along with baptism at the end of the 10th century. Since then, this Christian holiday has been widely, beautifully and solemnly celebrated throughout Russia.
Christmas
Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, the savior of the world, with whose coming people found hope for mercy, kindness, truth and eternal life. The Orthodox Church celebrates the Nativity of Christ on Julian calendar January 7, unlike Western churches that celebrate it on December 25 according to the Gregorian calendar
Russian Federation belongs to the number of multinational states of the world.
The list of nationalities includes more than 160 ethnic groups.
All peoples inhabiting the Russian Federation belong to nine language families: Indo-European, Kartvelian, Ural-Yukaghir, Altai, Eskimo-Aleutian, North Caucasian, Yenisei, Sino-Tibetan, Chukchi-Kamchatka.
In addition, one people (Nivkhs) occupies an isolated position linguistically.
The vast majority of ethnic groups in Russia, totaling 122.9 million people. (84.7% of the country's population), belongs to the Indo-European peoples.
The Indo-European family is divided into several groups, of which the following are represented in Russia: Slavic, Baltic, Germanic, Romanesque, Greek, Armenian, Iranian and Indo-Aryan.
The largest of these groups is Slavic (119.7 million people - 82.5% of the total). This includes, first of all, the main people of the country - Russians, who, according to the 2002 census, number 115.9 million people, accounting for 79.8% of the total population of Russia. Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles, Bulgarians, and representatives of some other peoples living in Russia are also Slavs. Russians sharply predominate in the vast majority of subjects of the Russian Federation. Of all the subjects of the Russian Federation, the proportion of Russians is lowest in the Republic of Dagestan, and after the well-known military events it probably became even lower in the Chechen Republic.
Such a large and widely dispersed people as the Russians, despite their significant monolithic nature, naturally includes subethnic groups of different hierarchical levels. First of all, there are northern and southern Great Russians, who differ significantly from each other in dialect and individual elements of material and spiritual culture. However common features There are much more than differences in the culture of different groups of the Russian people. The unity of Russians is also emphasized by the fact that, along with the northern and southern Great Russians, there is a transitional Central Russian group, whose culture and language combine both northern and southern elements.
The area of settlement of the northern Great Russians extends from the Gulf of Finland to the Urals and more eastern regions, covering the Arkhangelsk, Murmansk, Vologda, Leningrad, Novgorod, Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Ivanovo regions, northeast of the Tver region, northern and central parts of the Nizhny Novgorod region, Kirov region, Perm region, Sverdlovsk, Orenburg, Ulyanovsk regions, the eastern part of the Saratov region, the Astrakhan region, as well as the Republic, the Komi Republic, the Udmurt Republic, the Mari El Republic, the Chuvash Republic - Chuvashia, the Republic of Tatarstan (Tatarstan), the Republic of Bashkortostan (along with the indigenous population of these republics).
Among the Northern Great Russians there are a number of ethnographic groups lower hierarchical level. These are, first of all, the Pomors, as well as the Mezentsy, Pustozers and Ust-Tsilema, who are close to them in origin and culture. Somewhat separate groups of northern Great Russians are also the Kargopols, Zaonezhans, Ilmen Poozers, Poshekhons, and Kerzhaks.
The habitat of the Central Russian group is located mainly in the interfluve of the Volga and Oka rivers. This group includes the Tudov people, living in the Tver region along the Tud River (a tributary of the Volga River) and representing Russified Belarusians by origin, and the Russian Meshchera, settled in the north of the Ryazan region and in a number of other areas and, possibly, genetically related to those noted in chronicles of the Finnish-speaking Meshchera.
A special position is occupied by the transitional group, living in the Pskov and Smolensk regions and neighboring areas of the Tver and Kaluga regions and possessing a number of linguistic and cultural features that bring them closer to the Belarusians. This especially applies to the population of the Smolensk region, whose spoken language is closer to the language than to Russian (although the ethnic identity of the group is undoubtedly Russian).
Southern Great Russians are settled in the southern zone of Russia, from the Desna River basin in the west to the headwaters of the Khoper and Medveditsa rivers in the east, from the middle reaches of the Oka River in the north to the Main Caucasus Range in the south.
Of the ethnographic groups of the southern Great Russians, the Polehs live on the territory of the European part of Russia, who are considered the descendants of the ancient population of Rus', who never left with other southern Russian groups to the north from the attack of nomads; Besides them, the Sayans and Tsukans stand out as somewhat separate groups.
The Russian population of Siberia and the Far East was formed as a result of resettlement from various regions of Russia, and the share of these regions in different historical periods was unequal. The Siberian old-timer population is represented mainly by northern Great Russians of the 16th-18th centuries, “new settlers”, or, as the old-timers call them, “Russian”, come mainly from the southern provinces of Russia (second half of the 19th century).
Among the old-timer population, several very specific groups stand out, many of which, in terms of economic activities, culture and language, are strongly separated from the main part of the Russian population. These are the so-called Ob old-timers, Selduks and Goryuns, tundra peasants who have mastered the language, Russian-Ustinets or Indigirshchiks, Kolyma or Lower Kolyma people, Pokhod people or Middle Kolyma people who partially switched to the Yakut language, Markovites.
Resettlement of Russians
The Cossacks occupy a very special position among the subethnic groups of the Russian population. Possessing a number of common cultural and everyday features, they are nevertheless a single whole. Don Cossacks are settled in the Rostov and Volgograd regions, Kuban - in the Krasnodar Territory (they have a very significant component), Terek - in the Stavropol Territory, as well as in the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic, in the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, in the Chechen Republic and in Republic of Dagestan, Astrakhan - in the Astrakhan region, Orenburg - in the Orenburg, Chelyabinsk and Kurgan regions, Transbaikal (have a significant admixture) - in the Chita region and the Republic of Buryatia, Amur - in the Amur region and the Jewish Autonomous Region, Ussuri - in Primorsky and the territories. The Ural Cossacks living in Russia are concentrated in a number of southwestern regions of the Orenburg region, and the Siberian Cossacks are concentrated in some areas of the Omsk region.
Ukrainians (2.9 million people - 2% of the Russian population) form the highest share in the population of some northern regions of the Russian Federation: in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, the Magadan Region and the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug - Yugra. The share of Belarusians (there are 815 thousand people in the country as a whole, which is 0.6% of the population) is relatively high in the Kaliningrad region and the Republic of Karelia. (73 thousand people) are dispersed throughout Russia, forming significant groups in the cities of St. Petersburg and Moscow; In the Omsk region there is a small rural enclave where the Polish population predominates. Bulgarians and Czechs are also widely dispersed.
Among the peoples of the Romanesque group, Moldovans (172 thousand people - 0.1% of the country's population), Romanians, Spaniards and Cubans (6 thousand people, 2 thousand people and 1.6 thousand people, respectively) live in Russia. , dispersedly distributed throughout the country.
The Greek group includes only Greeks (98 thousand people), mainly concentrated in the Krasnodar and Stavropol territories.
The Armenian group is also represented by one ethnic group - the Armenians (1.1 million people - 0.8% of the Russian population). Armenians are widely settled throughout the country, but most of them live in the south of European Russia. A significant group of Armenians lives in Moscow.
The Baltic group is represented by a relatively small number of Latvians (45 thousand people and 29 thousand people, respectively), settled in a number of regions of the country. With a fairly dispersed distribution, they form small compact tracts in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. A significant number of Latvians, in addition, live in the Omsk region, Lithuanians - in the Kaliningrad region. and Lithuanians also live in the cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Among the Latvians there are representatives of the Latgalian ethnic group (mostly Catholics), who were previously considered a separate people.
The German group includes primarily Germans (597 thousand people - 0.4% of the Russian population). They are dispersed throughout the country, but their main area of residence is the south of Western and Central Siberia. Russian Germans are heterogeneous: among them, in terms of language and some cultural features, the descendants of immigrants from the South and North are primarily distinguished, and among the latter, Mennonites form a special ethnographic group.
Conventionally, Jews can be included in the German group (230 thousand people - 0.2% of the Russian population). The vast majority of Russian Jews are former Yiddish speakers, but among them there are also a small number of Sephardim, integrated into the Ashkenazi community. Among Jews in cities, mainly large ones, their largest groups are concentrated in Moscow, Samara, Chelyabinsk, Rostov-on-Don, Saratov, .
The Iranian group primarily includes Ossetians (515 thousand people - 0.4% of the Russian population) and Mountain Jews (3 thousand people). mainly concentrated in the Republic of North Ossetia–Alania; They are also found in neighboring areas. Mountain Jews live mainly in the Republic of Dagestan and the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic. Iranian-speaking people are dispersed in Russia.
The Indo-Aryan group is represented in Russia primarily (183 thousand people - 0.1% of the Russian population). Gypsies are widely distributed throughout the country and are found in almost all regions of the Russian Federation. However, partially preserving the traditions of nomadic life, they gravitate more towards the southern, “warm” regions. The most significant groups of gypsies form in the Krasnodar and Stavropol territories, as well as in the Rostov region.
The Kartvelian family includes Georgians (198 thousand people - 0.1% of the country's population). They do not form significant groups anywhere in the country. The highest proportion of Georgians in the population of a number of regions of the North Caucasus (Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, Krasnodar Territory, Stavropol Territory), as well as in Moscow; but even in these places there are few of them. Among the Georgians in Russia there are Mingrelians (and a small number of Svans) and Jews (1.2 thousand people).
The Ural-Yukaghir family is quite widely represented in Russia, although it is very much inferior to the Indo-European family in terms of its numbers. 2.8 million people belong to it. - 1.9% of the Russian population. The Ural-Yukaghir family is divided into three groups: Finnish-Ugric (most of the peoples of this family belong to it), Samoyed and Yukaghir.
The Finno-Ugric group includes Karelians (125 thousand people - 0.1%), Izhorians (0.4 thousand people), Finns (overwhelmingly Ingrian - 47 thousand people), Estonians (46 thousand people). people), (probably 0.2 thousand people), Vepsians (12 thousand people), Sami, or Lapps (2 thousand people), Mordovians (935 thousand people - 0.6%) , (595 thousand people - 0.4%), Udmurts (713 thousand people - 0.5%), Besermyans (10 thousand people), Komi (358 thousand people - 0.2%) , Komi-Permyaks (141 thousand people - 0.1%), (22 thousand people), (8 thousand people) and Hungarians (6 thousand people).
Karelians are concentrated primarily in the Republic of Karelia, but they constitute a minority of the population there. The second important place of residence of Karelians is the Tver region, where Karelians occupy a fairly compact area. Karelians also live in the Murmansk and Leningrad regions and the city of St. Petersburg. The closely related small people of Izhora are mainly concentrated in the Leningrad region. Finns live mainly in the Republic of Karelia, the Leningrad region and the city of St. Petersburg. dispersed throughout the country. The most significant groups of them are found in the Krasnoyarsk Territory and the city of St. Petersburg. Quickly assimilated by the surrounding Russian population, the small Vod ethnic group (the vast majority of whom do not know their native language and speak only Russian) lives in several villages in the Leningrad region. Veps are concentrated mainly in the Republic of Karelia, Leningrad and Vologda regions. The Sami are represented in Russia by a small group, the vast majority of whom are concentrated in the Murmansk region. The largest people of the Ural-Yukaghir family in Russia are the Mordovians. ranks eighth in number among the peoples of the Russian Federation. The people are dispersed very dispersedly, and about a third of all Mordovians live in the Republic of Mordovia. There are significant groups of Mordovians in the Penza, Ulyanovsk, Samara, Orenburg and Nizhny Novgorod regions. In the Volga region, somewhat north of the Mordovians, live the Mari, whose settlement is also dispersed. Only half of all Mari in Russia live in the Republic of Mari El. The share of Mari in the population of the Republic of Bashkortostan, the Kirov region, the Sverdlovsk region and the Republic of Tatarstan (Tatarstan) is significant. The Udmurts living in the Urals are mainly concentrated in the Udmurt Republic, although they make up about a third of the population. Among other subjects of the Russian Federation in which Udmurts live, the Kirov region, Perm region, the Republic of Tatarstan (Tatarstan), the Republic of Bashkortostan and the Sverdlovsk region should be noted. In the northern part of the Udmurt Republic live a small people of Besermyans, assimilated linguistically (but not ethnically!) by the surrounding population. The Komi, or Komi-Zyryans, living in the north of the European part of Russia are overwhelmingly concentrated in their Komi Republic. Outside the republic, the most significant Komi groups in number are found in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug and in the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug - Yugra. Close to the Komi-Zyryans are the Komi-Permyaks, who are also mainly concentrated in the Perm region. The Khanty living in Western Siberia are mainly concentrated in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug - Yugra and the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. The overwhelming majority of Mansi settled to the southwest live in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug - Ugra.
Another significantly smaller group of the Ural-Yukaghir family is the Samoyed. It includes only four peoples: Nenets, Enets, Nganasans, Selkups. (41 thousand people), mainly concentrated in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug and in the north of the Krasnoyarsk Territory (former Taimyr (Dolgano-Nenets) Autonomous Okrug). In these regions they make up a small proportion of the population. The Enets are one of the smallest. According to the 2002 census, there were just over 300 people. The Nganasans are mainly concentrated in the north of the Krasnoyarsk Territory. The Selkups (4 thousand people) are predominantly settled in two rather distant places from each other: the northern (Taz) Selkups live in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, the southern (Tym, Naryn) Selkups live in the north of the Tomsk region.
The group unites two peoples: the Yukaghirs (about 2 thousand people) and the Chuvans (more than 1 thousand people). Most of the Yukaghirs are settled in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). A relatively small group of them lives in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug. The majority of Chuvans are concentrated in it. Everyone has lost their native language, close to Yukaghir, and now speaks either Russian (sedentary Chuvans living in the area of the village of Markovo) or Chukotka (nomadic Chuvans living in the upper reaches of the Anadyr River).
The Altai family is the second largest in Russia after the Indo-European, although almost ten times inferior to it. It includes 12.7 million of all residents of Russia (8.7% of the total population). It includes five groups, of which four are quite widely represented in our country: Turkic, Mongolian, Tungus-Manchu and Korean.
The largest of these groups is the Turkic one, which in the Russian Federation includes the following peoples: Chuvash (1.6 million people - 1.1% of the Russian population), Tatars including Siberian (5.3 million people - 3.6%) , Crimean Tatars who moved to Russia,
(6 thousand people), Kryashens (about 300 thousand people - 0.2%), Nagaibaks (10 thousand people), Bashkirs
(1.7 million people - 1.2%), Kazakhs (654 thousand people - 0.5%), (6 thousand people), Nogais (91 thousand people), Kumyks (423 thousand) people - 0.2%), Karachais (192 thousand people - 0.1%), (78 thousand people), Azerbaijanis (622 thousand people - 0.4%), Turkmens (33 thousand) people), (123 thousand people), or Altai-Kizhi (about 45 thousand people), Telengits (about 5 thousand people), (1.7 thousand people), Tubalars (1.6 thousand people), Kumandins (3 thousand people), Chelkans (0.9 thousand people), Chulyms (0.7 thousand people), Shors (14 thousand people), Khakassians (76 thousand . people), Tuvans (243 thousand people - about 0.2%), Tofalars (0.8 thousand people), Soyots (3 thousand people), Yakuts (444 thousand people - 0. 3%), Dolgans (7 thousand people).
The fifth largest population in the country - half concentrated in Chuvash Republic- Chuvashia, where he makes up the majority of the population. Significant groups of Chuvash live in the Ulyanovsk region, in the Republic of Tatarstan (Tatarstan), Samara region, in the Republic of Bashkortostan, in Tyumen, Orenburg and some other regions of the country.
The Tatars (the second largest people in Russia after the Russians) are quite widely dispersed throughout the country. In addition to their republic and nearby subjects - regions of their compact residence, many Tatars live in the Western Siberian regions (Tyumen, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Tomsk and Kemerovo). The high proportion of Tatars in the Tyumen region is due to the fact that Siberian Tatars live here, who are the indigenous inhabitants of these places and are recognized by some scientists as a separate ethnic group. Siberian Tatars differ from Kazan and other European Tatars in their dialect and anthropological type(they are more Mongoloid). The Siberian Tatars are very dispersedly settled and fall into a number of ethnographic groups: Tyumen-Turin, Tobolsk, Zabolotnaya (Yaskolbinsky), Tevriz (), Barabinsky, Tomsk, Chat, Kalmyk.
The Kryashens consider themselves a separate people. Two thirds of them are concentrated in the Republic of Tatarstan (Tatarstan) (mainly in its northern and eastern parts), one third - in other constituent entities of the Russian Federation: in the Republic of Bashkortostan, Altai and Krasnoyarsk territories, in the Republic of Mari El and the Udmurt Republic. Close to the Kryashens are the Nagaibaks, who live in two districts of the Chelyabinsk region.
The fourth largest people in the Russian Federation, they are settled, like many peoples in the Cis-Ural region, very dispersedly. More than two-thirds of all Bashkirs in Russia live in the Republic of Bashkortostan itself, but they constitute a minority of the population there.
Outside the Republic of Bashkortostan, the largest groups of representatives of the Bashkirs are in the Orenburg, Sverdlovsk, Kurgan, Chelyabinsk regions, in the Perm Territory and the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug - Yugra.
Kazakhs are concentrated primarily in the regions bordering: Astrakhan, Orenburg, Omsk, Saratov, Volgograd regions and in the Altai region.
They are predominantly concentrated in the Karachay-Cherkess Republic, the Republic of Dagestan and the Stavropol Territory. overwhelmingly concentrated in the Republic of Dagestan. , mainly live in the Karachay-Cherkess Republic, but they make up a relatively small part of the population there.
Balkars mainly (90%) live in the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic.
The Oghuz, or southwestern, subgroup of the Turkic group includes Azerbaijanis living in Russia, Meskhetian Turks (25 thousand people), Ottoman Turks (21.5 thousand people), Gagauz (10 thousand people) and Turkmen . Azerbaijanis are represented in almost all constituent entities of the Russian Federation, but they form a significant share of the population only in the Republic of Dagestan. , living in Russia, only in one place - the Stavropol Territory - form a noticeable “clump” of the population. The so-called Stavropol Turkmens, or Trukhmens, live there. Another Central Asian people, the Uzbeks, unlike the Turkmens, do not form a compact territorial mass anywhere and are extremely dispersedly settled.
Altaians (Altai-Kizhi) belong to the South Siberian subgroup of the Turkic group. Altaians are mainly concentrated in the Altai Republic. The Altaians were previously joined by five Turkic-speaking peoples: Telengits, Teleuts, Tubalars, Kumandins and Chelkans. This subgroup also includes Chulyms, Shors, Khakass, Tuvans and Tofalars.
Telengits live in the southeastern part of the Altai Republic, Teleuts - mainly in the Kemerovo region, Tubalars - in the northeast of the Altai Republic, Kumandins - in the southeast Altai Territory and the far north of the Altai Republic, the Chelkans are also in the far north of this republic. The Chulym people live in the Chulym River basin in the Tomsk region and in the southwest of the Krasnoyarsk Territory. The Shors are settled in the south of the Kemerovo region (Gornaya Shoria), as well as in Khakassia. The overwhelming majority (80%) are concentrated in the Republic of Khakassia, almost all Tuvans (96%) are in the Republic of Tyva. Among the Tuvans, a subethnic group (36 thousand people) stands out, settled in the northeast of the Republic of Tyva. The small Turkic-speaking Tofalary people, close to the Tuvinians-Todzha, are mainly concentrated in the Irkutsk region. In the Okinsky district of the Republic of Buryatia, adjacent to the Irkutsk region, there live the Soyota people, related to the Tofalars and not counted in the latest censuses. This people once spoke a language very close to Tofa-Lar, but now they have almost completely switched to the Buryat language.
One of the northernmost peoples - the Yakuts - is almost entirely concentrated on the territory of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), where the Yakuts make up a third of the population, greatly inferior in number to the Russians. The Dolgans are very close in language to the Yakuts, living mainly in the north of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, as well as in the adjacent regions of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia).
Another one, belonging to the Altai family - the Mongolian group - is represented in Russia mainly by two quite significant peoples: the Buryats (445 thousand people - 0.3% of the country's population) and (174 thousand people - 0.1% population of the country). Buryats are mainly concentrated in three constituent entities of the Russian Federation: the Republic of Buryatia, the Ust-Orda Buryat Autonomous Okrug and the Aginsky Buryat Autonomous Okrug. There are some differences in language and culture between the eastern, Trans-Baikal, Buryats and the western, Irkutsk. The vast majority of Kalmyks live in the Republic of Kalmykia. The group also includes a small group of Khalkha Mongols living in Russia (2 thousand people).
The third group of the Altai family - Tungus-Manchu - includes Evenks (35 thousand people), Negidals (0.8 thousand people), Evens (19 thousand people), Nanais (12 thousand people), Ulchi (3 thousand people), (ulta) (0.1 thousand people), Orochi (0.8 thousand people), Udege (1.7 thousand people) and, conditionally, Tazy (0. 3 thousand people). very dispersedly distributed. About half of their total number lives in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia); they are also found in the Khabaovsk Territory, in the north of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, in the Republic of Buryatia, the Irkutsk and Amur regions and some other places. The Negidals are concentrated in their majority in the valley of the Amgun River in the Khabarovsk Territory. Evenov lives most of all in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), there are also in the Magadan region, Khabarovsk Territory, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug. The Nanais are overwhelmingly concentrated along the Amur River and its tributaries in the Khabarovsk Territory. In the Khabarovsk Territory, the Ulchi are mainly settled; The Oroks mainly live in the Sakhalin region, the Orochi - in the Khabarovsk Territory, the Udege - in the Primorsky and Khabarovsk Territories. Conventionally, the Taz are assigned to the Tungus-Manchu group - a people of Nanai-Udege origin who switched to the Chinese language and borrowed many elements of Chinese culture. Now the basins are concentrated in the village of Mikhailovka, Primorsky Territory. Russian has become the main language of many Tajiks.
The Korean group includes only one people - Koreans (148 thousand people - 0.1% of the country's population), who are dispersed throughout Russia, but a significant group of them lives in the Sakhalin region, there are also in the Primorsky and Khabarovsk territories and the Rostov region.
The very small Eskimo-Aleut family (it includes 2.4 thousand people, that is, only 0.002% of the Russian population) unites two peoples: Eskimos and Aleuts. (1.8 thousand people) live mainly on the eastern coast of the peninsula and on the island, Aleuts (0.6 thousand people) live in the Kamchatka Territory, mainly on the Kamandor Islands.
The North Caucasian family (which includes 4.6 million people, that is, 3.2% of the population of Russia), as reflected in its name, unites peoples, the overwhelming majority settled in the North Caucasus. The family is divided into two groups: Abkhaz-Adyghe and Nakh-Dagestan.
The Abkhaz-Adyghe group includes four closely related Adyghe peoples, as well as the Abaza. Adyghe peoples (Dargins, Kubachi, Kaytag, Tabasaran, Lengiz, Agul, Rutul, Tsakhur.
The Yenisei family (1.9 thousand people - 0.001% of the population of Russia) is very small: in Russia its representatives are the Kets (1.8 thousand people) and the Yugs close to them (0.1 thousand people), from of which only 2-3 people remember their native language to some extent. Some scientists consider the Yugs to be an independent people, others believe that they are a subethnic group of Kets. Both Kets and Yugas are settled along the middle and lower reaches of the Yenisei River and its tributaries, mainly in the Krasnoyarsk Territory.
The Sino-Tibetan family (36 thousand people - 0.02% of the Russian population) is represented in Russia mainly by Chinese (according to the 2002 census, 35 thousand people, although in reality there are, apparently, much more) . There are Chinese in the Khabarovsk and Krasnoyarsk territories and the Irkutsk region. In general, the Chinese in Russia are characterized by dispersed settlement.
The small Chukotka-Kamchatka family (31 thousand people - 0.02% of the Russian population) includes the Chukchi, Koryaks and Alyutors, Kereks, Itelmens and, conditionally, . The most significant of the listed peoples - the Chukchi (16 thousand people) - are mainly settled in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, where they make up a relatively small part of the population. They also live in the north of the Kamchatka Territory (former Koryak Autonomous Okrug). are divided into two groups: Chauchu - reindeer and Ankalyn - coastal. together with the Alyutors, there were 9 thousand people according to the 2002 census. Among the Koryaks, the Nymylans (coastal) and the Chuvchuvens (reindeer) stand out. The Alyutor people live in the area of Cape Olyutorsky and in other areas in the north of the Kamchatka Territory. Kereks are one of the smallest peoples of the Russian Federation, there are only 22 people, of which only 3 speak Kerek. Another people of the Chukotka-Kamchatka family - the Itelmens (3 thousand people) - live in the north of the Kamchatka Territory and in the Magadan region. Conditionally, the Kamchadals (2 thousand people) can be classified as the Chukotka-Kamchatka family - a people of mixed Itelmen-Russian origin, speaking Russian, but retaining some elements of Itelmen culture. Most Kamchadals live in the Kamchatka Territory. In previous censuses they were included among the Russians.
The linguistically isolated Nivkh people (5 thousand people) are mainly settled within two constituent entities of the Russian Federation - in the Khabarovsk Territory and in the Sakhalin Region.
In Russia there are also representatives of two language families, but they are dispersed and do not form compact areas anywhere. These are the Assyrians (14 thousand people) and Arabs (11 thousand people) belonging to the Semitic family (25 thousand people - 0.02% of the country's population) and those belonging to the Austroasiatic family (26 thousand people - 0 .02% of the country's population) Vietnamese.
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According to the most conservative estimates, more than 192 peoples live on the territory of the Russian Federation, differing from each other in terms of culture, religion or history of development. It is noteworthy that they all ended up within the same state borders almost peacefully - as a result of the annexation of new territories.
Peculiarities of peoples' residence
For the first time, a list of peoples living on the territory of Russia was compiled in the middle of the 18th century in order to streamline the collection of taxes. The Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg seriously dealt with this issue, and during the 17th-19th centuries several dozen serious ethnographic studies on this topic were published, as well as many illustrated albums and atlases, which have become very valuable for modern scientists.
At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the country's population can be formally divided into 192 ethnic groups. There are only 7 nations with a population of over 1 million in Russia. These include:
- Russians - 77.8%.
- Tatars - 3.75%.
- Chuvash - 1.05%.
- Bashkirs - 1.11%.
- Chechens - 1.07%.
- Armenians - 0.83%.
- Ukrainians - 1.35%.
There is also the term " titular nation", which is understood as the ethnic group that gave the name to the region. Moreover, this may not be the most numerous people. For example, many nationalities of Russia live in the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug (the list consists of more than 50 items). But only the Khanty and Mansi, who made up only 2% of the region’s population, gave it an official name.
Ethnographic research continues in the 21st century, and work on the topic “peoples of Russia: list, number and percentage” is of interest not only to serious scientists, but also to ordinary people who want to know more about their homeland.
parts of Russia
Russians are not mentioned as a nation in the current Constitution of Russia, but in fact this people represents more than 2/3 of the total population. His " cradle"is - from Northern Primorye and Karelia to the coast of the Caspian and Black Seas. The people are characterized by the unity of spiritual culture and religion, homogeneous anthropology and common language. However, Russians are also heterogeneous in their composition and are divided into various ethnographic groups:
Northern - Slavic peoples living in the Novgorod, Ivanovo, Arkhangelsk, Vologda and Kostroma regions, as well as in the Republic of Karelia and in the north of the Tver lands. Northern Russians are characterized by " pooping" dialect and a lighter color of appearance.
South Russian peoples live in Ryazan, Kaluga, Lipetsk, Voronezh, Oryol and Penza regions. Residents of these regions" envelop"when talking. For part" South Russians"characterized by bilingualism (Cossacks).
The northern and southern regions are not located closely - they are connected by the Central Russian zone ( interfluve of Oka and Volga), where the inhabitants of both zones are mixed equally. In addition, among the general mass of Russians there are so-called subethnic groups - compactly living small nationalities that are distinguished by the peculiarities of their language and culture. They are quite closed and few in number List they consist of the following groups:
- Vod ( as of 2010 number of people: 70).
- Pomors.
- Meshcheryak.
- Polehi.
- Sayans.
- Don and Kuban Cossacks.
- Kamchadal.
Peoples of the southern regions
We are talking about the territories between the Azov and Caspian seas. In addition to the Russian population, many other ethnic groups live there, including those who are radically different in terms of traditions and religion. The reason for such a striking difference was the proximity eastern countries- Turkey, Tatar Crimea, Georgia, Azerbaijan.
Southern peoples of Russia (list):
- Chechens.
- Ingush.
- Nogais.
- Kabardians.
- Circassians.
- Adyghe people.
- Karachais.
- Kalmyks.
Half of the population is concentrated in the southern part of Russia" national"Republics. Almost each of the listed peoples has their own language, and in religious terms, Islam predominates among them.
Separately, it is worth noting the long-suffering Dagestan. And, first of all, that a people with that name does not exist. This word unites a group of ethnic groups (Avars, Aguls, Dargins, Lezgins, Laks, Nogais, etc.) living on the territory of the Republic of Dagestan.
and North
It includes 14 large regions and geographically occupies 30% of the entire country. However, 20.10 million people live in this territory. consists of the following peoples:
1. Alien peoples, that is, ethnic groups that appeared in the region during the period of its development from the 16th to 20th centuries. This group includes Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Tatars, etc.
2. Indigenous Siberian peoples of Russia. The list of them is quite large, but the total number is relatively low. The most populous are the Yakuts ( 480 thousand), Buryats ( 460 thousand), Tuvans ( 265 thousand) and Khakassians ( 73 thousand).
The ratio between indigenous and newcomer peoples is 1:5. Moreover, the number of original inhabitants of Siberia is gradually decreasing and is not even in the thousands, but in the hundreds.
The northern territories of Russia are in a similar situation. " The past"The population of these areas is concentrated in large settlements. But the indigenous people, for the most part, lead a nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle. Ethnographers note that the northern indigenous peoples are declining at a slower rate than the Siberians.
Peoples of the Far East and Primorye
The Far Eastern Territory consists of the territories of Magadan, Khabarovsk regions, Yakutia, Chukotka Okrug and the Jewish Autonomous Region. Adjacent to them are Primorye - Sakhalin, Kamchatka and Primorsky Territories, that is, regions with direct access to the eastern seas.
In ethnographic descriptions, the peoples of Siberia and the Far East are described together, but this is not entirely correct. The indigenous ethnic groups of this part of the country are distinguished by a very unique culture, which was determined by the most severe living conditions.
The Far Eastern and coastal indigenous peoples of Russia, a list of which is given below, were first described in the 17th century:
- Orochi.
- Oroks.
- Nivkhi.
- Udege people.
- Chukchi.
- Koryaks.
- Tungus.
- Daurs.
- Duchers.
- Nanai people.
- Eskimos.
- Aleuts.
Currently, small ethnic groups enjoy protection and benefits from the state, and are also of interest for ethnographic and tourist expeditions.
The ethnic composition of the Far East and Primorye was influenced to a certain extent by the peoples of neighboring states - China and Japan. A community of Chinese immigrants numbering about 19 thousand people has settled in the Russian region. The Ainu people, whose homeland was once Hokkaido (Japan), live safely on the islands of the Kuril chain and Sakhalin.
Non-indigenous peoples of the Russian Federation
Formally, all ethnic groups in Russia, except for very small and closed ones, are non-indigenous. But in fact, within the country there was constant migration due to wars (evacuation), the development of Siberia and the Far East, government construction projects, and the search for better living conditions. As a result, the peoples have become quite mixed up, and the Yakuts living in Moscow will no longer surprise anyone.
But the country is home to many ethnic groups with roots originating from completely different states. Their homeland is not even near the borders of the Russian Federation! They appeared on its territory as a result of random or voluntary migration in different years. The non-indigenous peoples of Russia, the list of which is given below, comprise groups of several tens of thousands of people over the age of 40 (2 generations). These include:
- Koreans.
- Chinese.
- Germans.
- Jews.
- Turks.
- Greeks.
- Bulgarians.
In addition, small groups of ethnic groups from the Baltic states, Asia, India, and Europe live safely in Russia. Almost all of them are assimilated in terms of language and way of life, but have retained part of their original traditions.
Languages and religions of the peoples of Russia
The multi-ethnic Russian Federation is a secular state, but religion still plays a big role ( cultural, ethical, power) in the life of the population. It is characteristic that small ethnic groups adhere to their traditional religion, received " as an inheritance"from their ancestors. But the Slavic peoples are more mobile and profess various types of theology, including renewed paganism, Satanism and atheism.
Currently, the following religious movements are common in Russia:
- Orthodox Christianity.
- Islam ( Sunni Muslims).
- Buddhism.
- Catholicism.
- Protestant Christianity.
A rather simple situation has developed with the languages of peoples. The official language in the country is Russian, that is, the language of the majority of the population. However, in national regions ( Chechnya, Kalmykia, Bashkortostan, etc.) The language of the titular nation has the status of a state language.
And, of course, almost every nationality has its own language or dialect, different from others. It often happens that the dialects of ethnic groups living in the same area have different roots of formation. For example, the Altai people of Siberia speak the language of the Turkic group, and the nearby Bashkirs have roots oral speech hidden in the Mongolian language.
It is worth noting that when looking at the list of peoples of Russia, the ethnolinguistic classification appears in almost complete form. In particular, among the languages of different peoples, almost all language groups were “noted”:
1. Indo-European group:
- Slavic languages ( Russian, Belarusian).
- Germanic languages ( Jewish, German).
2. Finno-Ugric languages ( Mordovian, Mari, Komi-Zyrian, etc.).
3. Turkic languages ( Altai, Nogai, Yakut, etc.).
4. (Kalmyk, Buryat).
5. Languages of the North Caucasus ( Adyghe, Dagestan languages, Chechen, etc.).
In the 21st century, the Russian Federation continues to remain one of the most multinational states in the world. There is no need to impose “multiculturalism”, because the country has existed in this regime for many centuries.