Local rural holidays as a manifestation of cultural memory of Russian and Finno-Ugric populations in Nizhny Novgorod region

Introduction. In the context of cultural memory the article analyzes the rooting mechanism and subsequent functioning of local religious holidays in the cultural space of Russian rural communities of the XIX–XX centuries. Materials and Methods. The article contains studied and generalized materials found in research that give an idea of the problem under consideration. It also employs the author’s field materials collected during ethnographic trips to the Nizhny Novgorod region. The theoretical basis of the presented research is the problem-chronological and comparative-historical methods. Such methods of field Ethnography as direct observation and interviewing were used during the collection of field materials. Results and Discussion. In modern humanities, the representative properties of the holidays are interpreted in the context of cultural memory, where the holiday acts as its element or primary form. In this approach, the holiday can be considered as “General text”, which, according to Yuri Lotman can be stored and updated in the shared memory of the community, and as the mechanism of this update process, which acts from generation to generation and allows members of this community to exercise their cultural identity. The author considers local religious holidays of the Russian and Finno-Ugric population (Mordovians and Mari people) in Nizhny Novgorod region as one of the traditional forms of preservation, actualization and intergenerational transmission of information, important for the formation of cultural identity. Conclusion. Local religious holidays were the mechanism used for the collective memory of individual rural communities to be comprehended, preserved and transferred through the unified traditional forms of all-Russian spiritual culture. In the cultural memory of the Finno-Ugric peoples, the local religious holidays of the Russian neighbors became the key to the perception of Christian religion and played an important role in the processes of acculturation.