Features of ethno-cultural tradition and wedding rituals of Russian "Penzyaks" in the Baraba forest-steppe

The article deals with the issues of ethno-cultural identity and original culture of the villagers-descendants of the migrants from the village of Nochka, Penza Province (currently, Nikolsky District ofthe Penza Region) in the late 19th - early 20th centuries. The name of the Penza village was duplicated at a new place in the Baraba forest-steppe (Vengerovo District of the Novosibirsk Region) in order to preserve the memory of a small homeland and pass this memory on to the descendants. In this particular situation, the ethnographer had the opportunity to talk not only with representatives of the third and fourth generations of people born in Siberia, i.e. having the right to be called Siberians, but also with the first generation brought in their childhood to Siberia. The article is based on the materials of the East Slavic ethnographic expedition of the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography ofthe Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences; the work was carried out in the Baraba forest-steppe in 1993-1996, 2003, 2015, 2018, in the Penza Region in 2022 (the head of the expedition is the author ofthe article). The Penza Region has always been a detached region in Russia, sparsely populated for a long time, dangerous because of the frequent raids of nomads. This was the reason for the unique survival of many features of traditional culture both in the Middle Volga region and, subsequently, in the Baraba forest-steppe, which is revealed in this work on the materials of the rituals of the life cycle, in particular, the wedding ceremony. The analysis of wedding ceremonies and ritual folklore has shown a close resemblance to the Northern and Central Russian traditions indicating the migrants as bearers of these features of Russian culture. The people who received the name “Penzyaks” from the old-timers designate their ethnocultural identity by the word “commoner”, which means “Russian, Orthodox”, not belonging to any separate (cultural and confessional) group in their understanding. This one-dimensional identification compared with numerous examples of multi-level self-awareness in other groups of Russian settlers singles out the “Penzyaks” and enriches our knowledge about the phenomenon of ethnocultural identity.