Funeral and memorial rites of old believers immigrants from Belarus as ethnographic sources (materials XX - early XXI century)

Purpose: Relevance of general and regional problems, appearance and internal contents of Russian funeral ceremonies, the reasons for their multi-variant observed many times in the scientific literature. This work is devoted to a systematic description and analysis of the customs and rituals associated with the burial and commemoration at home, one of the local groups of Russian Old Believers Vasyugan'e - migrants from the territories of modern Belarus in the early twentieth century. Results: On the basis of field data by making an attempt to consider funeral rites of vasyugantsev's ethnographic materials involving other groups of Old Believers in Russian North, the Urals, Western and Eastern Siberia. Collected materials, moreover, allow us to investigate not only data on the Russian Old Believers from Vitebsk, Vilna Russian provinces early XX century, but also their neighbors immigrants-Belarusians. Consequently, the contingent data enables us to trace not only the interaction between the different groups of the Old Believers, but also reveal interethnic contacts and influence. Conclusion: Along with differences in some detail, we note that the common traditions between the Old Believer groups tend to have significantly more. It is preliminary preparation of the burial clothes long before death, usually with a shroud, customs objection died at the hands (using poles, stretchers), protection of the pit, the location of the head to the east, tying towels on grave crosses, victim-«charity» by clothing of the deceased and towels, tidy house after the removal of the body of the deceased, etc. Different attitudes to the circumstances of the death, the separation of the dead on the «clean and unclean dead», according to the Orthodox tradition, was so great that it is influenced by one or another version of the funeral rite that persists to this day. Dugout coffins currently make only in a few cases at the request of the elderly, but the memories of many Old Believers preserved coffin «chipped» as «legitimate». The most noticeable differences between the supporters of the official Orthodoxy and the Old Believers, but here they are vary within a single all-Russian type. Repeatability of many non-Christian traditions in various local Russian groups shows that they do not belong to a narrow tradition but once had all-Russian distribution.