Birthing ceremony: worldview and mythological beliefs of the Russian people

The purpose of the article is to comprehensively identify semantically significant elements of the worldview and mythological beliefs of Russians in the structure of the maternity rite, as well as to determine their functional significance. Russian ethnos considers important aspects of the birthing rite, which opens the life cycle of each person, as well as reconstructs the key ethno-cultural elements that determine the self-identification of Russians. The identification and preservation of ethnic culture is able to resist Westernization in the conditions of globalization and civilizational confrontation and revive the institution of family and marriage, returning it to a leading position in the scale of value preferences of modern youth. The high significance of the event determines the intense nature of reflection not only of the participants of the ritual complex, but also of society as a whole. The relevance of the chosen topic is connected with the need to force the difficult demographic situation associated with low fertility and the revival of having many children as a basic traditional value preference that forms the core of the Russian mental field. Special attention is paid to historical and ethnographic data, analysis of various aspects of the rite, their interpretation from the perspective of reconstruction of the constants of the ethnic culture of the Russian peasantry. The author suggests to supplement the ideas about the maternity complex of rituals ritualized and biologically and socio-cultural reproduction of the population in the traditional society of Russians.