Vernacular Writings as a Source of Ethnographic Knowledge on Chasovennye Old Believers in Eastern Siberia

Authors

• Danila Rygovskiy Universiy of Tartu https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0284-3127

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.23991/ef.146504

Keywords:

vernacular writing, folkloric motifs, ethnographic narrative, textual community, ethnographic sources, Russian Old Believers, Siberia, folk beliefs, religious practices

Abstract

This paper is focused on one of the most restricted communities of Russian Old Believers – monasteries that belong to a faction called Chasovennye (Rus. chapel), located in Eastern Siberia. Founded by monks and nuns in exile around 1939, the Dubches [monasteries were established deep in the forest to avoid contact with the state and non-Old Believers. Given the isolated nature of Old Believer monasteries, ethnographic fieldwork in this place is seriously limited. Therefore, in addition to fieldwork, I turned to the writings produced by the Chasovennye as a significant source of information on their isolated community. In analyzing Dubches manuscripts like Tale of Miraculous Events and Genealogy of a ‘Novoselie’ Cloister, I argue that these texts, written in the tradition of Old Russian hagiography, reveal complex details about monastic life, practices, and folk beliefs. I propose that Old Believer writings serve as ethnographic sources that, when combined with fieldwork data, allow for a deeper understanding of the community’s unique worldview. Though such sources are often highly stylized, the Old Believers’ writings illustrate their distinctive textual culture. Unlike the oral mediation seen in textual communities described by Brian Stock, the Dubches Old Believers’ textual interactions are mediated by structured practices dictating who may write, when, and what they may record, reflecting a communal oversight over textual materials. The monastery thus emerges not merely as a social institution but as a semiotic environment where reading, writing, and religious practice together transmit a specific perception of reality, framed by literary tradition, to further generations of monastic inhabitants.