Concept of the “Russian North”

1. Concept of the “Russian North”

Symbolic borders,
Ethnic images

2. Culture:

CULTURE:
spirituality;
beliefs;
aesthetics;
values; morality;
epistemologies;
systems of
representation
(language/writing/pain
ting/music, etc.);
gender; ethnicity;
sexuality;
ideology, etc.
2

3. Characteristics of the “way of life of the group”:

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE “WAY OF LIFE OF THE
GROUP”:
The dominant values of a society
The values that guide the direction that
societal change might take
Shared linguistic symbols (language)
Religious beliefs
What is considered to be the correct way for
people to behave in their day-to-day lives
What is considered to be the highest
intellectual and artistic achievements of a
group, including science, art, literature,
music and so on.
Formal behavioural traditions and rituals.
Dominant patterns of living, including styles
of architecture and patterns of land use.
3

4. Community:

COMMUNITY:
socio-economic
entities; political structures;
power and authority;
religious, educational and judicial/legal
institutions;
geography (rural/urban etc.) spaces
(domestic/work; private/public; secular/sacred;
gendered spaces, etc.);
sociocultural roles (women/men/children/aged
etc.); civic ritual, etc.
4

5. Ethnicity defining characteristics

ETHNICITY DEFINING CHARACTERISTICS
The
perception by others that the group
in question is different
The perception of those in the group
itself that they are different from others
The fact that that those defined as being
in the same group – with the same
identity – share activities based on their
sameness, whether real or imagined.
5

6.

“The creation of “a people” – whether
defined as an “ethnicity”, “a nation”, or a
“diasporic community” – is not a matter of
archeologically unearthing layer after
layer until the original layer is revealed;
rather, it is a matter of imaginative and
creative rediscovery, in which
contemporary interpretations and needs
fill the gaps, re-create the past, and
bridge the discontinuities with new
mythologies”.
Stuart Hall
6

7. A cultural landscape is an area where:

A CULTURAL LANDSCAPE IS AN AREA WHERE:
the landforms have been created by human culture as well
as by nature;
human culture has been created by the landscape as well
as the people;
each now depends upon and continues to exist because of
the other.
For tourists culture and scenery are integrated in the
expectations and perceptions of locals and tourists alike.

8. The UNESCO concept of cultural landscape

THE UNESCO CONCEPT
OF CULTURAL
LANDSCAPE
“coexistence
of
territory and human
civilizations”,
“particularly by way
of agropastoral
activity”
(UNESCO 2006 Cultural
Landscapes
<http://www.unesco.org>
(23 May).

9. Landscapes include the entities:

LANDSCAPES INCLUDE THE
ENTITIES:
Nature
Culture
Community
Children of Kimza village
(Arshangelsk region) Picture
by G. Mikheev

10. Using the concept “landscape”:

USING THE CONCEPT “LANDSCAPE”:
we look at particular
individuals,
emplaced within a
physical
environment, who
interact with others
within their social
environment
through their
remembered and
imaginary
experiences.
Scene from everyday life of
Kizhi museum employees

11. «Россияне» (Rossiyane)

• National level of ethnic identity customary termed
in Russian studies;
• It emerged in the situation of Russian Empire,
characterized by ethnographically diverse
population.
• It was “reinvented” in post-soviet Russia as the
solution to the ethnic revelation and ethno
nationalism problem.

12. “National” and “Ethnic”: conflated terms

• Cultural distances between the various geographic
groups of ethnic Russians can be greater than the
cultural distances between them and the peoples with
whom they have been living in long historical contact.
• Russians prefer to identify themselves as “inhabitants of
the region”.
• Regional cultures demonstrate differences in material
culture (dwellings, food, clothing), means of subsistence
and behavioral norms.

13. Russian

Basically cultural or spiritual in
nature
Is basically expressed in the
Russian state political activities
• Russian Empire as
• Language, literature,
traditional and
ancestral homelands
sustainable reincarnation
(soil), and religion are
on the “Russian soul”
the markers of Russian
(including Soviet Union
identity.
and Post soviet Russian
• Politics (the state) is
Federation)
judged in terms of its
• Opposed to “western”
conformity to the
values and political
nonpolitical dimensions
institutions.
of Russian ethnicity.

14. Russian regional cultural identity:

- Idea of the important role of local natural, cultural
and symbolic features in the national culture context;
- Combination of texts, artefacts and symbols,
representing specific social, political and ideological
status of a region in a state context.
- Myths of the common historical fate of local
population, important for its solidarity and
identification.
- Regional cultural representation of a national and
ethnic ideal and values associating with it.

15. Regional cultural traits:

- The dominant values that guide the interaction with other ethnic and
regional groups;
- Shared symbolic systems (language, art, architecture, aesthetic
styles…)
- Religious beliefs
- Correct (normative) way for people to behave in their day-to-day lives
- Highest intellectual and artistic achievements of a group, including
science, art, literature, music and so on.
- Formal behavioural traditions and rituals.
- Dominant patterns of living, including styles of architecture and
patterns of land use.

16. “Russian North” as a paradoxical term

Русский Север
Европейский Север России
(Russian North)
(European North of Russia)
• Cultural meaning of the
Russian colonization of
marginal and peripheral
territories of the state.
• Symbol of the Russian
traditions survival in
extreme natural
conditions and spiritual
revelation in the alien
area.
• Geographic term for the
territories to the north
from the middle lands
between Volga and
Suhona rivers,
• Where Russian groups
has lived in the
neighbourhood with
karelians, komi, vepsi,
saami and other peoples
for centuries.

17. Term the “Russian North”

First used by A.P.Engelgard, Arkhangelks region governor at the
end of the XIXth century, travel writings (in the borders of the
Arkhangels region).
Articulated if the activities of “Arkhangel society of the Russian
North studies”, founded in 1909 (regional research group).
By 1930s established as the ethnographic and geographic term in
the Russian humanities (synonyms for “Pomorie”, “Pomor land”)
By 1970s is recognized as ethnocultural term for “nonofficial”
mental interpretation of the region with the
1. “Russian core” – area of Arkhangelsk and Vologda, parts of
Karelia, Leningrad, Novgorod, Yaroslavl and Kirov region
2. Multiethnic perithery (Finno-Ugrian heritage)

18. «Русский Север»

А.П. Энгельгардт

19. History of the concept

Time period
VIII-XI
XII-XV
XVI-XIX
XX-XXI
Centre of Russian
cultural area
Novgorod
Veliky (Great)
Novgorod
Veliky (Great)
Moscow
Moscow
Cultural status
Foreign land
(zarybezie) and
“unknown
land”
“Shud”
resource
province
Russian –
“shud” cultural
province
Russian
cultural
province
Place name,
representing the
geoconcept
Zavoloshie
(Заволочье)
Zavoloshie
(Заволочье)
Pomorie
Russian North

20. “Colonization”- lasting migration of Russian communities from the central and southern parts of the Russian state.

1. First settlers, hunters and fishermen, came here 14 thousand years ago:
legendary chud (чудь) and lope (лопь) tribes.
2. In the 8th century the first groups of Slavs from Rostov-Suzdal and
Novgorod areas came to the North (brought land-cultivating, written
language, Christianity).
3. In the 12th-15th centuries there already appeared first cloisters, by the
17th century there had been about 60 Russian Orthodox monasteries.
4. 17th century – Russian old-believers settled in the area hiding from
official church in the remote places.

21.

22. Cultural Identity of the Russian North Settlers in the 10th - 13th centuries

Interaction of the Slavs and the Finns
especially intensive in the 10th - 13th
centuries.
- the abundant place-name data which is of
Finno-Ugrian origin and which was registered
in a major part of northern territories that by
the 12th century had been integrated into the
Novgorod and Rostov-Suzdal’ lands
Archaeologists can clearly observe the
dissimilarities in woman’s costume, pottery,
and the burial rite of the Finnic tribes and the
Slavs formed in the late 1st millennium AD (in
contact zones)

23.

24.

Fragment of Antonio Jenkinson map 1562

25.

Northern Europe and the North of Russia at medieval European map

26.

27. The “edge” phenomenon: at a border of a geographic area all the cultural traits are vividly articulated and strongly recognized

28. Northern Russian rural traditions

• Sedentary agriculture and animal husbandry
combined with fishing and hunting have been
traditional for Russian culture since the proto russian (slavs) communities formed (in the Bronze
Age).
• The Russian migrants mastered seemingly alien
forms of economy borrowing its basics from the
indigenous population drawn in the migrant's
cultural environment.
• They remain Russians both in their selfconsciousness and cultural and ethnic
identification by «outsiders».

29. Architecture is exceptionally important adaptive mechanism, making the environment adequate for people survival

30. Architectural details are markers of the regional cultural identity.

31.

Tradition (“eternal
present”) is preferred
to historical changes.
Collective and
anonymous creativity
succeeds the idea of
authorship.
Intuition and feelings
prevail rational and
pragmatic attitudes;
Aesthetic interpretation
is valued more that
logical “calculation”

32.

The sacral component of the Pomor
culture played a peculiar role in the
«spiritual renaissance» of the Russian
culture in the 19th — early in the 20th
century

33. Looking for «Russian cultural sources» in the North

Russian painter
Vasiliy Vereshagin
(goes down Dvina River in
1894)
«Икона Святого Николы с
верховьев реки Пинеги»,
1896

34.

The northern landscape appears in
artistic and academic texts of that time as
the territory revealing secret, shadowed
and gradually disappearing Russian
traditional worldview.

35. A set of unique rural historical settlements as objects of cultural heritage have been preserved in the Arkhangelsk region up

to the present time.
genamikheev6373_novyi_razmer

36. Traditional Northern Russian Peasants’ Craft Reconstruction Movement

• It started in the 70s of the 20th century
with the widespread among young people
search for the ethnic values and later (in
90-s) it influenced the choice of the
content and the strategies of “authentic
ethnic cultures” education programs.

37. Integration of the notion “Pomor heritage" into the activity system of governmental, legal and public structures means a change

Integration of the notion “Pomor heritage" into
the activity system of governmental, legal and
public structures means a change of paradigm
in relation to the past and historical memory.

38.

Pomor villages
become important
cultural tourism
destinations of the
European North of
Russia.

39. “Northern Russian ethnic style” is gradually becoming one of the tourist attractions of the European Russian North.

The interior of the “Pomorsky”
restaurant represents the
“authentic Northern Russian style”
combined with elements of
modern popular design