Ethnology 

Khabutdinov A.Yu., Tychinskikh Z.A., Khabutdinova M.M.

Muslim charitable societies of Тobolsk and Оmsk in the early 20th century

The article examines Muslim charitable societies of Tobolsk and Omsk cities, which operated in 1907–1914 and were called the Tobolsk Society of Muslim Progressists and the Society for the Care of Muslim Students in the 1st Omsk maktab. The purpose of the study is to analyse their activities as legal public organisations during the inter-revolutionary period (1907–1917) of the Russian Empire. We concluded that these organisations were a part of a network of Muslim charitable societies operating in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The administration board of the Tobolsk Society included representatives of three groups of the Muslim elite, whose families were historically associated with the region. Officials from nobility, clergy (imams), and bourgeoisie, and the leadership of Omsk Society was dominated by the bourgeoisie. Both the Tobolsk and Omsk societies focused mainly on helping the maktabs for boys. At the same time, three main directions can be seen in the activity of the Tobolsk Society of Muslim Progressists: school education, social activities, and public education. It is the latter function that will become the grounds for the closure of the organisation. Later, the influence of these societies would become evident in the activities of their leaders and activists during the 1917 Russian revolution, and as well as within the institutions of religious and national-cultural autonomy and the broader sociopolitical movement.

Keywords: Muslims of Western Siberia, mekteb, Jadidism, Tatars, Kazakhs.

Farakhutdinov Sh.F., Ustinova O.V., Filippova I.A.

Epidemic disease control in the Ishim District of the Tyumen Governorate in the early 1920s

The article highlights characteristics of epidemic control in the Ishim District of the Tyumen Governorate in the early 1920s. Based on previously unknown archival documents, the main directions for the prevention of epidemics in the Ishim District have been identified. The main measures to fight epidemics have been outlined, such as; expanding of the number of hospitals and feldsher’s stations in the county, improving their resource provision, conducting audits of medical institutions and pharmacies, examining public organisations for their compliance with sanitary and epidemics control standards, implementing organizational measures to comply with sanitary requirements in public places, and introducing a “food security tax” for the population. Special attention was given to assessing how these measures were put into practice and to identifying the reasons for their limited or absent implementation. What was illustrated by the research is that in spite of the measures taken, epidemic diseases spread rapidly. Interesting facts are presented that shed light on the living conditions of the local population during epidemics and their response to unfolded epidemiological situations.

Keywords: Tyumen province, Ishim district, epidemic diseases, epidemics, cholera, typhus, smallpox, epidemic control healthcare, medical institutions, public organizations.

Mavlyutova G.Sh.

Islamic spiritual leaders in Tobolsk Governorate at the turn of the century — a case study of the First General Population Census of the Russian Empire of 1897

This article has been prepared based on the data from schedules of the First General Population Census of the Russian Empire in 1897. The publication presents materials on 185 Islamic spiritual leaders who served as imams and muezzins. Analysis of the provided data revealed that the majority of those clergymen were not native to the area (66.8 %), with Bukharans accounting for 25.9 %, and a significant minority being state peasants (7.3 %). The mean age of an imams was 45 years of age, whereas that of muezzins averaged at 49. An overwhelming majority of Islamic leaders were born in the Tobolsk Governorate. The findings demonstrate that some faith leaders practiced polygyny. All imams and nearly all muezzins were educated people, literate in Arabic and Tatar, however only a small percentage of imams were proficient in the Russian language. Religious activities constituted the primary occupation for half of imams and a third of muezzins. Among these, for a quarter of imams and muezzins, this activity was the sole source of income.

Keywords: nominaive sources, Muslims, akhund, mullah, imam, muezzin, the Bukharans, non-Russians, polygamy.

Poplavsky R.O.

The main areas of study of religiosity in the 1930s

This is the third article in a series of publications devoted to the history of the study of religiosity from the late 19th to the first half of the 20th century. Analysing the publications of the 1930s on the theoretical understanding of religion and empirical research, the author compares approaches in the study of religiosity, highlighting trends, changes and factors that led to them. In the 1930s, religiosity was considered as individual and changeable characteristic, and this dichotomy fuelled methodological debates about the possibility and nature of empirical studies of religiosity. The dominance of quantitative methods can be considered as a common feature in the research into religiosity in different countries. Furthermore, there was mainly applied research conducted at the time, largely driven by attempts to identify the reasons behind the crisis of faith in the West after WWI and to demonstrate the disappearance of “religious prejudice” in the USSR, which had an impact on the vocabulary employed by Soviet authors, as well as the classifications of religiosity they developed.

Keywords: religiosity, ethnography, psychology of religion, sociology of religion, religious studies, methods, history of religious studies.

Rud' A.A.

Wood and modern materials in the cultural space of the Surgut Khanty

The aim of the work is to analyse the role of wood and modern materials in the culture of the Surgut Khanty. The research addresses a number of issues including the symbolic characteristics of traditional natural materials (wood, birch bark) and modern materials (metal, plastic, glass, rubber, etc.), determination of their place within the signsymbolic model, relationship between the placement of waste from modern materials and the spatial-symbolic scheme of the settlement. The sources of the research include the author’s field materials collected in 2002–2017 among the Khanty of the Surgut region of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug — Yugra, as well as published materials on the culture of the Eastern Khanty and their neighbors. In the culture of the Surgut Khanty, wood and birch bark hold a deep and symbolic meaning rooted in tradition, in addition to their practical uses. Modern materials, owing to their strong functional properties and availability, are becoming increasingly popular in the region. The replacement of traditional materials with modern ones (practical, but lacking symbolism) has lead to the neutralisation of the traditional meanings attached to wooden objects. This development is indicative of a broader desacralisation of the cultural space of the taiga inhabitants. At the same time, the cult and ritual sphere traditionally remains largely resistant to the mass use of modern materials, and continues to preserve the symbolic characteristics of wood and birch bark.

Keywords: Surgut Ob region, symbols in culture, wood and birch bark, metal, glass and plastic.

Masharipova A.Kh., Fedorov R.Yu.

Ethnocultural aspects of adaptation of the Armoured Boyars in Western Siberia (second half of the 19th century)

The paper examines the economic, ethnocultural and linguistic adaptation of the settlers from the Vitebsk Governorate, known as the armoured boyars in Western Siberia in the second half of the 19th century. It has been established that key factor in the long-term preservation of the settler community was the ability of the armoured boyars to establish an independent rural association. This structure not only allowed them to resolve land and other economic issues independently of the old-timers, but also helped to preserve the original social organisation. At the same time, active everyday contacts with the old-timers, including the adoption of farming techniques and certain elements of the culture of subsistence, supported the settlers’ successful economic adaptation. The transformations of the ethnocultural and linguistic identity of different groups of armoured boyars varied significantly. These differences arose from the diversity of ethnocultural characteristics of the places of origin of the migrants, as well as from the nature of their interactions with the Russian old-timers of Western Siberia and other settler groups.

Keywords: Belarusian migrants, Western Siberia, rural community, ethnocultural processes, economic adaptation, ethnocultural and linguistic identity.