Role of the «place of memory» in the preservation of religious traditions in the post-war collective farm village

Abstract

The authors conclude that numerous reports on the performance of prayers on the days of religious holidays, even in settlements where there were no religious buildings and registered communities of believers, indicate that in the daily practices of the post-war collective farm peasantry, religion was assigned a major role. The study is based on archival documents (State Archives of the Ulyanovsk Region, Central State Archives of the Samara Region, State Archives of the Russian Federation), most of which are being introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. As in the previous period, in the post-war collective farm village, which was in difficult material conditions, suffered from a lack of social infrastructure and socio-cultural benefits, representatives of rural society used the compensatory function of religion to preserve their peasant identity. They saw in religious traditions not only a means of consolidating society, but also a mechanism of cultural continuity, capable of uniting the past and future into a single whole, filling it with hopes for positive changes that could alleviate the difficult fate of the collective farm peasantry.

Keywords

• soviet peasantry
• soviet agrarian project
• place of memory
• religion
• religious tradition
• religious holiday
• collective farm village.