Visual sources about new Soviet rituals in a Tatar village in the 1970s

Abstract

In the 1960s–1970s in the Soviet society, formation of new civil rituals gained relevance. One of the newfound components was family and household (personal family) rituals – ceremonial registration and a wedding. The article reveals the process of introducing a new civil wedding ritual in a Tatar village in the 1970s. The sources include wedding photographs from the family archives of the Nurutdinovs, the Mamatovs, the Khakovs, and the Romazanovs – natives of different regions of the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, as well as the author’s field materials collected through in-depth and longitudinal interviews. Wedding photographs represent valuable illustrative material on the problem of the formation of a new “Soviet rituals” in the socio-cultural space of the village, including the destruction of the wedding image and deprivation of its national features and characteristics. They can be considered a multifaceted source upon which the formation of collective memory about the Soviet past is based.

Keywords

• soviet wedding
• celebration
• village
• tradition
• ritual
• visual anthropology
• photography
• family photo album
• tatars