Transformation of the Folk Architecture of the Belarusian Peasant Migrants of Siberia and the Far East (End of XIX - First Third of XX Centuries)

Abstract

The initial features and transformations of the folk architecture of the Belarusian peasant migrants of the second half of the XIX - early XX centuries living in Siberia and the Far East are considered. The results of a comparative historical and typological analysis of the ways of building culture development of immigrants’ descendants are presented. The relevance and novelty of the work is due to the fact that, based on a generalization of field studies done in several regions of the Asian part of Russia, an attempt was made to identify general and special patterns of relations between changes in the principles of building culture and ethnocultural processes among migrants. The results of the study confirm the assumption that in Siberia and the Far East, the variety of development paths and transformations of the folk architecture of Belarusians has increased significantly due to the need to adapt to various natural and climatic conditions, as well as borrowings from the new ethnic environment. It has been established that the transformation of the folk architecture of the Belarusian peasant migrants as a whole reflects the dynamics of ethnocultural processes taking place in their environment. It is shown that the loss of many features of the building culture, which has been growing since the second third of the 20th century, as a whole coincided with the dissolution of immigrants in the new ethnocultural environment, which was due to the processes of assimilation and interethnic integration.

Keywords

• belarusians
• folk architecture
• building culture
• peasant relocation
• ethnocultural processes
• siberia
• far east