Danila Rygovskiy will defend his doctoral thesis „Women in Russian old belief: religious practices and public imagination on the example of Siberian and Estonian old believer communities“

On 29 November at 12 Danila Rygovskiy will defend his doctoral thesis „Women in Russian old belief: religious practices and public imagination on the example of Siberian and Estonian old believer communities“.

Supervisor: Ergo-Hart Västrik, Tartu Ülikool

Opponents: Elina Kahla, Helsingi ülikool (Soome); Jeanne Kormina, École pratique des hautes études (EPHE) (Pariis)

Summary

This study deals more generally with the growing role of women in the religious practices of Russian Old Believers and in the management of church life, focusing on Old Believers in Estonia and Siberia. More specifically, my focus is on the Old Believers’ communities of Pomortsy, Fedoseevtsy (both Estonia), and Chasovennye (Siberia). The Old Faith is a conservative religion with strict rules on gender division. For example, Old Believer women are not allowed to act as church leaders or preachers. In fact, women fulfill a lot of responsibilities instead of men. In addition to that, there are on average more women than men among Old Believers, especially in Estonia and some regions of Siberia. In connection with all this, I consider the aim of this study as follows: by analyzing various sources (materials from my fieldwork, documents from the Estonian Nationa Museum, some Russian archives, folklore and ethnographic notes, Old Believers’ manuscripts, etc.), to describe by means of what and under which circumstances female agency implemented in various activities (i.e., conducting the service, writing, executing the demands of external piety, etc.) finds the way out in the conservative religious field of Old Belief. My research also focuses on how the different symbolic and social frictions that emerge from the growing role of women in the lives of Old Believer communities are reshaping women's agency and influencing women's religious practices. As part of my research, I analyze how Soviet antireligious policy along with forced modernization of culture and economy affected Old Believers’ religious practices. It turned out that the greater the impact, the more the gender balance in Old Believer villages became unequal. So far, it is clear that there are many more women than men in places that were heavily influenced by Soviet modernization. An equal balance has been maintained in those Old Believer villages, where the household falls largely on the shoulders of women, as men engage in hunting, fishing, and other similar activities.