Этноконфессиональная культура в контексте приграничья: русские-старообрядцы (липоване) Дунайского региона
An Ethnical and Confessional Culture in a Border Area: the Russian Old Believers (the Lipovans) at the Lower Danube

Summary/Abstract: Taking his stand both on some documentary sources and on some field researches, the author analyses the origins and the preservation of the cultural traditions of the Lipovans. The study reveals the fact that the establishments and the ways of expression of this ethnical and religious group find their origin in the Russian popular culture from the XVIIIth – XIXth centuries. Along the time, this cultural found underwent many changes, as a result of the influences exerted by several factors: the adaptation of the original traditions to new cultural contexts (those from Podolia, Bessarabia, Moldavia, Wallachia, Dobrudgea, Bukovina), the religious identity – „the Old Faith” as a basis for the group ideology and for the social practices, the influence of the neighbouring ethnical groups, surpassing in number the Lipovans, their condition of „enclave” within the territories where they settled. All these circumstances determined a particular form of traditional Russian culture. For the Lipovans, the ethnic specificity was interwoven with the religious identity; the ethnical patterns are tokens of the religious community and vice-versa. The features of the „Old Believers” were passed to the „Lipovan Russian”. All these features can be identified in the ways the Lipovans organize their space, in their language, religion, self-identity. For instance, the statute of „Old Believer” determined a declared preference for the „old”, against the novel, for the oral tradition, against the written one.

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