Bogdanov V.P. Old Ritualist Booklore and Old Ritualist Scribes in the 20th–21st Centuries: On the Material of Private Libraries

Abstract: The article is focused on Old Ritualist booklore – one of the key topics in the historiography of Old Ritualism (the works of N. Y. Bubnov, N. S. Guryanov, I. V. Pozdeev, N. N. Pokrovsky and others). But despite these authors’ stated complex approaches, the study of the Old Ritualists’ book monuments and the destinies of the carriers of this tradition was often examined separately. Through “social archaeography” (an approach developed by O. N. Bakhtin and E. E. Dutchak), the named topic is brought to a new research level and the study of booklore in the context of the social sphere of its existence became a reality and not just a declaration. The author used works in old printed Cyrillic. The basis of this study consists of published catalogues, as well as field diaries from the expeditions in 1970–2010s to Verhkamye and South Vyatka. The derived information was subjected to quantitative and also descriptive methods of analysis. As a result, the author was able to trace the destinies of Old Ritualistic scribes, the history of particular book monuments, as well as whole bodies of writings, and to clearly demonstrate the process of the gradual displacement of old-typed book forms with newer editions. The last, according to the author, is related not so much to the fall of traditional booklore, as much as to the adaptation of local Old Ritualist communities to modern realities.

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