Tuvan Old Believers on the pages of the Soviet periodicals
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25178/nit.2021.3.5Keywords:
Old Belief; Old Belief in Tuva; religious community; Tuva; mass media; The Tuvan Pravda; history of Tuva; Soviet period; external representation; history of mass mediaAbstract
The article focuses on materials on Old Belief in Tuva published in the local press from 1924 to late 1980s. Due to their ideological bias and prejudiced reporting of facts, Soviet regional newspapers have rarely been used by scholars of Old Belief as sources of information. In this article we study the newspapers of Soviet Tuva with our focus shifted from the information on the community to modes of its representation. This will help us discover new analytical perspective and avoid flat and straightforward interpretation.
Our study traces both quantitative (such as the frequency of mentioning Old Believers in the media in various years) and qualitative (the materials’ content, stereotypes, ideological bias, rhetorical devices, visual content, etc.) The article also presents a model of external representation of one of Tuva’s confessional groups in its interaction with other population.
In the press, the cultural features of this group were presented through an ideological lens, with Old Believers shown mostly in the negative light, as a periphery and marginal community, which reflected their status in society. Depending on the agenda, this light could be varied, but variation stayed within the strictly atheistic approach. In the early years of the Soviet regime Old Believers were primarily portrayed as its political opponents, with their religious identity enhancing their status as social and class enemies. Later, the confrontation shifts into the sphere of ideological rivalry where the Old Believers are constructed through binary oppositions of science v. prejudice, progressive v. backward, collectivism v. individualism. At times, Old Believers are not even seen as a religious community: they get dissolved in the mass of Soviet working class and only appear on the pages of Soviet newspapers as participants of “Socialism-building”.
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How to Cite
For citation:
Danilko E. S. Tuvinskie staroobriadtsy na stranitsakh sovetskoi periodiki [Tuvan Old Believers on the pages of the Soviet periodicals]. New Research of Tuva, 2021, no. 3, pp. 61-74. (In Russ.). DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.25178/nit.2021.3.5
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Author Biography
Elena S. Danilko, "Институт этнологии и антропологии им. Н.Н. Миклухо-Маклая РАН"
Doctor of History, Chief Research Fellow and Head, Visual Anthropology Center, N. N. Miklouho-Maclay Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences.
Postal address: 32A Leninsky Ave., Moscow, 119334, Russia.
Tel.: +7 (495) 938-18-20.
E-mail: Danja9@yandex.ru
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