E-mail: v.klyaus@mail.ru
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25a, Povarskaya str., Moscow, 121069, Russian Federation
Full Professor (Philology), head of Folklore department, Institute of World Literature named after A. M. Gor’kiy, Russian Academy of Sciences
This research is supported by the grant of the Russian State Fund for Humanities No. 14-04-00449.
This paper concerns one of the rituals of Russian wedding, that has appeared in Eastern Trans-Baikal area among Trans-Baikal Cossacks, namely disrupting of bridegroom’s parents’ clothes, if it was the youngest son, who got married off. This custom is preserved nowadays only within wedding tradition, that appears among the Chinese Russians, who inhabit so-called Trekhrech’e — region on the Chinese dexter bank of borderline Argun’ the river. For this region of China parents’ clothes disrupting functions as a distinctive feature of ethnicity, special of namely Russian wedding ceremonialism. Such researchers, as N. Kashin, K. Loginovskiy et al., who studied wedding traditions among Trans-Baikal Cossacks, didn’t mention this custom, due to its periphery position in the entire wedding ceremony. There in Russian tradition same customs don’t appear, but such playing acts appear in Ukrainian wedding tradition of vast territory. It is significant, that there in studies of Ukrainian wedding “vesillja”, no particular attention is paid to this clothes disrupting custom either, but it is mentioned among other jokes and funs of the second day. Appearance of the wedding custom of disrupting of bridegroom’s parents’ clothes among Trans-Baikal Cossacks may indicate, that the Cossack Host of Baikal incorporated settlers from Ukraine territories at the period of its formation. It is necessary to mention, that manifestations of the wedding custom of disrupting of parents’ clothes, that appear either in Ukraine or among Trans-Baikal Cossacks and their descendants and Chinese Russians are marked with certain diversity despite general similarity.
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