E-mail: tanyar_2@mail.ru
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41, Chehova str., Rostov-on-Don, 344006, Russian Federation
PhD in Philology, Senior Researcher, Laboratory of Philology, Federal Research Centre The Southern Scientific Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences
This publication was prepared within the framework of the implementation of the state assignment of the SSC RAS for 2025, state reg. No. 125011200150-2. Received: February 4, 2025
This article considers the variations in the wedding ritual of the Don Cossacks of the Ust-Donets district of the Rostov region. Two local variations of the ritual are distinguished: that of the Lower Don (settlements along the Don in the south of the district) and that of the Donets (settlements along the Severskii Donets River and its tributary, the Kundryuchya River). Differences exist in the ways and terminology of confirming the marriage contract; the terminology of inspecting the groom’s house and farmstead before the wedding; the composition, forms and names of baked wedding food; the rites at the end of the wedding; and the timing and symbolism of breaking dishes. This territorial variability of wedding rituals in the south and north of the Ust-Donetsk district is apparently due to the fact that the Don region was settled by people from different regions of Russia. Parallels between weddings in the Ust-Donetsk district and Belgorod, Voronezh, Oryol, and Tambov wedding traditions have been documented. At the same time, one cannot exclude the divergence of wedding types over time due to internal mechanisms of culture, as well as to the gravitation of the population of the south and north of the district to different socio-economic centers of the Province of the Don Cossack Host. Thus, the southern version is in many ways close to the ritual of the neighboring Lower Don districts (Aksayskii, Bagaevskii, Semikarakorskii), and the northern one is close to the rituals of the villages and farms of the south of the Belokalitvinskii district, as well as to those of the Konstantinovskii, Kamenskii and Tatsinskii districts of the Rostov region
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