The article analyzes the main ideas of E.G. Kagarov and P.G. Penner. They were two leading researchers of wedding rituals of Germans in the USSR in the 1920–30s. Researchers collected factual material for their works themselves in settlements of Germans in the USSR. Despite the close similarity of methodology, their interpretations were diff erent. E.G. Kagarov, constructing his research in the context of the comparative analysis, focused on the protective and protreptic functions of wedding rituals, paying less attention to the social component. Kagarov’s postgraduate student, P.G. Penner, on the contrary, emphasized the socio-economic elements of wedding rituals. Both published sources and archival documents are used in this article in order to demonstrate the concepts of both scientists. One of the signifi cant archival sources is the draft and the only surviving version of Penner’s dissertation “Refl ection of Primitive Forms of Marriage in Wedding Ceremonies of the Germans of the USSR”, quotes from which are repeatedly cited in the text of this article. Penner disagreed with his supervisor regarding the interpretation of many elements of wedding rituals and argued with him in the text of the dissertation. In turn, E. G. Kagarov, noting places requiring deeper analysis, left his notes and comments in the margins of the document

The State Archives of the Republic of Buryatia store materials on the history of the Russian Buddhist Church, including relations with authorities and charity. Some of these materials are not used in historians. Documents confi rm the integration of Buddhist clergy into the imperial political system at the beginning of the 20th century. Pandito Khambo Lama adequately responded to the instructions of regional authorities, collecting donations for the Russian army and helping hospitals. Buddhist leaders assisted local authorities in mobilizing Buryat Cossacks during the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). In 1908, they took special measures when Japanese intelligence agents disguised themselves as missionaries and arrived in Transbaikalia. The peak of charitable activity by Buddhist clergy in Eastern Siberia occurred during World War I. Buddhist leaders Itigelov, Agvan Dorzhiev, and Iroltuev created the “All-Buryat Committee to collect donations for the needs of war”. The help of Buryat monks was great. Monasteries collected donations to fi nance military hospitals. Abbots brought information about the progress of military operations to the population. Lama healers visited the places where mobilized Buryats were staying, and parishioners paid for their travel expenses. During the Civil War, Buddhist clergy collected donations for starving people in the Volga region, which was carried out under diffi cult conditions of famine. The author studied sources on the collection of donations in Selenga Aimak, the Buryat-Mongolian Autonomous Region, RSFSR, 1921–1922, when the size of charity signifi cantly decreased. Buryat clergy managed to help starving Volga residents and Buryat students in Moscow with food and money. When Pandito Khambo Lama called for constant material assistance to the starving people of the Volga region, Buryat monks donated objects of religious worship.

The article examines a unique phenomenon of Soviet cinema - the anti-religious film of the 1920s-1930s - a question insufficiently explored in humanitarian historiography so far. Being an organic part of the “cultural revolution”, on the one hand, anti-religious films of this period acted as an effective tool for the propaganda of the Soviet state in the fight against both the official church and manifestations of everyday religiosity. On the other hand, their creation was accompanied by detailed theoretical and methodological recommendations on the forms of interaction of party propagandists with the audience, and on the formats for the presentation of anti-religious attitudes. Based on previously unpublished archival materials, the authors bring to the fore one of the most indicative of such films titled “Sectarians” shoot by Vladimir Korolevich (Sovkino, 1930). The authors consider the film as a document of that time and analyze processes that ran parallel with one another in the Soviet culture and policy...

The article examines the study of the veneration of locally revered saints by Soviet ethnographers in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The expeditions were carried out by the staff of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, the Ethnographic Department of the Russian Museum, the State Academy of the History of Material Culture, the Society of Local History and the Union of Militant Atheists. Ethnographers showed interest in the study of local cults of saints, striving not so much for historical studies of the veneration of saints in Russia, as for the anthropological study of the syncretic features of the worship of saints, in which folk ideas and pre-Christian practices in the form of so-called “Orthodox paganism” were preserved to the greatest extent.

This paper deals with the famous Zoroastrian marriage xwēdōdah. This form of marriage refers to the conjugal union of father and daughter, mother and son, brother and sister. Zoroastrianism of the Sassanid era made this institution a key element of religion, along with offering meal (mēzd) and seasonal holidays (gāhānbār). The question of whether this institution is a part of ancient Iranian legacy or has emerged later, is still controversial among the scholars. Careful development of xwēdōdah in the late Pahlavi works after the Arab conquest in the 9th century could have been the propagation of the priesthood who tried to protect Zoroastrian society against infiltration and destruction or sticking to archaic norms in an effort to preserve their religion in the face of extinction. The paper gives an overview of the most relevant theories about xwēdōdah. The genesis of this institution probably traces to the pre-Indo-European cultural substrate. Some modern scholars, looking for an explanation, pay attention to the works of anthropologists. The rejection of incest in all societies with exogamic regulation led to a certain taboo. This taboo is often due to the birth defects of children born out of consanguineous marriages. In the author’s opinion, the hypothesis of “ritual value” by A.R. Radcliffe-Brown seems to be the most appropriate to this case.

The article presents the results of the study of materials collected by A.P. Farafontov and reflecting the folk Orthodox culture of the Russian population of Transbaikalia and the Amur region of the early 20th century. A.P. Farafontov (1889, Troitskosavsk - 1958, San Francisco) is a Russian emigrant enthusiast: ethnographer, naturalist, taxidermist, writer; member of the Russian Geographical Society, The Society for the Study of the Manchurian Region. The collected data (signs, charms, life stories, past occurrences, tales, riddles) were written down by A.P. Farafontov during an expedition from Harbin to the Trans-Baikal resort of Shivanda (1916) and published in the Harbin scientific journal “Monitor of Asia” with a conceptual foreword by P.V. Shkurkin. The first part of the collection - “Among the Russian people” - is of particular interest to researchers. Its value is in fixing the local ethno-religious tradition of the Russian population of the Far Eastern frontier (Transbaikalia and the Amur region), based on folk Orthodoxy with the inclusion of elements of religious cults of local peoples (Buryats, Chinese, Nanais, Udege, etc...

The object of the research is a syncretic reality in which pure reason and religion are present. The subject of research is religion and pure reason in their structural relations in modern times and today. The study was formed in accordance with the structural and functional method. Its essence consists in searching for visible connections between the subjects of pure reason and the subjects of religion. The phenomenological method is a complement to the structural-functional one, since it can be used as a method of analysis in the fundamental phenomena of being and consciousness, rational and religious components are intertwined in a life composition, in which sometimes the rational and religious are inseparable from each other and have the same goals, for example: victory over poverty, disease and other adversities. In this sense, building or analyzing structural correspondences brings the researcher closer to a clear picture of the goals and means to achieve mutual understanding...