From the author

Folk life is boundless and incomparable to anything. Nobody had ever comprehended it totally and, hopefully, will never succeed. So the main attribute of science is an unquenchable thirst for knowledge: its greatness and weakness. But people have an unquenchable thirst for beauty, too.

How different are these two human needs, and how are they identical in their power and origin! And if the world is only Time and Space, science interacts more with Space and art with time... People's life in its ideal, comprehensive sense never knew this kind of separation. The world was a single entity for a person. Centuries created and polished the way of life formed back in paganism. 

 All customs that were unnecessary, cumbersome, or unsuitable for common sense, the national character or climate conditions were sifted away with time. But things that had been missing were partially added by people, partly borrowed from other nations and quickly asserted throughout the state. Such order and stability can easily be called stagnation or immobility, as some "researchers" of Russian folklife pointed out. But, unfortunately, they deliberately ignore the rhythm and cycles that prevent life's stagnation and immobility.

The principle of rhythm is one of the conditions of life. And the life of my ancestors, the northern Russian peasants, was basically and mainly associated with the rhythm. Any violation of this rhythm (wars, pestilence, crop failures) put a fever on all the people and the states. Likewise, interruptions in the rhythm of family life (illness or premature death, fire, adultery, divorce, theft, imprisonment of a family member, death of a horse, recruitment to the army) destroy the family and impact the family's life the entire village.

The principle of rhythm manifests itself in everything, forming the life cycle. You can talk about the daily and weekly cycles, cycles for the individual and the whole family, summer or spring cycles, the annual cycle, and the entire life cycle: from conception to the grave's grass...

Everything was interconnected, and nothing could live alone or without each other; everything had its place and time. Nothing could exist outside of the whole or appear out of turn. At the same time, the unity and integrity of life do not contradict beauty and diversity. Beauty cannot be separated from functionality, and functionality cannot be separated from beauty.

A craftsman was called an artist; an artist was named a craftsman. In other words, beauty was omnipresent rather than localized as it is now. So what do we need to learn with close attention to detail about this long-standing and largely disappeared way of life of the Russian North? Any knowledge of what was before us is desirable and essential.

Young people usually bear the brunt of the social development of society. And today's young men and women are no exception. But wherever they spend their boundless energy: whether at the taiga construction site, whether in the fields of the Black Earth region, whether in the factory shops - everywhere the young person needs above all the high moral standards because of physical conditioning, level of academic knowledge and professional excellence by themselves, without these ethical criteria, are worth nothing. But it is only possible to cultivate high moral principles by knowing what has been before us. Even modern technology does not appear out of nothing, and many working processes have not changed in their essence.

 For example, the cultivation and processing of flax preserved all the oldest elements of the so-called linseed cycle. All the processes have just been accelerated and mechanized, but the flax should be pulled, spun and weaved, as was done in the Novgorod villages ten centuries ago.

Culture and folklife have a profound continuity. You can take a step forward only when the leg pushes away from something solid; moving from nothingness or out of nothing is impossible. That is why our young people have a great interest in the past. Future generations cannot do away with our generation. They also will need our moral and cultural experience, as we now need the expertise of people who lived before us. 

The book is not by chance called "Harmony" and talks about harmony rather than discord of the peasant life. It was conceived as a collection of Northern life and folk aesthetics sketches. However, I tried to talk only about what I had known, experienced or seen myself or by people close to me. Half of the materials are written from conversations with my mother, Anfisa Ivanovna Belova. 

Recollections and impressions of the days are proved to be too many. Willy-nilly, I had to organize the material, giving the story some, albeit relative, order dictated by the book's composition. I had to repeatedly reduce or remove facts, primarily the general reflections.