ETERNAL MOMENTS

Who of us, especially in childhood or adolescence, was not terrified and not despairing at the sight of a woefully immense pile of wood that should be sawed first and then chopped and put in the woodpile? Or a vast field, which you must plow? Or a dozen fat wool tows, which must be spun by the holiday? My heart sank at how much had to be done. But, as always, there is a consoling and encouraging proverb. It is like this: "The eyes dread, but the hands do."
 
 One of the elders mentions it, and behold- it is not so scary to begin a task which has no end in sight. So much for the material power of the word…
 
"The initiative is more valuable than the whole affair," - recalls another, no less critical, saying later: "It should be a beginning, and an end will come." If, however, you undertook to do something, you can see how much is done and how quietly the result grows and grows. And suddenly, you'll be surprised to see what has not yet been made has departed, though not by much, it became less!
 
You did half, and the second half has its half. The eyes dread, but the hands do ... But this proverb is accurate in terms of volume, the quantity of work, and its quality, that is, on the skill, ingenuity, creativity, and - not afraid to say - art.
 
The young beginner could be afraid, and the other not-so-young could be frightened, even having natural talent. But how do you know whether there is a talent, if not, to start doing something? In art, the risk is necessary for the beginner, even to a certain extent - the folly!
 
It may be one way for the initial identification of gifted people. Need courage and the daring impulse to understand whether you can do something. Try to start, to dare! And there, in the course of work, there is an inspiration and a worker, if nature invested in him a talent, at once or gradually becomes an artist.
 
Of course, you should not try without ending all your life, turning persistence into dull stubbornness. The uniqueness of the Northern peasant labour code was that all tried to do everything, and among these, many were born and original masters.
 
Skills are the basis on which great masters develop. But for a man who already believes in himself, convinced in his ability every time something is done, needs to take the risk of heart, justified, and every second controlled by the mind, he needs boldness, balanced by a careful unhurriedness. Only then would inspiration come to him, and precious moments stood, cast in advanced art forms.
 
It is not true that these moments, this high enthusiasm and inspiration are possible only in certain specified types of work and professional work! Art can live in any profession. Another thing is that, for example, a plowman or a farmer's work is not embodied in art. Because of that, people respected artisans and artists who create art.
 
Peasant artisans and artists from time immemorial have been nameless. They created their art pieces to meet only aesthetic needs. Art of Craft was born on the border between man's aesthetic and economic conditions, when the master begins to create art, not for himself, and not as a gift to friends and family, but by the order and for sale.
 
Art of trade… The combination of words lays a contradiction: trade involves mass, serial, that is, sameness and art is always a unique way, never duplicated. And whatever we come up with for the salvation of artistry in the trade, the trade will always seek to erode it, and art will always resist occupation. The image dies in the multiplicity of identical items, but this does not mean that art objects cannot be created in different ways in their diversity. At least until there is little difference between objects, trade can be called art...?
 
For crafts, it is typical to use traditional technologies and imagery with the obligatory artistic individuality of a craftsman. A master journeyman whose work is identical to his neighbour, a man indifferent to his art, who mastered the traditional techniques and the images but strives for quantity - a man impels artistic craft to degeneration and extinction. With machine production, creative individuality disappears, dissolving into mass production and kitsch. Amid all this, the seemingly miraculous existence of crafts overcomes the "gross" mentality.
 Accountants and economists plan not to interfere with beauty and aesthetics in their business. Nothing often exists for their "gross" psychology except the cash payment and the bottom line. Is the survival of beauty in such conditions not remarkable? Nevertheless, some Northern crafts are unwilling to concede the onslaught of gross anonymity and pressure of aesthetic dullness.

BLACKENING ON SILVER

Like the city of Novgorod, the City of Ustug the Great was the center of Russian culture, commerce and industry for a few centuries. Ustyug could do everything: fight, trade, and farm...
    Many of its citizens came to Alaska and California and settled there, while others travelled through Siberia and traded with India, China, and other countries. But those who did not like to travel and stayed at home did not sit idly by.
The people of Ustug town knew almost all the trades that had flourished in Russia and medieval Europe.
A man with the divine spark in the soul could take on all kinds of available crafts, but it was impossible to do a little of everything and nothing for real. Usually, one would choose an ancestral trade, building and perfecting a tradition or ignoring it. In both cases, the craftsman or the artist could manifest himself fully as a person. But in the second case, the craft would go down quickly, and skills and professional taste for beauty would disappear. It was enough for one generation that a canon of high beauty and a particular aesthetic "ceiling" would be lowered to the extreme. This would destroy the craft's artistic and aesthetic foundation, which is the primary condition of its scale, fame, and economic survival. A craft perishes…
 On the approach to the XX century and early XX century, blackening on silver would suffer the same fate if a few enthusiasts' patience and energy had exhausted. Therefore, we should be thankful for preserving the city of Ustug's magnificent art.
    Its essence is that the artist initially engraves silver and then fills the engraving with a special compound - blackening. This "tattoo," so to speak, is fixed by high temperature, i.e. the usual fire.
Ustuyg's plant "Severnaya Chern" produces good products in high demand at home and abroad. This compels our economists to increase the output to promote uniformity. The danger for artistry lies in mass production. Previously, the artist worked by himself from beginning to end (trusting no one, even his tool, not only products), and now the product is touched by many indifferent hands. For art to survive in such circumstances is incredibly difficult. Yet it survives.

WORLD

"His life, as he looked at it, had no meaning as a separate life. It had meaning only as a part of the whole, which he constantly felt." Leo Tolstoy

 In Russian, the word "Mir" means the entire universe. "Mir" means the universe, the temporal and spatial infinity. The same word is for peace, stable life and friendship, harmony and tranquillity. The coincidence is not accidental. But open a textbook on the ancient and medieval world (again, "Mir"!). Just flip, and you get tired of endless wars, skirmishes, conquest, and murder. Well, is it true that humanity before us was engaged only in this kind of activity? Fortunately, the peoples of the Earth ("MIR" again) not only fought but worked and lived in peace ("Mir").
 Or how would they have grown grains, raised cattle, forged the instruments of labour and life, and built canals, ships, temples and huts?
We are more attentive to the international antagonism of the past for some reason than to the testimony of friendship and peaceful cooperation among the peoples, without which the world would have been destroyed.
The Earth, even in ancient times, was not so vast. Viking's ships sailed across the Atlantic. Herodotus knew how our distant ancestors whipped themselves in a bath by the birch twigs. Thor Heyerdahl proved to all that the possibility of crossing the Pacific Ocean had existed long before Magellan's travel. Athanasius Nikitin travelled to India from Tver, Russia, on the horse and without visas.
Russian Pomors (Russians living on the shores of the White Sea) knew about the great Northern Sea Route for many centuries before the "Krasin" and "Chelyuskin" ice-breakers went that route. And why, at the ancient bazaars of Samarkand and Bukhara, were all the major languages of the world heard, and people got along just fine? Languages were heard but were mixed.
People of different nationalities have only sometimes sorted out their relationship with the ringing of swords and daggers. Proofs of this are countless. And if anyone had seriously investigated the history of trade and navigation, then even a general view of the past could be much brighter. However, inter-tribal communication was carried out not only through the exchange.
     In most nations, there is curiosity and aesthetic interest in other people, unlike them. To continue to be yourself is not necessarily to destroy the neighbour's house that is quite unlike yours by fire and sword. Quite the contrary. How did you understand yourself, stand out among the others, if all the houses were identical if food and clothing had the same taste?
Moving to the east and north, ancient Novgorodians were not inherently conquerors. Stephen of Perm, the Zyryan's Alphabet creator, showed a high example of unselfishness in dealing with the natives. Russian and Zyryan's settlements still stand side by side; military skirmishes between Novgorodians and Finn-Ugric tribes were sporadic. In any case, rarer than with the blood brothers: the Muscovites and Suzdalians...
Hospitality, whose remnants are still preserved in many places of the immense North in ancient times, had apparently reached a cult level. Marrying people of different nationalities was not considered a sin by the Russians - neither by Pagans nor Christians, though it was not encouraged, so to speak, by public opinion.
    The same public opinion made possible a light mockery over the antics of the people of another nation but did not allow them to grow into antagonism. What for? If you need more land, take the axe and go in any direction, uproot stumps, burning forest.
 Invader, carpetbagger, bloody villain, and trickster did to his tribe neither honour nor advantage. Respect for other people's rights and national traditions originated primarily from self-preservation. But this does not mean that the Russian people quickly parted with their lands and customs. Even three centuries of domination of the nomads have not taught them, for example, to eat horse meat or to kidnap other men's wives. The world ("Mir") for the Russian people is not so good that it is immense, but also because there is a lot of variety; it always has something to marvel at.

REGION

Nature burns on the soul a print that does not wash off; it leaves its mark on the outer and inner appearance of the people. Even the language, though to a lesser extent, is also prone to such influence.
For example, many words related to the forest and snow are unknown to a Russian living in the southern part of the country. The psychological identity of an ethnic group mainly depends on the natural environment, landscape, and seasonal features. A Southern man cannot live without the vast steppes; a treeless vastness seems bare and uncomfortable to a Northerner.
The white nights at Solovki Island confuse even citizens of Central Russia.
    Perhaps because of that, they are so strong in the Russian folklore images of foreign and native landscapes. Interestingly, the alien side was always substantial and multifaceted in the popular imagination. When a girl got married, even a neighbouring village seemed to her at first foreign. More "foreign" becomes a faraway place when people leave to work as haulers. Soldiers' "foreign place" was always harsh and distant.
    Leaving for a faraway place, you must grudgingly fasten the heart; otherwise, you perish. "When visiting, be like people, but at home, as you wish," - says the proverb.
At home, the faraway place doesn't look so scary. However, when in a foreign land where "the birds sing differently, flowers bloom differently," the previous one, a little "foreign" place, a man will not call it a "foreign," but native.
An insult or ridicule suffered in a foreign land will not always be forgotten soon after the comeback. Good-natured mockery of the people's rumour is often manifested in such nicknames as "Permians - salty-ears," "Yaroslavsky waterslurpers," "Vologdian calves," and "Chud white-eyed." Yet mockery could reach only a specific target group, usually a travelling posse of workers, while a stranger was treated with reverence.

* COUNTY (Administrative division)*

A county in common sense was called several villages, united by a land register, a church parish or geographical features. It could be the first reason, another, and the third together. In some counties, there were several parishes or several communities. Usually, a county was situated along a river or lake. The villages were separated at a small but reasonable distance for fieldwork. People liked to settle on a higher ground overlooking the water.
There were lovely counties and were parishes so-so and sometimes quite shabby. Thus, the Kadnikovsk district of Vologda province county of Kumozero was one of the most beautiful places. The hills bordered along the picturesque lake, villages gravitated to the main village with the church visible for many miles around.
Not for nothing, the county was a place for the provincial Fair. It is challenging to imagine some other, more typical of the peasant life of the community than the county life.
   The county has always had its own name, was distinguished by a unique vitality and rarely yielded to administrative evisceration. It also sported its peculiar dialect and had its soul and guardian angel.
Like the nerves of a living body, kinship thoroughly permeated it, although marrying outside of their county was considered more attractive. All adult residents knew each other in person and by hearsay. And if they didn't know, then they sought to find out. "Whose are you, boy?" - asked a rider, a boy opening the gates. Or: "I, my dear, from Verkhoturie come, Ivan Clay's niece, but got married (again, should be the exact address) to Antip (an ongoing detailed account of who, where, and whose cousin this Antip)." Or: "It hurts so good the girls are; where you from gorgeous?" Something like this or that would start all the talk. Life of the county didn't tolerate ambiguous words, nameless people, secret affairs and locked gates during daylight hours.

* VILLAGE *

* Houses and buildings stand so close, so sometimes it was impossible to drive on the two-wheeler between them. You could drive only down the street, and cattle runs. To explain such overcrowding, a desire to save the land is absurd since there is a lot of land in the North.
     The laity built houses close by, driven by a sense of convergence and desire to be one with all. In case of a fire, the whole parish would attack the fire, and the poor, orphans, and widows helped all together, paid taxes as one unit, and delegates and soldiers were chosen together. All that was said about the county is inherent in the village, only in a narrower sense.
 Each village had a religious holiday, winter and summer; the rich villages always built their chapel.
    Every grief and happiness in the village was visible. The people knew everything about everybody, no matter how scrupulous people were trying not to wash dirty linen in public. Others, more reckless, saying what the heck or naively, even laid out unnecessary details at the court of public opinion. But this court has always been selective: one thing it would take seriously, others not so, but the third it did not notice.
For a man, there was nothing more terrible than loneliness. Even the bad-tempered, unsociable nature layman had (at least formally) to observe the communication custom, visit the family, talk with neighbours, and bow with all the Orthodox people. This formalism in contact was always very noticeable and incredibly well-sensed by children and animals. Beggars, too, almost always accurately determined the measure of sincerity of alms. If evil and solitary were doing (by necessity) good deeds, then what to talk about people by nature good, humane and gentle.
The village's opinion is paid back to every one according to their true self. An atheist was an atheist; a drunkard was a drunkard. You cannot hide behind any pretences. An honourable man in the parish was known and revered in his village and far outside the county. Those people were often industrious, kind, sometimes wealthy, but often not.
In the village, mutual assistance had been worked out to the last detail. Borrowing money was inappropriate, but people were willing to give and take everything else. Men borrowed leather, ropes, tar, birch bark, and grain from each other. It was possible to borrow the field equipment and a horse with a harness. Women kept borrowing and lending utensils and dairy products. When their own cows had not yet been with milk, it was customary to take milk in debt, with close relatives, as a gift. People borrowed even samovar coals or bread leaven when suddenly you couldn't find it at the house.
    People helped each other in big and small. Roll logs around the corner, babysit a child or grab something on the way to a neighbour - all this was considered a trifling favour. But how pleasant it was for you and the neighbour! There was an invisible threshold, a borrowing limit in all of this. To go to propose is still better to do in your own sleigh, and asking daily for the scales is not very handy...
All public issues - building roads, fences, walls, bridges - were addressed at public meetings. By the decision of the public gathering, night duty (patrol) was usually set.
In the 20s of the last century, it was combined with the duty of police constables in some places. Police constables organized public gatherings, gave lodging to pilgrims, and walked or drove on coaches for blind and orphans. A sign of the police constable was a plaque on the stake, put to a neighbour's gate after "patrolling" was done.
Your village was a home without any exaggeration. Even the most wicked apostate or drunkard, put by fate nowhere beyond the land's end, strove to go home. He knew that in his village, he would find sympathy, understanding, and forgiveness, even if he committed a sin ... And what could be more fruitful for an awakening conscience? To tear off a man from his homeland meant to destroy the economic and moral basis of his life.

The FARMSTEAD

On the compound usually lived one family, and if two were present, it was rare and temporary. The household of the same family in different places and at other times has been called different things (yard, smoke, draft, residence, etc.). The terminology was used to squeeze out the peasant's taxes and duties, but it also expressed other purposes of the family unit with all the economic and moral nuances.
    For the Russian people, the family has always been the focus of all their moral and economic activity, the raison d'être, the foundation not only of the state but also of the world order. Almost all ethical and aesthetic values were shaped in the family, assimilated gradually with their depth and seriousness.
If he is not a monk, every healthy adult has a family. Being fit and mature and not having a wife or husband was considered godless, unnatural and absurd. Childlessness was seen as a punishment and the fate of the greatest human catastrophe. Big, prominent families enjoyed in the village and parish universal respect. "One son - not a son, two sons - half of a son, three sons - a son," - says the old proverb.
    In that remark, there is a conclusion of the world. First, three sons must replace two of his father and mother, and a third to hedge their brothers. Secondly, if the family has many daughters, the family and the farm with three sons will not decline and not interrupt, and thirdly, if one goes to serve the prince and the second to God, then one of the three still remains.
    But before we talk about the moral and aesthetic atmosphere of the Northern peasant family, recall the key names of relatives. Husbands and wives were called "spouses" for special occasions and had many other names. For example, the boss, spouse, "spousenik," man, father, lord, dad, "himself" - this way, wives called their husbands in different circumstances.
  The wife was called a wife a wife, a lady of the house, "herself," mom. Add to these the names of a few vulgar names as a "broad," familiarly-loving "a little wife," economically justifiable, "big boss ."
    Mother was called mom, matushka, Mammy, mama, mother, and parent. Sons and daughters are frequently called father daddy or batyushka (modern "papa" was introduced relatively recently). Parents in the North have never formally accessed "you," as is common in Ukraine. Stepfather and mother, as they are known, are called the stepfather and stepmother and stepdaughter and son - stepdaughter and stepson. Children of brothers and sisters were called cousins. Small children often called their grandfather "Dedo" and grandmother "Baba," nephews called uncles and aunts sometimes bozhat, bozhatok, bozhatushkoy or godfather, godmother.
  The daughter-in-law came into another family's house and was obliged to call her father-in-law and mother-in-law as father and mother; they were for her "God-given" parents. Concerning the husband's father, the daughter-in-law was called "snokha," but concerning the mother and sisters of the husband - "nevestka ."
    Sisters called brothers "bratelko" (little brother"), and cousins sometimes called each other "friend and brother," as could do non-related friends.
 Fraternization of friends with the oath and the exchange of crosses and triple kisses was widespread and resulted from a special friendship or the events of salvation in the battle. Maiden's friendship, not connected by kinship, was set by a ritual: the girls exchanged the crosses. After that, the friends were called cross-exchanged. The term "My cross-exchanged" can often be found in the limericks. Fraternization and friendship oblige, making a person more circumspect in his behaviour.
 No accident is that the ancient proverb states that "nobody needs a strained horse, a broken bow and a friend with a soiled reputation." By "dever," a woman called her husband's brother and a sister of her husband "zolovka ." There is a proverb for this occasion: "Better to have seven axes than seven hoes ."That is better if the husband has seven brothers than seven sisters. "Zyat" (The son-in-law) is the husband of a daughter.
 The wife and husband's parents called each other "swat" (kinsman) and "swatya" (kinswoman). ("Swat" in the wedding ceremony is another person). Men married sisters are considered "swoyaki" (close ones), and the wife's sister is called, for some reason, "swoyachenniza" also. The title of "brother-in-law" exists only in the masculine, and for male relatives, it means the wife's brother and sister's husband is the son-in-law for both sexes. In this regard, the people come up with the humorous riddle: "Brother-in-law's nephew is what? In what kind of relation to the son-in-law?" Not right away; you can guess that it is a son.
There are countless poems, songs, and legends about the father's house. In terms of importance, the "native home" was one of the concepts of the Russian peasantry as death, life, good, evil, God, conscience, homeland, Earth, mother, and father.
    A sweet home for a man is definite and concrete in shape, as scientists say. The image is not abstract but always subjective, accurate and ... individual, even for members of one family, born to the same mother and grown under the same roof. This house is always different from other houses, even constructively, and even though it would be built down to a hair, just like someone else's, which was, in general, a rare case.
Building wooden and equipping two identical homes cannot be done even by the same carpenter, at least because all the trees in the forest are different, and every day of the year is also other.
The difference was in the very atmosphere of the family, its moral and aesthetic appearance, family habits, traditions and characters.
     Each house had a centre, something important about the entire farmstead. This focus, of course, has always been the hearse, a Russian stove that will not cool off as long as the house exists and if there is at least one living soul. Every morning, there has been a fire in the stove for many centuries to warm, feed, comfort and heal people. This fire is connected to my whole life. The home is alive until the hearse is warm; this physical warmth is equivalent to soul warmth.
And if there is a merger of the invisible world and the physically tangible one, the example of the hearth is ideal for such a merger. Since the beginning of Christianity, the hearse of the Russian house, apparently, gave way some of its "rights and duties" to the front right corner with the icon lamp and Orthodox icons. The shrine in the corner of the family table, which has always been present daily bread and salt, is the spiritual centre of a peasant's hut, both winters and summers. However, the hearse does not oppose the right front corner; they complement each other.
Favourite icons in Russian life, apart from Christ the Saviour, were considered the images of the Virgin (link to the significance of the lady of the house, "big-one," the keeper of the hearse and family warmth, is obvious), Nicholas the Miracle-worker (which is a carpenter and fisherman and hunter), and finally, the image of St. George, treading by the spear a serpent (defender by the force of the arms).
There were a lot of omens related to home and the hearth, all kinds of legends and superstitions. It was believed, for example, that it is forbidden to inundate the stove with a woman's head uncovered. "Grandfather behind the stove - tells Anfisa Ivanovna - put a pot on a lady's head, and she lived with the pot all her life."

* FAMILY

Generally, a loner, tramp, hobo, and people without families were considered punished by fate and God. Having a family and children was as necessary as an integral and natural as to work.
    The most significant moral authority together holds the family. This authority usually belongs to the traditional head of the family. However, the combination of leadership and moral authority is optional. Sometimes, such power was granted to the grandfather, one of the sons, or the "big one" (wife), while the formal rule has always belonged to the man, husband, father, and parent.
     Kindness, tolerance, and mutual forgiveness of wrongs develop in a good family into mutual love despite the diversity of the family. Curses, envy, and selfishness were not only considered a sin. They were personally disadvantageous for any family member. Love and harmony among family members initiated loving relationships beyond home limits. It is in vain to expect respect for others, neighbours in the village, the township or the county from a man who does not like and does not respect his own family.
 Even inter-ethnic friendship has its source of love for family and kinship. To expect the baby to be ready to love, for example, his uncle or aunt, is absurd; his love does not extend beyond the mother initially. The moral sphere expands with the physical expansion of the scope of knowledge.
The child gradually starts to pity the mother and father, sisters and brothers, grandmother and grandfather; finally, the family feeling becomes more vigorous than it can apply to aunts and uncles. Then, a direct blood relationship indirectly becomes the foundation for kinship because a quarrelsome, not respecting their daughter's old woman cannot be a good mother-in-law, as a coarse daughter will never become a good sister-in-law.
Compassion and love for relatives by blood are prerequisites, if not for love, then at least for deep respect for distant relatives. Just on this boundary line originate the springs of altruism flowing beyond the home. A contentious and quarrelsome disposition as a character's property is considered a punishment of fate and evokes pity for their carriers. Active response to such manifestations of nature did not bring the family any good. Giving in, forgetting the insult, answering well, or remaining silent was necessary.
The formal hierarchy in a traditional Russian family, as in the village and township, does not always coincide with morals, even though there was a desire for such. Therefore, the children respected and obeyed even a weak father; even a not-very-lucky husband enjoyed the wife's confidence.
    When the time came, the father would give away tacit, self-evident seniority to even a not-so-bright son. The strictness of family relationships was based on traditional moral principles, not the tyranny which excludes tenderness toward children and care for the elderly.
 For centuries, gender relations evolved in the peasant family, for example, between a wife and her husband and between sisters and brothers. Particularly evident are these relationships appear at work. The woman rolling onto the cart a colossal log or waving a hammer in the foundry was as absurd as a spinning yard blacksmith or milking a cowman.
    Widows usually picked up a hatchet only because of the great need, and the man (too often widowed) sat down with the pail under the cow.
All the executive power in the household held a "big one" - woman, wife and mother. She was in charge, as they say, with the keys to the whole house; she kept track of hay, straw, flour and other food. All the cattle and all domestic livestock, except horses, were under a "big one" supervision. Under her watchful control was all that was associated with family meals: fasting, baking bread and cakes, a festive table and the daily table, handling laundry and clothing repair, textile, and bathhouse.
 Of course, she needed to do more of this work. Children who barely learned to stroll, along with the game, began to do something useful. "Big-one" was not shy regarding rewards and punishments in the household. Over the years, the title "big-one" quietly passed management to the son's wife.
`The host, the head of home and family, was primarily a mediator in the relationship of the farmstead and the land society, the family and the powers that be. He was responsible for significant agricultural activity, plowing, sowing, construction, logging and firewood. He and his older sons carried all the physical burden of peasant labour on his shoulders. The grandfather (the owner's father) often had not only advisory but the casting vote in all these cases.
    Apropos, in a respectable family, any crucial matters were decided at the family councils and openly in the presence of children. Only distant relatives (or infirm paupers, living in the house until their death) wisely did not participate in these councils.
The Peasant family has evolved over the centuries; the people selected its most necessary "dimensions" and properties. Thus, it could be destroyed or provided to be inferior if the family needed to be more complete. The same happened with the sizeable superfluous number when, for example, two or three sons got married. In the latter case, the family becomes, to put it in a modern way, "unmanageable," so a married son, if he had brothers, sought to secede from his father's household. The parish would cut him a piece of land from a public fund, and the house was built with help from all the family. Daughters, growing up, too, left their father's house. Moreover, each was trying not to marry before her elder sister. "You do not thresh each other sheaf,» - said about the unwritten law of this priority.
     Children in the family are considered to be the subject of general worship. The unloved child was a rarity in the Russian peasant life. With age, people who have not experienced parental and family love as a child become miserable. Widowhood and orphanhood have been considered tremendous and irreparable sorrow since ancient times. Offending an orphan or widow meant to make one of the most grievous sins. Growing up and standing on their feet, orphans would become ordinary people, but the wounds of the orphanage did not heal in the hearts of each of them.

* CHILDHOOD *

Writers and philosophers call childhood the happiest time in human life. Carried away by this assertion, we might think facing an unhappy time in life, such as old age, is inevitable. However, people's views of life do not allow talking about it with such certainty. It would be a gross mistake to judge people's outlook on life from the mind's perspective, by which man is only happy in his childhood, that is, while he does not know about death.
 There was no opposition from one life period to another for a Russian peasant. Life for him was a whole thing. This unity is based not on permanency but on a constant and inevitable change. The boundary between childhood and infancy is unclear, as it is unclear when changing, for example, night and morning, spring and summer, the creek and the river. And yet, despite this uncertainty, they exist separately: the night and morning, the brook, and the river.
     It is best to think that childhood begins when a person can remember himself. But again, when does it really start? Smells, sounds, a play of sun rays recalled from infancy. (Some people seriously claim that they remember how they were born.)
By peasant's ways, you're not a baby anymore if you are weaned from the maternal breast. But some "babies" were breastfed up to the age of five. After that, breastfeeding was interrupted by the prospect of another child.
    Maybe weaning from the maternal breast is the first severe hardship in life. Is it not a tragedy for a little human being when he is full of expectation and confidence to mother, once clung to the nipple, smeared with mustard? The culmination of infancy was considered when the children learned to walk and get their first clothes and shoes. The ability to ignore unpleasant and horrific things (e.g., death) is probably the main feature of childhood. But this does not mean that the grievances of childhood are forgotten quickly. On the contrary, the child's soul absorbs equally greedy the evil and the good, the evil and the good impressions remembered equally vividly for life. But evil and sound do not change places in the peasant view of the world, unlike the yolks and whites in the egg; they are never mixed.
 The atmosphere of kindness around a child was considered mandatory. It did not mean pampering and indulging. The steady, kind attitude of the adult toward a child does not contradict accountability and strictness, which grew gradually. As mentioned, the degree of responsibility before society and the physical load at work and in games depended on age. They grew slowly, imperceptibly, but steadily, not only from year to year but maybe with each day. The didactic and forceful imposition of good habits caused bitterness, resistance, and opposition in the children's hearts. If the boy is being dragged by the hand into the fields, he will obey. But what's the use of such obedience? Nothing is forced to do; the child himself wants to work. Adults just wisely protect him from the crushing workload.
A typical child's desire for imitation immeasurably enriches education more than coercion. A personal example of the behaviour of adult life (grandparents, parents, siblings) stood in front of the child's inner eye. Is that why in good families rarely, very rarely come out bad people? The family has been instilled in childhood immunity to moral artifice.
 The world of childhood has expanded rapidly and every day. Then, a person was finally leaving the lived-in, familiar to the last twig crib, and the whole room became an everyday three-dimensional world.
    Behind the stove, under the stove, in the scullery, behind the cupboard, under the table and under the benches - all were studied, and everything was familiar. You are not allowed only into the trunks, cabinets and the shrine.
    In the summer, you are to new discoveries. The whole house becomes a sphere of habitual, maternal, and usual. The house (summer and winter), hay attic, upper floor, a tower (loft), county, barn, basement and all kinds of nooks and crannies. And after that, the whole street, and the entire village... Field, forest, river, and mill, where kids went with grandfather to grind flour ...
    The first night away from home, finally, the first visit to another village - all this is the first time. In childhood, as in other periods, no spring or fall was like the previous ones. After all, each year of a child's life meant something new. If you were allowed to simmer only in shallow water last year, swimming where deeper water is now possible. Thousands of such changes, innovations, and more complex skills, games, and customs had been experienced in his childhood; everyone would remember them and, of course, become familiar with them in their own children.
     Children's memories are always concrete and shaped, but everybody remembers something more, something less. So, for example, if the talk is about spring, almost all remember the feelings associated with spring tasks.
Take out of the internal window frames, and the house became brighter and fresher. The street is peering directly into the house. Set up the birdhouse with the father, grandfather or elder brother. Drain water (building dams, ditches, toy windmills). Lower the boat on the water. Grease boots with tar and dry them in the sun. Collect ants and distill the ant spirit. Undercut birch bark (for collecting and drinking birch sap). Forage the first mushrooms and crocuses. Harvest sorrel. The first game in the street. The first angling trip…
     In summer, children have faced so many things that some were lost with joy, did not know where to rush, and did not have time to experience all that fun to learn.
The play was alternated with easy work or merged with it, and valuable merged\ with pleasure quietly and firmly. A playful element in the work process, first tested in childhood, remained in many kinds of compulsory labour, if not for life, but for very long. All of these wigwams on the meadows, huts in the forest, fishing, campfires with baking potatoes, mushrooms, perch, horse riding - all of this transpassed to subsequent stages of life with a fair amount of play, child's fun
 A certain intangible edge in the transition from one state to another, sometimes the opposite, is the most exciting thing in childhood. Children are the most refined connoisseurs of such elusive- natural conditions. But even adults know that the most delicious potatoes are slightly crunched on the verge of raw and baked. Okroshka (Cold soup with kvas(a drink from fermented rye bread ) suddenly acquires a unique charm when something hot is dropped. 
    A child feels a strange pleasure, dropping snow into boiling water. A towel brought in from the cold into a warm house smells like something in particular; the blackness of the bath in the oven and the dazzling dawn in the window create an unusual atmosphere. Fractions of a second before jumping over the obstacle, a moment when the swing is moving upward but is about to begin the reverse movement, the moment before a hunter shoots, before falling into water or straw - all this creates a strange rapture of happiness and fullness of life. A sound of cracking and deflection of the thin autumn ice under the ice skates when all passes over again, and no one falls into the cold depths of the pool. 
A premonition of what the suddenly immobile float will just now disappear from the water's surface! This moment is the most beautiful in angling fish. And is not the most wonderful; is not the most thrilling love on the brink of childhood and youth in this brief and too elusive time?
In the autumn, harvest time is particularly pleasing to play hide and seek between sheaves and among the stacks, ride horses, make holes in large piles of straw, heat the barn stove, climb elderberry trees, chew turnips, munch peas ...
    And the first ice on the river opened hundreds of new experiences and opportunities for children. So the winter brings up kids; it's no less fun than the summer.
 After getting frozen on the river or in the snow, how nice it is to climb onto the stove close to the grandfather and fall asleep without hearing his story till the end! And cry if you missed something interesting. And happily calm down after the paternal or maternal affection. The temperature contrast appropriate for a child's body, repeated with the increase, has always been the foundation of physical conditioning; it was nothing for the five-year-old child to jump out of the hot bathhouse into the snow.
But children in good families were also protected from psychological contrasts.
    Tender care was not necessarily explicit, but it manifested itself everywhere. Here are some examples. When the old stove is removed ( to make a new one), someone will make a baby bird out of clay for a child; when slaughtering a sheep or calf, they will undoubtedly condition and blow the animal's bladder, put into it a few peas (a dried bladder turned into a children drum). If the father is carpentering, he necessarily chops small blocks for children. When the kholodetz (calves' foot jelly) is boiled, the boys get particular bones ("babki"), and the girls get ankles. The hunter gives a child a fluffy white rabbit's tail tied to a thread every time.
     When beer is brewed, the children trooped to gnaw stones. At the end of the summer, children have a particular pea lot in the garden. Returning from the woods, everyone tries to bring the kids a gift from a fox, hare or bear.
Giving a ride to a child on a sled or a cart was considered optional but desirable. They were woven, tiny baskets and buckets for children, and made small rakes, scythes, etc.
 In addition to general foods, children's sweets were distributed by age and merit. Some of such homemade, rather than purchased, treats were apples, bones (during cooking jelly), "yagodnitsa" (pressured blueberries or strawberries in milk), and foam from the baked ("roasted," as they say) milk. When oatmeal is cooked on the fire, a delicious crisp foam rolls on a stirring wooden wand and gives it to the children. Grilled potatoes, onions, turnips, carrots, berries, birch juice, peas - all that was available to children, as they say, by an unwritten law. But following the law was not always exciting.
Therefore, stealing vegetables and apples counted first among the classic childish mischiefs. Another grievous sin has been destroying birds' nests; those engaged were rare and incorrigible. Forbidden was thought to watch how people eat or drink tea in somebody's house (such children were called "vislyatyu" (snoopers)). However, giving someone else's child a treat from their table was considered normal.
A special place in the child's soul occupied pets: a horse, cow, calf, dog, cat, and rooster. All except the rooster had different names, characters, and good or bad qualities, in which children were dealt with superbly. Sometimes, adults are assigned to a child an individual animal, so to speak, to take personal care of.

* ADOLESCENCE *

What is the difference between childhood and adolescence? They differ in many things, but there is no clear division: all the changes are gradual, and other period features overlap and grow into each other.
 Conditionally, the boundary between childhood and adolescence can be defined as when a person shows a meaningful interest in the opposite sex. For example, one day, when the bathhouse is heated up, the mother, grandmother or sister prepares a boy to wash, and he suddenly begins to act up, hang back and throw out the "tricks." -"Well, now you're going to wash with your father!" - calmly said grandma.
     And, all at once, it falls into place. Sister, and sometimes the mother, did not know what was going on, why the brother or son began to mutter something under his nose and elbowing. The overall moral atmosphere did not require any special sex education. It spared fledgling adolescent self-esteem, encouraging modesty and chastity. Observing the lives of farm animals, people have gradually learned about basic physiology in their childhood.
  There was no need to explain how and why a child was born, what occupied the bride and groom on the wedding night, etc. This was not mentioned because everything that goes without saying and talking about it is unnecessary, indecent, and unacceptable.
    Such modesty from adolescence passes into youth, often maintained for a lifetime. It gave the stability of romantic feelings, which arranges not only sexual but also social relations. In adolescence comes a man's first and most often not the last infatuation, the first love with all its psychological bouquet. Before that, boys or girls were "rehearsing" their first real love by the previous enthusiasm for adult "objects" of the opposite sex. And if such a frivolous infatuation is ridiculed, make fun of both. The first true love is usually spared, and the family tries not to notice. Moreover, a teenager could keep his fiery secret not worse than an adult. The mystery is often revealed only in youth when the feeling is legalized by public opinion.
     The circumstances surrounding the first love explain all the behavioural features at this age. If previously, as kids, people were open, and now they become insulated, the frankness with family and friends has been replaced by silence and sometimes rudeness.
    Streetlife is also imperceptibly transformed. In childhood, boys and girls played the same games together. In adolescence, they often play separately and make fun of each other.
Building a boy's character largely depended on the teenager's games. Relationships in these games were particular. For adults, they sometimes seemed simply cruel.
    If the family was allowed leniency for a teenager, even tenderness, then a Spartan spirit reined in the peer relationship (especially in games). No allowances for age or physical handicaps existed.
Often, testing his physical endurance or being provoked, the teenager enters the game unprepared. As a result, he would "hounded" without pity the whole evening, and if he did not recoup, they moved the game to the next day. It is difficult to imagine the state of a loser, but even more, he would have suffered if peers felt pity for him and left the situation as it was. (This is only about sports and physical competitions, not intellectual endeavours.)
Adults reluctantly tried not to interfere. But nevertheless, it was absolutely fundamental: to break out, win, and win himself without assistance. One such victory while still in adolescence turns a boy into a man.
 Games for the girls did not have a similar focus; they differed by calm, lyrical playing relationship. Of course, a young person's life is allowed to have time to engage freely in games. But they have already been supplanted by more serious business, not excluding elements of the game.
    First, the teenager is increasingly drawn into the work process. Secondly, games are increasingly replaced by entertainment, peculiar to youth. Finally, adolescents of both sexes may have to mow the grass, harrow, pull, cart, hang flax, cut pine twigs, and tear bark.
 Of course, all this was done under the adults' invisible guidance and close supervision. Competition, or working, gaming and other rivalries are especially characteristic of youth. An adolescent sometimes had to hold back because he wanted to learn to plow before his peers, so all the girls, big and small, have seen it. He wants to cut wood more than a neighbour so that no one calls him a little boy or lazy. He wants to catch fish for mother's pies and gather a few berries to treat younger kids.
     Fantastic combination of a child's privileges and the responsibilities of adults observed in this period of life! But no matter how good childhood privileges are, youth were already ashamed of them, and if they used them, then with caution. So, he could still complain and beg his mother for a tasty treat at home, in the family, among his younger siblings. But if in the house turned out to be peers or just strangers, being "a little one" was shameful.
Consequently, for adolescents, an unwritten code of conduct existed. The boy at this age should have been able to (tried, anyway) make a handle, tie fishnets, harness a horse, cut pine twigs, tear bark, herd the cattle to graze, and fish. But, instead, he was ashamed to cry. He knew that fallen is not beaten, and two do not attack one, that, if made a bet, the word must be kept.
Girls at age twelve spun a the lot and well learned to weave, sew, helped to mow, knew how to knead bread and cakes, although they were not trusted with this, as the boys were not charged with such tasks as grinding an axe, killing a cock or a sheep, ride without adults to the mill.
Adolescents have the right to invite their relatives or friends of the same age; visitors could sit at a table like adults, but they could only drink non-alcoholic drinks. They imitated more senior guys who were "having fun" for real at youth gatherings. Time existed to exit the excess energy and meet the needs for self-indulgence and deliberate valour - the Yuletide. Public opinion was not exactly encouraging then, but it condescended to teenage pranks. Have fun for Christmas week, and then please behave like decent people all year. A year is a great deal. So, get used to the festive antics. There wasn't enough time. They are approaching a different time of life.
«An unbecoming girl laughs and talks with everybody, runs around the suspicious places and streets, baring breasts, sits down close to the strangers, elbows and not sitting quietly, but sings profane songs, and gets drunk. Then, gallops on tables and benches, let her be dragged to all corners like a bitch. For where there is no shame, there is no humility. Of which questioning said Lyukretsiya the truth: if a girl loses shame and honour, what else is left?" -" Youth honest Mirror" manuscript from the XVI century.

* YOUTH *

"We obeyed our elders, - says Anfisa Ivanovna," who never read "Youth Honest Mirror," - you cannot visit a nearby village without permission." So you'd say: "But I want to go." My mother and grandmother answered: "Eat yours want with bread!" Or: "Everyone claims to know the girl, but not everybody saw her." And if you go out, you are given an order: "Try to keep your mouth more closed than open." Do not laugh, then.
    Shame is one of the significant moral categories if we talk about people's understanding of morality. This concept is on a par with the honour and conscience, of which Alexander Yashin said:
" In the myriad of riches, our words are precious: Fatherland, Loyalty, and Brotherhood." And there is Conscience, Honour... "

    There was a natural reticence (let's not confuse it with shyness) as an acquired one. At any age, from the earliest, reticence adorned a person and helped to resist the pressure of temptations. It is vital at the time of physical maturation. Lust was quietly restrained by usual shame, leaving the moral purity of even a spiritually immature young man.
  For this, the people did not need a unique rule printed in the printing house like "Youth Mirror." Instead, solid suggestions are interspersed throughout that book with such advice: "And this is a great deal of infamy, often when someone blows his nose, like trumpets into the tube ..." "Obscenely at a wedding to wear boots and bot-forts, so that those boots strip clothes from the female sex, and they to cause great noise, so men are not so hasty in his boots than without them."
     Clearly, the book is not of peasant origin since the peasants did not wear "bot-forts» and did folk dance at weddings, not ballroom dancing. More reveals the basis of "Mirror" advice: "Youths should always speak with each other in foreign languages to get used to it, and especially when they happen to say that the secret is so the servants and maids could not understand and that they can be distinct from blockheads ... " Here, it turns out, for what were functional foreign languages to honourable dudes multiplied under cover of the Tsar Peter's reforms. Possession of "manners" and foreign languages completely separated the upper classes from the people.
    Adolescence grew into youth in a few years. A boy finally developed physically and comprehended traditional agricultural, forest, and household labour skills.
    Only professional skills (carpentry, blacksmithing, and women's "linen" art) required further development. Others mastered these skills their whole lives and could only learn them at the end.
 But is it a disadvantage to him and his close ones because of such a desire? If the guy does not learn how to build dom churches, he will make a house with no problem. If a girl could not understand how to weave in "nine nooks," she would weave a simple canvas.
     Youth is full of fresh energy and creative thirst, and whether in a house, a village, or the country, everything is okay; this time of life is beautiful in itself, and everything in it is happy and harmonious. The girl or guy has time to talk, walk, and work in such circumstances.
But even in the worst times, household responsibilities and age requirements rarely contradict each other. On the contrary, they are mutually supportive.
For example, everyday work for guys and girls has never been a burden. Even the hardships of logging, which began in the late '20s and lasted for about thirty years, people have suffered relatively quickly thanks to this circumstance. Haymaking time, walking to the fence, the spring sowing, carting, and many community help events give young people a unique opportunity to meet and communicate, significantly affecting the quality and quantity of work made. Who wants to pass for a lazy, slob, or ignorant?
    After all, everyone in his youth dreams that someone will fall in love with him thinks about getting married and marriage and tends not to disgrace his family and people.
     Labour and festivities seemed to tame each other. One does not allow the other to transform into ugly forms. You cannot stay up all night until morning if you need to get up before sunrise and go to the pasture with the horses, but you cannot plow till dusk because of the evening festivities at the church. However, it also happens that sleepy bachelors would go into the forest and purposely not find the horses, flop in the shepherd's hut. But those guys were left with the untilled plot that day, and it threatened more severe consequences than the one referred to in the maiden limerick:
"My dear, it is hard to walk around mocked. Every my sweetheart has a non-sown pasture."

 Non-spoiled maidens also had to get up early, especially in summer. "In the morning, my mother wakes me up, and I continue to sleep in a hurry." The parents rarely played the same tune. If the father was strict, the mother always guarded her daughter against too hard work. And vice versa. If both parents are excessively hard-working, then the defendant was represented by a grandfather, or older brothers always somehow silently guarded the sisters. The strictness in the family is balanced with kindness and humour.
    Most acquaintances occurred in childhood and adolescence, mainly during visits, because people visited even the most distant relatives. They say " seventh water of a ninth of porridge" but still know each other and walk miles for fifteen or twenty to visit. Practically, if not in every village, then in every parish, there were close or distant relatives. Many would befriend strangers if there were no relatives in the remote town.
    Collective walking to other villages for festivities further enhanced chances for singles. To go for a walk for 10-15 km in the summer was nothing to talk about, especially if the weather permits. The return was the same night if went as guests - in a day or two, depending on the household circumstances.
    In the relations of boys and girls, there was no kind of patriarchal pedantry, as they say, if you take a walk with someone, then take walks till you get married. Not at all…
 From adolescence, acquaintances and interests have changed; young people kind of "grind" to each other, looking for a pair of soul and character. This does not exclude, of course, cases of the first and only love. Evidence of spiritual freedom and freedom of choice in youth's relationships are thousands (if not millions) of love songs and limericks.
    The feminine side does not look passive and dependent. Betrayal, love, break-ups, and interruptions are showered in these often improvised and always heartfelt ditties. Parents and elders were not strict about the behaviour of young people, but only up to the wedding. The newlyweds were deprived of this freedom and the ease of making new friends forever and ever. At that time, an entirely different life began.
Therefore, the wedding can be a sharp and well-defined boundary between adolescence and adulthood. But even before the wedding, freedom and lightness of new acquaintances, infatuations, and "loves" do not mean sexual freedom and frivolous behaviour. You can go for a walk, get to know, but ... Maiden honour is above all. There were apparent boundaries of what was permitted. They transgressed very seldom. Both sides, both male and female, tried to observe chastity.
 It is easy to fall into a gross error if the judge of public morality on separate cases is easily mistaken!
Here are just two: a drunk, a deranged reveller, off all the brakes, starts to sing during the obscene dance limericks, and the audience approves and, most surprisingly, truly supports him. But later, no one will treat him seriously ...
 Latest marvels like the circus and fairground ride with invisible women everyone would perceive with naive, almost childlike delight approving. But overall, the prevalent global attitude to all of this was, for some reason, definitely sarcastic.
    But in some questions of morality, public opinion was cruel, unyielding, and merciless. Bad maiden reputation rolled away very far. It wasn't stopped by any forest or swamp. A sin committed before the wedding could not be whitewashed by anything. But after the birth of an illegitimate child, as a girl would be forgiven her mistake, humanity prevailed over moral principles. Mother or grandmother of out wedlock mother to any attack responded with a proverb: "Whose steer would be jumping, but the calf is ours." It is an erroneous view that the need for chastity applies only to the women's side. A guy who had physical intimacy with a woman before the marriage, too, was considered tainted. A tarnished reputation harmed him, and he was called not a lad but a "dude."
 Of course, each of the two who conspired against chastity counted on secrecy, especially the girl. The secret, however, would come out eventually. The initiative of the sin usually comes from a guy. In itself, it depends on his moral level, which in turn depends on the moral status of his family (village, parish, society). An immoral family did not teach an individual how to spare others and keep the word. The heart of such a dude usually burns a desire to boast, and the secret is gone. A girl's bad reputation also impacted the perpetrator; he would be accused by the same measure.
Moreover, if they were real, all his feelings toward the girl would rapidly disappear, and he would switch to another "object" and eventually get married, somehow, not in a proper way.
With a tarnished reputation, the girl also had difficulty finding a partner. Now, it was not about love, but just getting somebody. Even a guy from a good family, but with the stigma of sin, lost his "prince charming" title, and proud girls avoided such candidates.
The veritable drama of love relationships experienced by most physically and morally healthy people, after even a happy love, does not exclude some drama. The beauty of relations between young people sometimes fed such mutually exclusive properties that coexist within one person as glibness and chastity, modesty and mischief.
     Love meant the same thing as pity; love could be "hot" or "cold." High poetry of the marital relationship is vividly reflected in a folk song:
"Do not sing, sing the little lark. You sing the spring on a thawed trail.
You send your voice through the dark forest, the pine forest, Moscow stone-walled, and a strong fortress!
 There was imprisoned a Good Fellow. He had been sitting there not for a year or two years. He sat there for precisely nine years.
In the tenth year, he started writing a letter. He began to write a letter to his father and mother. Father and mother refused: "Because we never have had thieves in the family. He also wrote to his young wife. Young wife got into tears..."
    But marriage is not only moral or spiritual but a material and economic necessity. Young years were marked by expectation and preparation for this significant life event. It stood on a par with birth and death. The too-late or too-early marriage appeared to people as a misfortune. The big difference in the bride and groom's age also ruled out a whole and beautiful relationship. Unequal and repeating marriages among the peasants were regarded as unhappy and economically disadvantageous from the economic point of view. Such marriages were cruelly mocked by widespread rumours. Beauty and anomaly exclude each other. There was often not only age but also income inequality. But it could not seriously affect the moral code built over the centuries. Pity (love as we call it now) overrode everything else.

* COMING OF AGE *

 Life in reminiscences of old people is invariably divided into two halves: before and after marriage. And indeed, not yet subsided the songs and not got the wedding cake staled as the entire way, all way of life is changing dramatically. In which direction? Such a question would have sounded naive and inappropriate.
In such cases, "bad" and "good" categories retreat to the background. Marriage is not fun (although it is, too). It is not a personal whim but a vital natural necessity connected with the new responsibility to the world and with fresh, not yet experienced joys of life. It's as inevitable as, for example, the sunrise or the onset of autumn.
There was no freedom of choice. Only a physical deformity and mental illness released people from the moral duty to marry. But even a moral obligation is not perceived as a duty if a person is morally sane. It may be the duty only for an immoral person. Because to prescribe genuine people's morality, it did not require any written codes of the said "Mirror" or "Flower Garden," where the monastic rules of conduct are collected.
Finally, the dramatized wedding ritual, which lasted several weeks, was completed. Time has come of age. Time to mature is the biggest time span of human life.
 Time after the wedding is the most exciting and hazardous for a new family. The terms "evil eye" or "spell" are considered in the civilized world to belong to superstitions. But it's not a matter of "black magic." The first threads of weak conjugal relationships are easily broken by one unkind word or an angry, contemptuous gaze.
 The psychological adaption of a bride to the world of no longer a stranger's family is not always quick and smooth. Though based on a common tradition, habits, especially the rules, are different in all families and houses. In some, such customs as pancakes to bake thin; in others, they like them thick; in this house, they saw firewood to one length; in another, they do different because there are different stoves, and the stoves are other because the masters who built them are not the same.
 It is difficult for a young woman accustomed to the girl's freedom, parental care, and affection to enter a new life in a new family. About this, the people have composed countless songs:
"You'll come beyond the irrecoverable line, and from that place, you will never come back. Never put on girl's clothes again. Because flowers don't bloom after fall, don't grow grass in winter's snow. Never will you be a maiden again."

A dramatic change of life state, evident in folk songs, is often taken as evidence of Russian women's terrible family situation, of their inequality and oppression. However, the legend of this inequality is fading away from the light touch of folk and literary monuments.

 "Do not worry, dear ones, I will not stay alone; 

if not you, then your friend will belong to me," - publicly and loudly sings a girl at the gathering if the guy starts to think too highly of himself.
  On a failed marriage, there was such a song:
  "Whatever she was, but got married to such a young man but a boor.
  He does not know how to treat me; he goes to a party without saying goodbye.
  And coming back to the gates, ignorant, screaming, and yelling:
 "Unlock wife, wide gate! "
 Oh, how I, young wife guessed, quietly got up, bare feet shoes put on,
  I have locked the gates tight: "Oh, you go sleep, boor, but outside the gates, your soft bed is yes, white snow, your high pillow is the gateway, your warm blanket is the winds of violent, you coloured curtain are the stars countless, yes you strong guards are gray wolves."

 
 That point is that the people to no one had not occurred to oppose a woman to a man, the family to the head of the family, children to parents.
 Neither Avdotya from Ryazan from the epic or historic Martha-Governor's Wife nor Alena (Nekrasov's and Lermontov's) resembles the downtrodden, unequal, or degraded. A historian, Kostomarov, speaking of the "Russian Truth" (the first known set of Russian laws), wrote: "A married woman enjoyed the same legal rights as men. However, for her murder or insult to her, the pay was the equal amount."
 Literacy or illiteracy Rights in Ancient Russia also did not depend on sex. "Princess of Chernihiv Euphrosynia, the daughter of Michael Vsevolodovich, started in Suzdal a school for girls, where they were taught to read, write, and church singing," - said the same Kostomarov, based on the chronicles. Equality and sometimes the superiority of women in the family were due to the economic and moral needs of the Russian national life.
What is the point for the head of the household to beat his wife or keep at bay the entire family? Only a spoiled, stupid man without a king in the head allowed such actions. And if natural stupidity though with a smile but was forgiven, then acquired stupidity (tyranny) was mercilessly derided. A bad reputation of the family tyrant, like the glory of a girl's dishonour, ran "in front of the sled."
 The authority of the head of the family was kept not on fear but on the conscience of the whole family. To maintain this credibility, you must be respected rather than feared. Such respect could be gained only by personal example: hard work, fairness, kindness, and consistency.
 If you remember more about kinship and parent-child love, it becomes clear why younger children "feared" elders. That "fear" for children did not come from fear of physical harm or even punishment but from shame, from the pangs of conscience.
In a good family, one condemning look of a father forced family members to tremble, while in the other, the rod, belt or just his fists were perceived quite indifferently. Moreover, the dominance of brute force and fear of physical pain flourished in deception, the secret mockery of elders and other vices.
     Headship from father to eldest son passes not at once but with the aging of father and son and the accumulation of life experience. So leadership kind of slips bit by bit and is poured down from generation to generation because the nominal head of the family is the grandfather, father of the father. But, still, to all, including the grandfather, it is clear that he is not the head anymore.
 Traditionally, the grandfather still has the first word at the family councils, but it is consultative rather than decisive, and he does not see this as an offence. The owner's father and son clearly show how to share the essence of seniority: one provides a form of rule, the other content. All this is gradually shifted.
 The same goes for the female "half" of the house. Young housewives, with the passing years, become the main hand "at the oven," and hence, "the big one." It happened naturally because the mother-in-law grew old and could not always carry buckets of fodder to the cattle to knead the bread. Once you start to bake bread, you have the key from the flour chest. If you milk cows, you pour milk and churn butter, and the loan must be given out not by the in-laws but by yourself. So, the one who makes better pies will obtain seniority.
For unmarried sisters to stay at home for too long was unnatural. It turns out that marrying younger sons was also necessary, if only because of a crowded house. But is it only a cramped house that shaped this need? Before marrying, the second son's father, grandfather, and eldest son began to think about building a new place for him, but the end of construction would often coincide with the wedding. The two married brothers lived with their families under his father's or grandfather's roof for some time. Women's quarrels, common in such cases, hurried construction.
After gathering help (sometimes double or triple), the father and sons quickly finished building the house for a younger son. The same happened with the marriage of the third and fourth sons unless war or some other scrape with all his impudence was bursting into people's lives.
 Conjugal fidelity was the basis of marital love and the well-being of the whole family. The peasants' wives cried when their husbands were jealous because jealousy meant distrust. It was believed that if a man does not trust, then there is no love. They cried that he did not love, but not because he was jealous.

* OLD AGE *

Sometimes, there is no sharp boundary between the time of the blooming of all forces of man and old age. Smoothly, slowly, and quietly, a man approaches his old age. Time moves at different speeds in all seven periods of life. Years of maturity are most numerous, but they fly faster than years of childhood or old age. How can this be explained?
    "Life is not only for youth, but death is also not only by old age"—as the saying goes, but it is not entirely comprehensive to a modern man. So much can be said to decipher this proverb. For example, youth cannot be considered a period of monopoly with the possession of happiness and joy unless you see happiness as something fixed and unchanging throughout life…
     People believe the essence of happiness is different in different periods of life.
    "Sasha sat down on the sleigh, flying like an arrow fast, full of happiness, from the mountain of ice," wrote N.A. Nekrasov about childhood. But how can you experience the same happiness, sliding from the mountain, for example, at an age when Sasha or Masha says, "She will pass by and like the sun shines on! She will look at you, and you feel like a million rubles!"
And at the time of old age, not any peasant woman in her right mind would dream of going to the rye and seriously expect from the fate of ... "the whole piece of calico, a scarlet ribbon to braid, belt, white shirt, belted in the hayfield." All of that, she wishes no longer for herself but for her daughter. Her daughter's happiness is the happiness of her own.
    Does this mean the daughter's happiness is greater than the mother's? A question again needs to be corrected. You cannot compare the joy of youth with happiness in old age. It is quite different both in form and content. The same can be said about love or "pity." A child loves his mother and other relatives. A boy suddenly begins to feel sympathy toward a stranger of the other sex. Finally, the sympathy goes into either an incomparable feeling of love or an irresistible desire into something sublimely tragic. The complexity and drama of this moment are in a fierce conflict between the spiritual and physical, high romance and mundane reality. This contradiction is resolved with a long, almost ritualistic premarital period and the wedding ceremony.
After the wedding, love (compassion) is reborn naturally and becomes qualitatively different, less vulnerable and more thorough. From unfathomable celestial heights, the romantic feeling was tearing down, falling on hard ground, but the marriage bed, prudently stockpiled by life, softened the blow.     
    The birth of children has almost always completely dispelled a sublimely romantic haze. Compassion (love) between the spouses of each other became rougher and more profound. It was fastened to the overall responsibility for children and universal love for them.
 After the birth of children, the couple sometimes kept some of an adolescent's lofty attitude that was not condemned but not very much encouraged by public opinion. Families without children are no families. Life without children is no life. If one year after the wedding, in the house does not yet creak the crib and slatted swinging cradle, the house is considered unlucky. The wedding, in such circumstances, remembered with some bitterness and then tried to quickly forget about it. Childlessness is the greatest misfortune, entailing humiliation of women, fake relationships, rudeness of men, and adultery. Childlessness upsets life harmony and throws off the rhythm. One unnatural causes another, and the house gradually becomes a scourge.
     Nevertheless, childless families are only sometimes destroyed. On the contrary, spouses honouring the sanctity of marriage either adopting children (orphans or from large distant relatives) or bravely bearing "the cross," getting used to the grave and single lobe.
 In a typical peasant family, all children were born primarily in the first ten or fifteen years of married life. "Pogodki" were called children to be taken with a year difference. Thus, even in a large family with ten or twelve children when the last was born, the eldest has yet to emerge from adolescence. This was important because pregnancy, when an adult child is still at home, was not very appropriate. And while no one directly blamed parents for the birth of a sudden "late child," spouses with the maturation of their first child and getting older, the rest of the children were not in such a hurry to enjoy the marriage bed ... They both have gradually returned to youthful chastity. Old age marked not only that.
Even the songs sung at adulthood and maturity were replaced by other, more appropriate meanings and forms. If, during a visit, joining the ring, the mother of an adult son sings about "boyfriend" or "betrayal," no one will take it seriously. Human behaviour is changing with the maturation of children, but physical aging is still very far away. Even a mature woman gets a girl's cheeks to blush during the holiday feast, but she cannot dance the old way when looking at her daughter-bride. Father, who just turned forty, still wants to compete or play dice seriously, but he never will because his sons should do it for real.
Under cover of futility, to defend them by a semblance of a joke, and in old age, he can still go to games, go fish perch, and buy his wife fairground candy. But marital status has moved you to the other cases and brings different, diverse entertainment. Love (compassion) for the wife or husband loses something appropriate or needed in their youth but becomes something new and unexpected for both spouses: tenderness, affection, and fear of losing each other. All this is carefully clapping for external roughness and feigned indifference. The couple even slightly criticized each other, and outsiders sometimes need to understand the essence of their genuine relationship.
Only the most talkative and straightforward laid out in conversations all the ins and outs of the family. They often ratted their "half," but it was generally innocuous. Self-irony and a joke rescued people this age, protecting their family affairs from unwary influences. "We sleep together, but money keeps separate" - with a severe look told a man about his relationship with his wife. Of course, everything is just the opposite.

* REALLY OLD AGE *

Physical and mental stress also gradually declines in old age, steadily increasing in childhood and adolescence. However, this does not mean the economic, productive uselessness of the elderly.
  Rich morals and working experience gave them equal rights in the family and society. If you cannot plow, nobody can do better sowing than you. Previously, he was chopping massive logs. Now, there is even more to do in the woods for him. It was simply a disgrace to hew pine needles, bark, and birch bark for mature men.
 If the grandmother could no longer weave canvas, she would again be called to the rescue when spinning. Without the old folks, a large family couldn't survive. If the family did not have a grandmother or grandfather, they would be invited to live with a lonely or disabled old woman, and she babysat the children.
An old person in a typical family did not feel a burden and did not suffer from boredom. He always had something to do; he was needed by each one separately and all together. He would lie on the stove and tell a grandson tales because telling or singing is no less entertaining than listening. To another grandson, he will make a pacifier from clay. Adolescent girls carve a spindle for a lady of the house, fix the kitchen tools, bring twigs for brooms, and then weave the shoes; daughter-in-law makes a brick-brack box, cuts spoon out of linden tree wood for everybody. It does take a lot of work to please everyone!
A really old man and a child are equally helpless and equally vulnerable. To an insensitive, thick-skinned man accustomed to the moral authority of parents, to their high standards, and spiritual and physical cleanliness, it will be hard to understand why grandmother over-salted cabbage and grandfather, always so careful, accurate, suddenly forgot to close the well or soaked his shirt. In such cases, to refrain from a reproach or rebuke could only men of high moral standing.
And it was precisely at such moments that his responsibility for the family matured, for its strength and prosperity, and not when he plowed a pen or cut down a new house. Of course, the attitude towards children and the elderly has always depended on society's moral level. This relation can probably almost accurately determine which way a nation goes and what awaits them soon. Another ethical and philosophical principle to judge people is the attitude toward death.
     Death to a Russian peasant seemed as natural as birth, but a solemn and menacing (and for many believers and even joyful) event, relieving from the physical suffering associated with senile decay and the moral anguish caused by the inability to continue working. Lacking their physical strength, old men did not lose their spiritual forces. Some called for the death, while others waited patiently for her. But as the saying goes: "Without death, one will not die." Suicide was considered a disgrace, a crime against themselves and others.
To the Northern Russian peasant, death did not cause fear or despair. On the contrary, it was the equivalent of the secret mystery of birth. Since you have already been born, death is as necessary as life. A natural and normal sequence in the changing age characteristics led to a philosophical, religious, and spiritual balance, a calm self-perception of the end of the road ... Namely, the sequence, the gradualism.
 While still of sound mind and strength, the old folks were quietly and with a certain solemnity preparing themselves for death. But meeting her calmly could only be someone who lived with dignity, sought not to do evil, and those who were not lonely had a family. According to popular understanding, the greater the sins are, the more difficult it is to die. Of course, there are no totally sinless people, and everyone felt the value of the degree of his own sins, their crimes before the people and the world. Pangs of conscience conform to the weight of this sin, so the religious rite of Communion and confession alleviated suffering from the dying.
Many people in old age look young. A Young, almost youthful face is a sign of kindness and a lack of evil. To some extent, longevity is dependent on kindness and health. Anger causes the disease, at least through our ancestors. From the contemporary point of view, it is naive. But naiveté is not necessarily stupid or absent of high inner culture.
Human life lies between two great mysteries: the secret of our appearance and the mystery of disappearance. Birth and death protect us from the horror of infinity. Both are associated with brief physical suffering. The child has it just as hard during childbirth as a mother, but the first pain is better than the last as the first battle. A man meets the labour of death, being prepared by life and overcoming physical suffering. Therefore, despite all the diversity of attitudes to end ("How many people, so many deaths…"), there was all the same/widespread/ attitude towards it - calm and wise.
It was believed that non-existence after death is the same as non-existence before birth, that earthly life is given to man as an award, and that something important is obscured from him by the secrets of those two mysteries. The logic and timeliness of all that inevitably being accomplished between birth and death affected all the features of traditional aesthetics.

**NATIVE NEST *

 Place, landscape, neighbourhood, and all the land, water, and sky were called a generic word - Nature. Yet, who needs to understand that beauty is different in different places? There is the spread of a bog with stunted pines; over there are surging hills, overgrown with magnificent pine trees. In one place, there is not even a tiny stream; the water is used from the wells, and in another, there is a river and a lake, and more than one, and also at different levels, like in Ferapontovo.
The natural beauty of one or another parish positively affects ordinary people's feelings. But never and nowhere had it influenced their sense of homeland. Impressions of the native nest and the enthusiasm of infant, child and adolescent experiences are born spontaneously.
 Local nature, like a mother, exists only in the singular. The world's wonders and beauty cannot replace some nondescript hill with a river bend where a birch or willow tree grows. The saying on this occasion says succinctly: "It is not lovely because it is good, but it is good because it is lovely."
 Homeplace will become even closer when men put their hands to it when every inch of the surrounding land is familiar to the touch and connected with clear household memories.
    The homestead and inside of the home, the hearth and the red corner were the focus of economic life, the center of the peasant world. This world is in the material, and moral sense was consistently expanding circles, which included the dwelling first, then the whole house. Then, finally, the farm, field, pasture, the long-burning and forest meadows located from the village for ten or fifteen miles.
 Nature begins immediately behind the gate. But the farther from home, the more independent it becomes and the wilder it grows. In remote, inaccessible places, the most subtle traces of human hosts received special significance: score, barely beaten path, just a stone in a stream or perceptible place where people rest. A forest's unspoiled wilderness, combined with such rare details and various incidents (for example, an encounter with a bear), becomes an exciting and unique experience with a strange intimacy. Such forest frightened, soothed, tortured, caressed, oppressed, and cheered. The man has the same way as urge to communicate and an inherent desire for solitude. These centripetal and centrifugal forces (if you speak the language of physicists) are balanced in the peasant household by the same opportunities. Needs for both communication and solitude manifested themselves from very early years.
In childhood, the desire for solitude is noticeable, for example, in the game "in a cage" when the child plays in a small but still his own "house." The need for privacy, mainly girlish, burns even brighter in youth. It is very noticeable in old age, not to mention the period of married life. The forest gives a person an excellent opportunity to be alone, philosophize, calm down, and reflect on their relationships with people. Such thoughts, however, were never an end in themselves. They have invariably accompanied some work.
The most challenging thing in the woods - is stubbing for arable land. The easiest is picking mushrooms and berries. Mikhail I. Kuznetsov, a great connoisseur of material and consumer culture of the Russian North, wrote: "A rare case where a resident of the North, who lives in the surrounding woods, will not find opportunities to replace the metal with wood. What's missing in the fir grove, in the riverside willow and elderberry bushes, he invariably found in a birch grove. This is a vast storehouse for him, where it was all he needed: blades, pitchfork, rake, handle, shaft, rocker and any size, slender, not yet had time to turn white birch. From birch twigs were woven rope belts to the plow. Rings were made from a jeweller's small size to half-meter diameter. These intertwined, coiled birch twigs tie logs in the rafting timber. The rings were required very often and a lot ...»
 The land reclaimed from the forest is called differently: burning, hooked, clearing.
All of this also had their own names, sometimes quite poetic. A wild and distant forest landscape, ennobled by mowing, a cozy bridge across the creek, lava through the bright and rocky, then calmly-sedge river, became very dear, like all places close to home. A lateral dike through the swaps in the faraway yielded a feeling of security and sustainability of life. A fire pit or firewood pile in the woods can be calming if one gets lost. A morsel of willow bark, a mark on a young birch tree, a familiar stump or an old log has strengthened the invisible connection between man and nature. But nothing has so ennobled the environment as the cut-out shed, the primary element of this ancient architecture and the whole economic system.

* FOREST HAYLOFT*

After a long walk, after a shaking and vicious drive in the impenetrable forest, through marches, hills, and dense bushes, suddenly opens a clean, mowed, or all in bloom meadow and in the clearing, there is a forest hayloft. And immediately disappears fatigue from the long, dangerous journey.
    The spirit of your distant ancestors, materialized for you by their tireless work, reflects in these finished, silvery from time logs. However, in the old days, nobody noticed that silver hue. It was all taken for granted and therefore was invisible. The forest haylofts initially were built from the same firs, pines, and sometimes the aspens, which grew at the site of the future meadow. Expanding meadows, a peasant cut down more trees, of which, if desired, can be made one or more haylofts.
 The logs were placed on each other without the moss but closely, without large gaps. In summer, there a cool breeze seeps through the cracks. The barn ventilates with hay, the moisture does not stick, and logs do not rot for a long time.
The roof was made of one slope; the runner covered the top, rarely with the shingles. The structure was built with two pitches also. Under the roof gutters often nested forest birds. Under the same roof, wasps spun and glued their laminated gray nest, similar to the salt-away. Instead of the usual plank floor, were used firwood logs.
    To build a barn takes a few days for two guys. Nobody bothered with the gates. Hay was taken away during winter when the swamp froze. The frosted blizzard mingled with the smell of snow and still stood apart from the scent of summer flowers. Such contrasts have met in peasant life very often. They have underlined the connection of the seasons emphasized the uniqueness of labour, tradition and general life experiences.

* HUT IN THE FOREST*

Peasant life in the North of our country is difficult to imagine without the forest. A plowman often combined hunting, fishing and forestry skills (collection of resin, extraction of tar, the procurement of coal, willow and birch bark, berries, mushrooms, etc.). Haymaking in the forest also forced not only to stay overnight but to live in the woods for weeks.

 Therefore, the cabin was simply indispensable. Not everybody would build it but it was used by all, from vagrants and beggars to merchants, and ending with the police officer if the cabin was standing near the road connecting the townships. Apparently, the hut in the forest is the most primitive, preserved in its original form, the oldest human habitation. A square cage with a single-window, with a ceiling of tightly finished spruce loges, with a flat or not very steep gable roof. The ceiling was insulated with moss pressed by a layer of earth. The door was made a small but tight, with the wood hinges made from birch brackets on the wooden hooks in the wall. Wide bunk beds made out of wooden planks were awaiting the weary workers. In small huts instead of bunks were arranged ordinary benches. In the middle or even in the corner was a dark, pleasant smelling with heat and smoke the trivet - hearth, built of large stones.

 Even now, an experienced hunter sets up a place overnight in the woods in an ancient way: after collecting rocks lines the bed of them on the damp, and even on frozen ground and starts on it the campfire. Heated, cleaned with the broom stones retain heat till the morning, it makes easier to beguile even the longest and cold night directly under the stars. Using this way a man created the hearth.

 Initially, the campfire was just surrounded by stones, then people learned how to build the walls, and that they would not fall apart, willy-nilly they had to bring the walls together. The cracks in the stone arch created an excellent draft. The bigger the stove, the less firewood was required and warmer was in the cabin. CO gas disappeared along with the extinction of coals. The chimney in the wall was closed and until the morning there was a warm and pleasant smell. The noise of wind in the frosty night forest forced to appreciate the warmth and comfort and to thank the person who built the cabin. A traveller quietly fell asleep with such feeling. In the summer, at the time of midges and mosquitoes, the smoke easily drove away from the cabin that numerous creatures.

No wonder about the good carpenter is said: "He hones the frame so that a mosquito cannot put his nose in." The cabin often had a parking space for the horse, sometimes it just was fenced, not cut, put the logs close to each other. A resemblance of the roof was arranged from light poles, pine needles and bark. Forest sheds on the banks of rivers and lakes were complemented with a boat mooring and lines for drying nets.

* * PASTURES**

No less than the building, the fence has shaped the surrounding view, especially in open places and close to water. A wall in the forest called "osiek," in the field it was "ogorod" or "wall," around the house was the palisades.
"Osiek" in the forest, together with a bridge, a glade and a road, animate the landscape, complementing the natural hills, streams, large stones, and hay meadows. In the summer, the peasants never herded cattle into the fields. For this purpose, they shielded large areas of forest. "Osiek" didn't let cows wander far; the shepherd by the bell's sound always knew where the herd was.
Sometimes the villagers put additional fences for two or three small pastures, so-called "suburbs." The entrances and driveways in the fields and pastures were carried out with "elbows" and gates.
 If an absent-minded person or even an evil man does not close the gates or doesn't do it properly, the horses could immediately go into the woods. There were times when people were looking for them for weeks afterward. It could be even worse if a herd of cows hits grain fields. Therefore, fencing, gates and challenges are maintained in good repair.
Interestingly enough, among the horses, you could often find mischief that broke the fence using the chest and even open the latch with the muzzle. And take away the whole herd to the oats field. Unfortunately, some cows also trained themselves in such vile skills, which often caused comic and tragic stories.
The accusation of intentional damage by cattle did not bode well.
The forest fence was attractive because of plenty of raspberry, currant and gooseberries bushes. It would not let to get lost in the woods and starve. (Even from the fields in dark autumn evenings, when nothing is visible, people returned home by touch on the garden fences.) A nearby pasture after distant meadows seemed quite familiar, homely. Trails and entire roads trampled down by the cattle in the most impenetrable places always took people to the gates in the run - a relatively narrow strip between two fences, leading through the fields to the village.
A shepherd's shed (a forest hut in miniature), built-in each pasture, attracted the young and old. Rarely a man wouldn't drum into hanging on the pole board. The fun here is combined with a benefit - to drum and hoot in the pasture was considered almost a duty of everyone. It drove away from the wild herd beasts.

* * THE THRESHING-FLOOR**

 The runway, and more often a direct route through the gate, led a rider walker into the field. In any weather, at any age, it is a pleasure to get out of the woods into the own fields, see the first field hayloft, then the threshing floor, and the whole village: a wide cluster of houses, granaries, baths, basements, firewood piles, nurseries...
Out of the woods, nobody ever was driving with empty hands, with the empty wagon. Everyone carries something with themselves or on themselves. Firewood, hay, pine needles, birch twigs for brooms, stakes, poles, rocks, bark, bark for shingles, decks, pre-fabricates of handles for scythes, rakes - hundreds of other large and small objects that are the responsibility of men of the house. And for all of this, you need to find a place to put, to soak or to dry.
Boredom will come if people do not know what they can do; boredom is ridiculous and absurd in rural life. Because of its short duration, the variety of tasks turns into fun and entertainment, most notably in the forest. As for working in the field, there is no less diversity. The threshing floor and the barn tie into the whole year-round cycle of fieldwork. There is one way from the threshing floor: to the barn and the mill, but the interest and fun accompanied a peasant, even here, on this short journey.
     Every detail, down to the bag's tie and the creaking of a wagon, had its meaning. The threshing floor is the threshold of the native nest, literally and figuratively fanned by bitter but exciting haze... The threshing floor was made of large smooth block, so soft and dense that even a single grain couldn't get lost.
     As soon as the April sun was beginning to thaw out from the roof large silver icicles, a gang of children threw open the gates to play the game of huckle bone. Adults almost completely freed all the haylofts from the chaff and straw by the spring. The threshing floor attracted rabbits and birds, so teenagers caught both kinds using snares.
 In the dark autumn holidays, guys led to the threshing floor, into the straw bales, their girlfriends, so to say "sit"... These "sittings" for young couples didn't always end well ...
After harvesting dried barn at night, older folks entertained young people with stories, amused themselves, and went to spook each other.
 Ironically, the threshing floor in the 30-s assumed the duty of the village center of culture. In the middle of the threshing floor, where in the morning were threshed corn, a portable film projector was set up on the boxes. To the hoist of the barn was suspended the screen, and boys alternately were spinning the dynamo. To roll two or even three parts in a row was enough of volunteers, but a few ventured to complete this feat. Then, under the chatter of the machine, power-driven manually, the audience-friendly chorus read the subtitles.