The Family as a Supreme Value
The Family as a Supreme Value: Scholarly Article by I. A. Sedakova on Old Believers’ Attitude Toward Family — Selected Excerpts
The article by I. A. Sedakova is based on materials collected from 2006 to 2008 among Russian Old Believers — the Nekrasovites and Lipovans — in Bulgaria (Kazashko village, Varna province; Tataritsa village, Silistra province) and Romania (Sarichioi village, Carcaliu village, and the Pisk district of the city of Brăila). The article presents the value system characteristic of Old Believers aged 50 to 80, who belong to the upper (elites, connoisseurs of confessional culture) and middle (active participants in religious life) social strata.
Irina Alexandrovna Sedakova is a prominent scholar in Bulgarian studies, ethnolinguistics, and the traditional language and culture of Slavic peoples.
Full Text of the Article (in Russian):
https://nashavera.com/media/uploads/2017/12/21/sedakova_semya-kak-cennost-i-semejnye-cennosti-v-rasskazah-staroobryadcev-bolgarii-i-rumynii.pdf
Excerpts from the Article: #
The Old Believer family is not a New Testament family, but rather an Old Testament one: the role of the entire kinship group takes precedence over the role of the individual spouses.
A “pure,” “unmixed” marriage — one not involving members of other ethno-confessional groups — retains special value within Old Believer communities. This explains their specific approach to choosing a marriage partner and the particularly regulated strategy for forming kinship ties — for example, choosing godparents from among blood relatives so as not to expand the family too much (so as not to “entangle the kin,” as phrased by informants from UNM and KKL).
Good knowledge of one’s genealogical tree is essential in Old Believer circles. Brief descriptions of relatives, as well as detailed biographies, are common genres in conversations with researchers. For instance:
“Now, Grandpa Makary, my wife’s grandfather — he was born in 1812, and he lived to be ninety-eight. He fought there in Russia — they pulled him down from the gallows three times… He once stayed at a monastery, living on peas for three weeks…” (DLA)
“My grandfather — he was a streltsy [musketeer]. He was born in 1845. In 1945, when he turned one hundred, he died. He used to say: ‘When our soldiers come, then…’” (ILB)
The key traits of the elders are always noted — qualities that dominate the value framework of the Old Believers: pious, wise, strict, clever, crafty (the latter meaning intelligent and quick-witted), and so on.
Family history is also passed down through material values. Among Old Believers, an object is considered a relic if it carries spiritual significance and at the same time serves to preserve tradition — sacred items such as icons and books, which were always taken along when relocating. Belonging to the same category is Old Believer church clothing with its obligatory elements (belt and lestovka, i.e., traditional prayer rope). Compare:
“[What did you take with you when you fled?] Icons and church vestments. I still have my great-grandmother’s skirt, my mother gave it to me to preserve, and so it still lies there” (DLA);
“What could we take onto the boat? We took books, icons — we left nothing sacred behind. Everything else we left and set off down the Danube. This little fur coat — it’s my grandmother’s” (FF).
Clothing, especially women’s clothing, is passed down from generation to generation. Even worn-out fur coats are repurposed — pieces of them are used as inserts in festive swaddling blankets for infants:
“They went from hand to hand — from the grandmother to her daughter, and from her to hers” (UNM).
One of the most important educational principles in the family is the transmission of various forms of knowledge, marked either as values or anti-values. All everyday, cultural, and confessional knowledge comes from the elder relatives — and despite resistance or even “rebellion,” it is eventually absorbed by the younger generation. One often hears such accounts about specific relatives, recounting how they instilled moral and ethical virtues in children:
“Grandpa was strict — he understood what youth is like, he taught us to go to church, to pray, to understand one another, to respect every person well. Don’t get offended so quickly — snap, and you’re already upset. Maybe at that moment he was struggling too, maybe in an hour or two he’ll regret it. Do it for God, and for people too” (NFP);
“She was very wise, grandma, and she used to say to me: ‘Don’t get carried away [with fanaticism]. Whether you’re praying to God, or doing something, or whatever it may be — everything should be balanced. There has to be measure, everything in moderation. Not like: I’ll stand now, beat my forehead in prayer, and then step outside and wag my tongue and start slandering.’ So, she said even prayer isn’t right if you give yourself over to frenzy like a maniac. That’s bad, that’s bad…” (FF);
“My father was very wise, he only taught us the spiritual, and everything stayed in my head” (ANL).
The value of the knowledge received from elders is only truly recognized and articulated by the informants once they themselves become heads of household — the master or mistress, father or mother, grandfather or grandmother — and begin to perform the very roles their elders once did. Nearly all respondents aged 50 to 80 emphasize the atmosphere of strictness combined with love that prevailed in their families:
“I was very afraid of my father” (FF);
“My grandmothers loved me very much. But the grandfathers kept to a certain strictness” (FK).
Fear of adults and obedience were the norm:
“We always listened to our father and mother. Father taught us — if boys start pulling at your zapan [apron], run home. Guard your maidenhood like your eyes” (EIS).
The first words a child would hear in the family were not only directed at girls, but also at boys: You mustn’t, It’s improper.
Regular attendance at church, work, restrictions on “aimless” wandering, rare outings, and little time spent playing with peers — this was the routine enforced by the elders:
“They kept us around the house, didn’t let us go out, just stood by the window a little…”
“We never wandered idly around the village — not like now, hanging out in the center” (EIS).
The strict fasts observed by the elders are mentioned in nearly all the narratives of Russian Old Believers in Bulgaria and Romania:
“One must not break the Wednesday and Friday fast throughout the entire year — only then may one receive Communion. That’s what Grandpa used to say, and he kept to it, observed every fast. So you must do the same” (NFP);
“Neither on Wednesday nor on Friday did we eat. We know this from our elders. Only two meat-eating weeks in the whole year allowed eating on those days” (FF);
“On Wednesdays and Fridays, my grandmother never ate anything with oil. She would eat an apple with some bread, dip the bread in salt, boil some tea, boil whole potatoes. I remember this. She was very pious. She even fasted on Mondays — like Wednesday and Friday, so also Monday. But that was her own rule — she took it upon herself. And Grandpa too, he was strict, he fasted rigorously” (FK).
The foundations of religiosity were transmitted by the elders to children through direct verbal instruction — with a mixture of sternness, affection, and cunning:
“My grandmothers used to tell me that when the Cherubic Hymn is sung in church, whatever you think about will come true. Or if you think really hard during the reading of the Gospel, it will happen. They tricked us — and we believed it. ‘What are you going to ask for in your thoughts?’ Grandma would ask me. And I’d say, ‘A dress.’ Then Grandma would whisper to Mom, and it would come true” (PFE).
The most valued character traits instilled in children were diligence, modesty, a desire to help and serve others, cleanliness and neatness, honesty (lying was forbidden, stealing — “don’t covet!” — was condemned, UNM), and other such qualities. Literacy was unquestionably a family value:
“Her father was literate, a spiritual man. He read the church calendar” (DLA).
However, whether one was literate or illiterate was not always clearly assessed in Old Believer narratives, as it depended on whether one was referring to church literacy or secular literacy. Knowledge of the Slavonic alphabet and the ability to read liturgical books were held in especially high regard.
Today, among elderly Old Believers in Romania, knowledge of the civil Russian alphabet is also regarded as a family value:
“I wrote to her [my daughter, who works in Greece]. I don’t know whether she’ll read it, but I wrote the Our Father and the Heavenly King. I wrote the prayers in Russian. She didn’t know them. It’s easier for me in Russian. My son-in-law is a Lipovan, and Romanian is easier for them. Before there were no phones like now — we used to write letters when they went to Greece. And I wrote in Russian. They wrote to me in Romanian, using Russian letters, and so they learned. Whether they wanted to or not, they learned” (PFE).
The loss of the Russian (“Lipovan”) language among the younger generations is seen by the elders as a departure from tradition and the loss of one of the most essential family values:
“But my grandson — he’s Bulgarian, you see — he just doesn’t speak Russian. It hurts me so much” (AFS).
Thus, the family, as a supreme value in the worldview of the Old Believers, is closely tied to another foundational value — the preservation of order (in religious practice, the performance of rites, daily life, etc.). Any changes — especially in the sphere of religious or confessional daily life (clothing, prayers before meals, table manners, etc.) — are understood in relation to the coming of the end times and the “last days.”
The total collapse of the world order is one of the signs of the “coming” — something the Old Believers were warned about from childhood:
“Grandma talked about this too: ‘There will come a time when a woman will be a man, and a man will be a woman.’ We were children, and I asked, ‘They’ll swap places? How’s that?’ And they didn’t know how to explain it. And now the girls wear trousers, their hair is cropped short, and the boys wear earrings and have long hair” (EIS).
In this way, the distinctions between “male–female,” “elders–youth” (now everyone is treated equally) are being erased.
The preservation of order (we hold fast) or its absence (it is being lost, they are already drifting away, have departed from the faith, are weak, have grown feeble) is one of the most frequently discussed issues in conversations with Old Believers. Contemporary Old Believers aged fifty and older affirm:
“Just as our parents lived, so they blessed us to live” (DDB);
“How my grandmother taught me — that’s how I’ve always lived” (FF).
In matters of faith, daily conduct, child-rearing, and the transmission of values, they rely on the example of their elders:
“We keep things our own way, just as our forebears did” (SGV).
At the same time, when speaking of their children and grandchildren (and sometimes of their siblings, whether older or younger), informants often say:
“They no longer have [faith], it is being lost” (ANL).
Traditional models of instruction are being re-applied to new situations. For instance, in letters to her daughter and son-in-law — who had written lamenting that they could not find work in Greece — one informant replied:
“Ask God, the Lord will not abandon you. The Lord will give — you will find it, you will find work. Be patient. And patience, as it says in the book, moves mountains and dries up the sea” (PFE).
Such texts are evidence that both the system of family values and the mechanisms for passing them on remain alive among the Old Believers of Bulgaria and Romania.