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Bereznitsky S. Christianity and the Renewal of Ethnicity of the Tungus-Manchurians and Paleo-Asians

S. Bereznitsky
Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Russian Academy of Sciences
St. Petersburg, Russian Federation
ORCID: 0000-0001-6235-5542
E-mail: svbereznitsky@yandex.ru 

 

 Download  |  Go to Issue #3. 2024

 

ABSTRACT. The diversity of peoples and cultures, ethnic traditions, ways of life, and con­fessions constitute the uniqueness of Russia. At the same time, this ethnic kaleidoscope creates difficulties in national-political unity due to contradictions in the relationship between ethnic and civil identity, traditional beliefs and world religions. Historically, a complex relationship has emerged between the Christianization of the indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia, and the Far East and their inclusion in the state. These factors have significantly influenced the ethnicity of the indigenous peoples of the east of the country, causing its repeated renewal. The article analyzes the specifics of Christianization and missionary activity from the seventeenth to the late twentieth — the first quarter of the twenty-first century. It brings to the fore historical, ethnographic, and folklore materials illustrating various reasons that spurred people of different social statuses to adopt Christianity in different periods of Russian history, the development of its ideology and state system. The author draws attention to a significant divergence between missionary practices and ethno-cultural strategies of the Russian Orthodox and Protestant churches in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. The activities of Orthodox and Protestant missionaries lead to different results. The newly baptized people receive help in solving everyday-life problems, family conflicts, and dealing with addictions and diseases from which they could not get rid on their own, mainly in Protestant communities. The article employed a synthesis of primordialism, instrumentalism, and constructivism as its methodological approach to study the problem of preserving vs. transforming the ethnic identities of the newly baptized.

 

KEYWORDS: Christianization in the seventeenth–twenty-first centuries, Orthodoxy, Protestantism, Indigenous peoples of Siberia, Tunguso-Manchurians, Paleo-Asians, ethnicity renewal

 

DOI 10.31250/2618-8600-2024-3(25) -178-199
UDC 316.734

 

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