RELIGIOUS LIFE IN HARBIN IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY IN THE ORAL STORIES OF THE CITY RESIDENTS (BASED ON MATERIALS BY N.N. LALETINA)

Abstract

The article presents the results of the reconstruction of the religious life of Harbin in the first half of the 20th century based on oral stories of the former Harbin citizen N.N. Laletina (born 1931, Harbin; lives in Ogre, Latvia) about her childhood, youth, family, environment, education. The interviews were collected in person (Harbin and Karlovy Vary) and online (Ogre). In addition to the topoi related to the Orthodox festive culture of the city, which were general for oral stories of Harbin dwellers, these narratives reflect the “geography” of the Orthodox everyday life of an ordinary Harbin family, stories about religious education at school, facts of syncretization of the religious consciousness of Russians and Chinese in Harbin, memories of attempts to Japanize religious life and school education by the occupiers during the Manchukuo period, as well as personal impressions of the Harbin Orthodox priests. A separate section is represented by various genres of oral prose (there were legends) dedicated to the Harbin mythologeme of Nicholas the Wonderworker (of Myra), the Harbin patron. In the oral narratives of the former Harbin resident, two points of view were combined - the direct perception of the little girl of the events of religious life and the assessment of these phenomena from the height of the past years by a person who now lives in a foreign cultural non-Orthodox environment as well.