Subregional Calendar Traditions of Belarusian Settlers: Stable, Mobile and Unique Components

The article deals with the ritual and song components of the subregional calendar traditions of Belarusian settlers from the Omsk and Novosibirsk regions, Krasnoyarsk and Primorsky territories (records of songs and descriptions of rituals of the 1970s–2010s). It has been established that the subregional traditions of Belarusian settlers differ from each other in the composition of calendar rituals, the presence or absence of a song component in them and the number of song samples. The author comes to the conclusion that the annual calendar cycle of Belarusian migrants includes stable and mobile folklore and ethnographic complexes. Stable ones are developed in all the studied subregional traditions, in them the ratio of “rite-song genres” is balanced. Mobile ones may be present / absent in different sub-regional traditions or have different weight in their ritual-genre systems, the ratio of rituals and songs in such complexes is, as a rule, unequal. In addition, there are a small number of unique elements that distinguish any tradition from a number of others. The most stable is the winter festive folklore-ethnographic complex. It is present in all sub-regional traditions in sufficient completeness and safety. Only the Omsk subregion has a striking difference, where there is also a uniqat – the Christmas ritual game “Tereshka’s marriage”. The second stable component is the stubble ritual-labor complex with song genres related to it, including ritual ones and those dedicated to the season. The features of mobile folklore-ethnographic complexes are considered. The unique features of each subregional tradition are revealed.