Lena Kolesnikova

The Alatyr is a stone mentioned in Russian folklore; it is described as the navel of the earth, endowed with sacral and healing properties. The word Alatyr has no Indo-European etymology, but can be explained through Yeniseian languages. The component ala correlates with Ket al "in the wood" and Pumpokol "field". The component tɯr correlates with Ket and Yugh [tɯl] "navel", and Proto-Yenisseian *tɨr [tɯr]. Thus, alatɯr means "taiga navel". One of the main activities of Neolithic people was hunting, and it was important for them to mark the boundaries of hunting grounds of different local groups. Initially notches on trees were used as boundary markers, but stones with natural and artificial dimples were more stable markers. The word alatɯr initially denoted notches on a tree (in Ket there is the word tɨ [latɯl] "depressions in tree trunks") and later it also began to denote dimples on stones.

Social networks are usually considered as something extremely positive and the most optimistic forecasts and expectations are associated with them. The reality, however, is slightly more complicated, and social networks have negative aspects. The first negative aspect is a tendency to escape meaningful content. Another negative point can be conventionally designated as stereotypization and artificial segregation of ideas. Also social networks serve the standardization of mind and behavior. And also a very negative aspect related to social networks and messengers is the obsession with mobile phones. The fact that there is such a large demand for brainless content is a sign that in modern society there are a variety of crises. People should pay more attention to real life and should not hesitate to be unsocial, 'unmodern' and complicated.

The so-called historical reenactment in Russia is a special subculture with its own ideology. Usually reenactors are adherents of different conservative worldviews (they are adherents of so-called 'traditional family values' and sexism; demonstrate negative attitudes toward feminism and LGBT, and also toward liberal ideas). Also historical reenactors consider things as more important than semiotic systems. This tendency serves the devaluation of history as semiotics. Semiotics should be the backbone of any historical research and any experiment/reconstruction: one should not simply reconstruct a certain item, but should first of all understand/reconstruct the role of the item inside the corresponding culture. Under the influence of this historical reenactment the importance of semiotics in historical sciences is subjected to devaluation, and experimental archaeology is converted into a cosplay show. Serious historians should distance themselves from movements of such kind, and oppose something to such movements or at least not hesitate to criticize them.

In the last decade we can see a notable rise of ethnic separatist and regionalist movements in Russia. These movements can be conventionally subdivided into two types: ethnic separatist movements and regionalist movements. These movements have the following characteristic features: 1) negative attitude toward Russian culture 2) ignoring facts of history/ethnology/linguistics and inventing an ideal history of an ethnic group/a region, 3) adherence to Nazi like ideologies. Such movements aren't well organized yet; most often they are just clubs of interest, and also such movements have little impact on the current cultural, social landscapes. However, the existence and fairly widespread distribution of such movements is a sign of a deep economic, social and ideological crisis that exists in Russian society. To solve this problem, a set of measures is required. I suppose that the anthropological community could watch the situation and could come up with some recommendations.

In Modern Russian culture a woman wearing a skirt or dress is usually perceived as more feminine than a woman in pants. Women who wear skirts/dresses and headscarves are perceived as super feminine women. The headscarf was the traditional headdress of married women in the Russian village, where the position of the woman was rather powerless and submissive. In Russian Orthodox Church headscarf remains mandatory for women; headscarf is the sign of woman obedience to her husband and to god. After about 70 years of communist rule and forced eradication of many archaic issues of society, the headscarf is mostly an element of fashion and/or convenient item of clothing rather than a marker of social status. However, headscarf still is a kind of marker of super-femininity, super-obedience to the male world.

Anthropologists as well as plain people often use the concepts of tradition/traditional values/traditional culture. They both suppose that tradition is something contraposed modernity/contemporaneity. Really any culture is based on certain traditions. Traditions are actually regularly performed practices so any culture is based on certain traditions since any culture always supposes certain set of regularly performed practices. Also we should keep in mind that tradition also supposes invention of new issues. Also we should keep in mind that the activity of anthropologists, i.e.: the fact that they pay much attention to traditional societies and contrapose so called traditional societies to modernity provide help to the forces of obscurantism.

Queer doctrine is generally considered as good medicine for liberation of gender and sexuality. However, actually queer helps not liberation, but oppression due to the following: 1) term queer actually means " freak " , " weird " and thus it represents all LGBT issues as freakish or issues which have no deep historical background and indirectly strengthens heteronormative/cisgender society based on Abrahamic values; 2) queer doctrine has been inspired by Marxism or its derivatives and thus queer doctrine is also an implementation of Abrahamic tradition as far as Marxism is an Abrahamic religion. Liberation of gender/sexuality is completely impossible if we follow Abrahamic paradigm or its derivatives. Postgenderism (radical elimination of gender) is nothing else but just another side of conservative Abrahamic coin. True liberation of gender/sexuality would be multigenderism, but not postgederism, i.e.: in current conditions settling niches for more than two genders would be much more helpful than complete elimination of gender.

There are two basic types of folk-history: 1) folk-history about enigmatic issues of ancient civilizations, 2) nationalistic folk-history. The first type is mostly spread in the West while the second in the East. In USSR official history was just a set of dogmas: conceptions were changed not due to discovering some new facts but just due to zigzags of ideology. Due to this fact in mass consciousness wasn’t formed right notion of historical methodology: history was considered just as a set of different versions. It was good background for folk-history. The most notable issues of Post-Soviet folk-histories are: Ukrainian and Turkic folk-histories: they both harshly ignore facts and methodology; also they both influence on academic history. In this aspect Ukraine is closer to Turkic world and to the East rather than to Europe while Russia is closer to the West since in Russia folk-history has no influence on academic history.