Writer, historian, and ethnographer Viktor Berdinskikh made an attempt to show a Russian peasant as he was and is in his own home—in a natural setting, alone with himself. In his book, the focus is primarily on everyday life, moral foundations, customs, traditions, oral folk art, spoken language—and even includes a vocabulary of the people’s dialect from 1907 and a lexicon of catchphrases with the author’s explanations… At first glance, it may seem that all of this passed into oblivion along with the Russian peasantry during the period of persecutions under collectivization. Yet, having dissolved in time and grand historical upheavals, the peasantry remained within us—in every cell of the people’s body, even if we ourselves do not realize it. Ethnographic immersion into the world of the Russian person together with Viktor Berdinskikh convincingly proves this.
Viktor Berdinskikh is a Doctor of Historical Sciences, a professor in the Department of History at the Vyatka State University for the Humanities.