Search

The ethnicity of the Nagaibaks originated in 1736 after the establishment of the Nagaibak fortress, in which inorodtsy of different backgrounds from adjacent areas were gathered and given the status of Cossacks (on condition of their baptism). Later, after their resettlement to the New Line in 1842–43, the Nagaibaks formed a peculiar community: their membership in a military estate and their inclusion of peoples of different traditions and creeds helped them to become “a border people” in spatial and sociocultural dimensions. In turn, this “liminality” allowed the Nagaibaks to unite opposing features within their ethnicity—hospitality and rivalry, openness to innovation (in terms of active participation in ethnic projects) and closeness in traditions (in terms of preserving rituals of kinship). At various points in their history, the Nagaibaks turned to either openness or closeness, or a combination of both. In the Soviet period, an emphasis on closeness allowed them to preserve their culture (“introvert mode”). In the post-Soviet period, on the contrary, the Nagaibaks mobilized their ethnicity through openness (“extrovert mode”). This dynamic ethnicity made possible a transition from the spatial mobility of the past to the activization of ethnicity in the present. Through their development at the crossroads of different types of cultures (nomad and sedentary, Christian and Muslim, European and Asia) the Nagaibak culture became open-minded and adaptable, while the nomad and Cossack sociocultural heritage led to mobility and flexibility in their actions.

The aim of the study is the discovery of nomad properties in the narrative that semantically reflects stativity and permanence. The narrative «Home» is taken as such a concept. The paper reveals the content of the notion «Home» in sedentary culture. The author describes and analyses the processes of transformation of the narrative «Home» during the transition from modernity culture to the situation of postmodernity, accompanied by the loss of traditional functions of the Home. We study the notions of «Home» in existential and psychoanalytic philosophy. The concept of «Home» in the mythology and folklore of the national culture is taken into account. The author discusses the acquisition of new properties by the «Home» in postmodern, related to mobility and instability, singularity. Postmodern «Home» is a point of a route, which is contrary to the sedentary paradigm, not a place of peace and relaxation, but rather the moment of formation, the transition from the finite to the infinite. The main attention in the paper is given to the detecting nomadism in the ontological essence of the Home. The research results can be used in the study of the ontological, anthropological components of postmodern situation.

The Middle Volga-Kama region played a special role in Russian history. From ancient times this region was an important point for economic and commercial interests of Eastern and Western Europe as well as of the Oriental regions. The Volga-Kama region was affected in one degree or another by the global events of world history – the creation of world empires, such as the Turkic Khanate or the Golden Horde. The key moment of the regional history was the formation of the Volga Bulgaria state in the 10th century. It was a culture formed in the centre of the Volga-Kama region, which for more than two centuries determined the priorities in trade, economics, politics and cultural innovations. The system of settled communities of different organizational levels based on ethno-cultural characteristics of the local population was formed in the Volga Bulgar at different times. In the middle of the 11th century, Islam became the prevailing religion of the Volga Bulgarian population playing an important role in the development of the economic and political foundations of the state. The main development line of the Bulgarian material culture in the 11th–12th centuries was the displacement of ethnic preferences in standardized manufacture within the framework of public handcrafts and prevailing development of the most flexible elements of different ethnic culture. A new ethnos appeared to depend on its ethnic components and its development was largely determined by the initial substrate basis. The stability of this ethnosystem was determined by ethno-cultural tolerance.