On the Symbolism of Russian Peasant Embroidery of Archaic Type

Old Russian peasant embroidery has long attracted the attention of researchers because of the archaic nature of its motifs. Thanks to the work of Gorodtsov, (1) it has found a stable place among the material sources on the history of old Russian and old Slavic beliefs, and is today regarded as ranking among archeological sources. But the ornamented Russian peasant fabrics of medieval times have, for all practical purposes, not survived, and it is work of the 19th and early 20th century (the so-called embroideries in archaic style) that serves as the main source for studying them. When employing such recent embroideries for the purpose of studying ancient Russian paganism, historians sometimes forget that embroidery (as distinct from archeological materials) remained, for the many centuries since the downfall of paganism in Russia, a component part of the living folk culture and, consequently, could not but undergo significant changes. The work that is essential in the utilization of historical sources — identification of temporally diverse strata, and relative and absolute dating of them — has not yet been performed in this regard. The present article makes no pretense to any complete analysis of archaic Russian embroidery, but contains only a few conclusions to which the author has been led by study of primitive religious symbols. (2)