Olga Labachevskaya
In the Belarusian State Archive of Film, Photo, and Sound Documents in Dzyarzhynsk, there is a documentary film “In Bryansk Polesie,” dated 1930. Unique footage from the past unfolds before the viewer images of rural life with the leisurely movement of windmill blades, harvesting, and threshing, which are interspersed with holidays – women’s games, the wedding ritual of putting on the bride’s headpiece, the blessing of water, and a procession with a miraculous icon of the Mother of God. The face of a girl is memorable, who, moving with the crowd towards the shrine, suddenly turns around and gazes for a long time into the lens of the camera.
Thanks to the miracle of cinema, not only do we observe the people of that time, but they also look at us with surprise from the silent black-and-white screen. Like a time machine, the archival film brings to life what has long since ceased to exist.
In the 1980s, several parts of this film were selected at the State Film Fund of Russia for transfer to the State Archive of Film, Photo, and Sound Documents of Belarus. The presence of such excellent material in our archive, its localization with Bryansk Polesie, allowed us to assume that it reflects the peculiarities of the lifestyle, attire, and types of Belarusians in the east of our ethnic territory. As is known, the eastern border of the settlement of the Belarusian ethnicity, according to the studies of Y. Karski and M. Dounar-Zapolsky, runs along the Desna River and reaches Bryansk. On this basis, the chronicle film materials about Bryansk Polesie from 1928 have been repeatedly used in Belarusian documentary filmmaking. In 1998, at Belvidyatsentr, director Viktor Aslyuk made the film “The Land of Sorrowful Songs”, which is entirely built on archival footage [1]. Subtitles with lines from the famous poem by Y. Kupala “From our ancestors, through the ages, we have inherited a legacy” and musical accompaniment were added. In 2010, Halina Adamovich included footage of peasant women embroidering and whitening cloth in her film about folk artist Alena Kish from Sluchchyna, made at the “Letopis” association of the Belarusian State Film Studio. Modern digital technologies and means of disseminating information have allowed the original archival film to be made accessible to a wide audience.
The video “Letopis,” lasting 20 minutes, is now available to Internet users on “YouTube” [2]. An Internet search engine, in response to the query: where does this film material come from and who is its author? – instantly provided the answer: the documentary film “In Bryansk Polesie” is part of the classic of Soviet documentary filmmaking. On Russian sites “Encyclopedia of Domestic Cinema” and “Cinema-Theater,” there are references that it was shot by the famous Soviet film director Ilya Kapalin and cameraman Pyotr Zotov at the “Soyuzkinokhronika” film studio. The film, 1456.7 m long and consisting of 5 parts with frame-by-frame descriptions of the plots, is stored in the archive of the Russian Central Documentary Film Studio [3]. In the early 1930s, the film was shown on screens across the USSR. It contrasts the past of the Bryansk village with the new life of peasants united in cooperatives, mechanizing their land cultivation, and also showcases Soviet factories, schools, and other phenomena of the new Soviet reality. A promotional poster for the film in Ukrainian “In Bryansk Polesie” graphically reflects the antithesis of the film: a bearded, gloomy peasant and a young citizen of the new Soviet state with a happy, broad smile.
Does the Bryansk village depicted in the film, with its distinct ethnographic features in clothing, wedding rituals, games, and more, relate to Belarusian ethnic culture? The answer to this question had to be sought in ethnographic works. The history of ethnographic study in Bryansk in the 1920s allows us to understand that the emergence of the film “In Bryansk Polesie” was not accidental.
During those years, the Central Industrial Region Museum in Moscow conducted active ethnographic activities. At its request, ethnographer N. Lebedeva studied the folk life of population groups in the upper reaches of the Desna and Oka rivers and conducted expeditions to Bryansk and Kaluga provinces in 1925 and 1926 [4, p. 28]. This marshy and wooded region was called “Polesie,” and the population referred to themselves as “Poles.”
The choice of the route was determined by the significant preservation of archaic life and relict forms of culture, as well as the fact that in this territory, the cultural traditions of the southern Great Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians historically intersected. Therefore, one of the tasks of N. Lebedeva’s expedition was to determine the ethnic traits of the population and the boundaries of the settlement of various ethnocultural groups based on data on material culture – primarily traditional costume and housing.
The expeditions provided a wealth of material for the museum and many new ethnological data. In her 1925 report on the study of Kaluga Polesie, the researcher made some important conclusions. Firstly, the “Poles” in their material culture are southern Great Russians, who, by certain traits, are close to the ancient groups that formed the Belarusians and Ukrainians, as well as to the Lithuanians. Secondly, there are no grounds for associating southern Great Russians with modern Belarusians, and the border between them lies to the west of the Desna. In 1927, N. Lebedeva’s work “Folk Life in the Upper Reaches of the Desna and Oka (Ethnological Expedition in Bryansk and Kaluga Provinces in 1925 and 1926)” was published, in which the accumulated materials were described and analyzed, and conclusions were made regarding the ethnic composition of the population in the studied territory [5].
I believe that the attention of Soviet documentary filmmakers to these regions was prompted precisely by these ethnographic studies, which revealed a significant preservation of relict forms of culture. It is possible that N. Lebedeva had a direct relation to the creation of the script for the film “In Bryansk Polesie” in 1930. The professional ethnographic approach is evidenced by the choice of plots that captured archaic manifestations of life and culture: a kurin house, the ritual of driving away hail clouds by hand, a grandmother treating a child, preparing the deceased for burial, commemorating the dead at the cemetery, the spring women’s holiday “Margosy” with the preparation of ritual eggs, round dances and games with tug-of-war, the wedding ritual of anointing the young’s hair with oil, showering them with grain, and subsequently placing the young woman in a special kichka with a cap and a povoynik – a women’s headwear. The film details women’s activities: harvesting, weaving at looms, embroidering geometric patterns, whitening cloth, and especially – ancient outfits with open panova, “zapanami” – aprons worn over the shirt, high kichkas with embroidered ornamentation and beaded “pazatyl’niks” at the back.
Some of the phenomena shown in the film are described in detail in N. Lebedeva’s work, and the traditional costume is reflected in photographs and sketches [5, pp. 71 – 74]. On this basis, it is possible to accurately determine the filming locations of the film. These are the villages of Boyanavichy and Padbuzhzhye. At the time of N. Lebedeva’s expeditions, they were part of the Zhizdrinsky district of Bryansk province, and when the film was shot, they were in the Bryansk district of the Western region of the RSFSR, with the center in Smolensk. Today, these settlements are located in the Khvastovichsky district of the Kaluga region, which is in its southern part on the border with Bryansk province. Tourists today describe these places in their internet diaries as marshy, with windfalls, difficult for walking and river excursions. The village of Boyanavichy is located on the Roseta River and is situated on the summit of a “bald mountain.” This fully corresponds to the frames of the film, in which youth games take place on a high hill, and the cameraman’s camera shows the landscape of the river valley below from above.
Descriptions by N. Lebedeva of southern Great Russian headwear allow us to precisely determine that in the wedding ritual shown in the film, the bride is dressed in a three-part povoynik, which was worn from the village of Padbuzhzhye. It replaced the ancient headwear – kichka with a cap. The povoynik was put on the bride immediately after the wedding in the church. The ritual took place in the church’s caretaker’s house. In the film, it is shown on the street.
Frames with women in traditional costumes with panova and kichkas of a peculiar shape correspond exactly with ethnographic descriptions of headwear from the village of Boyanavichy. The film of early Soviet documentary filmmaking has saved for us a piece of the ancient world, which now entirely belongs to the past. The film is an excellent living illustration for the study of Slavic ethnography.
Its historical-anthropological dimension is valuable. Perhaps this is one of the last film documents in which the traditional way of peasant life in the village appears still untouched by the destruction of collectivization and the anti-religious struggle unleashed by Soviet power in the regions where filming took place, specifically in 1930. It is not excluded that the priests and some peasants we see in the film quickly became victims of political repression.
The scientific conclusions made by one of the most authoritative ethnographers of the Soviet era, N. Lebedeva, unfortunately, do not give us grounds to relate the materials of the film “In Bryansk Polesie” to sources for studying the ethnic culture of Belarusians. The places where it was filmed in 1930 lie outside the boundaries of the ethnic territory of Belarusian settlement. At the same time, the film still awakens interest in the ethnic culture of Belarusians. It has so happened that this film was destined to play a role as one of the cultural factors in the process of national identification in our society, which continues.
References:
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Aslyuk, V. The Land of Sorrowful Songs [Electronic resource]. – Access mode: . – Date of access: 19.04.2012.
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In Bryansk Polesie [Electronic resource]. – Access mode: . – Date of access: 19.04.2012.
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In Bryansk Polesie [Electronic resource]. – Date of access: 19.04.2012.
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Lebedeva, N.I. Ethnological Study of Kaluga Polesie as a Characteristic Ethnological Region // Ryazan Ethnographic Bulletin: scientific works in 2 volumes. Vol. 1. Creative Heritage of N.I. Lebedeva: ethnographic research and materials / ed.-comp. and author’s notes B.A. Gorbunov. – Ryazan: Ryazan Regional Center for Folk Art, 1996. – pp. 28–30.
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Lebedeva, N.I. Folk Life in the Upper Reaches of the Desna and Oka (Ethnological Expedition in Bryansk and Kaluga Provinces in 1925 and 1926) // Ryazan Ethnographic Bulletin: scientific works in 2 volumes. Vol. 1. Creative Heritage of N.I. Lebedeva: ethnographic research and materials / ed.-comp. and author’s notes B.A. Gorbunov. – Ryazan: Ryazan Regional Center for Folk Art, 1996. – pp. 31–92.
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1 “Margosy,” “margoski” are celebrated on the third Sunday after Easter, dedicated to the holiday of the myrrh-bearing women (Shaparava N.S. Encyclopedia of Slavic Traditions: calendar beliefs and customs of the Slavs. – Moscow: AST-Astral, 2010. – p. 508).