Grandmother's Icons and "Natural" Fasting: Orthodox Culture in the Daily Life of "Ordinary" Citizens of the Late USSR

The relevance of the research topic is due to the need to integrate the past of Orthodox culture into the general context of the social and cultural history of the USSR, as well as the importance of historiographical understanding of the role of the confessional component in the structure of late Soviet life.
The purpose of the research is to characterize the influence of confessional traditions on the way of life of citizens from the traditionally Orthodox regions of the late USSR.
Objectives: to find out the most common ways of introducing an "ordinary" Soviet citizen to the Orthodox culture, to describe the individual mechanisms of the influence of this culture on everyday life in the traditionally Orthodox regions of the country, to assess the impact of intergenerational ties on the success of reproducing confessionaloriented patterns of behavior of citizens in the late Soviet period.
Methods. During the formation of the empirical base of the paper the author used traditional methods of archival work as well as methods of field research - questionnaires, interviews. To systematize the data, the method of historical induction, historical-statistical, historical-genetic methods were used.
Results. The paper shows that despite the formally irreligious nature of the way of life of the most citizens in the late USSR, in fact, phenomena associated with Orthodox culture remained in it. The average Soviet citizen encountered traditional rites of passage, saw icons and was periodically forced to take into account the peculiarities of the church calendar as well as the traditions of Orthodox fasting. The norms of commemoration of the dead, widespread in the late Soviet period, were also largely of a national Orthodox nature.
Conclusions. The paper concludes that the presence of certain elements of Orthodox culture in the family life of the late Soviet period was more a norm than an anomaly. At the same time, the strength of intergenerational ties and the high authority of older family members increased the chances of familiarity with the images of Orthodoxy among young people. The presence of confessional customs and attributes of faith in the living space of "nonreligious" people allowed them to preserve their ideas about the Orthodox way of life, which created prerequisites for potential church formation.

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