Red corner in a Russian hut - children's drawings. External and internal decoration of a Russian hut

let `s talk about old Russian hut, or let’s take it even a little more broadly – ​​a Russian house. Its appearance and internal organization- the result of the influence of many factors, from natural to social and cultural. Peasant society has always been extremely stable in its traditional way of life and ideas about the structure of the world. Even being dependent on the influence of the authorities (the church, Peter’s reforms), Russian folk culture continued its development, the crown of which must be recognized as the formation of a peasant estate, in particular a courtyard house with a residential old Russian hut.

For many, a Russian house remains either some kind of allegory of Christian Rus', or a hut with three windows with carved platbands. For some reason, exhibits in museums of wooden architecture do not change this persistent opinion. Maybe because no one has clearly explained what it is, exactly. old Russian hut- literally?

Russian hut from the inside

A stranger explores the home first from the outside, then goes inside. One’s own is born within. Then, gradually expanding his world, he brings it to the size of ours. For him, the outside comes later, the inside comes first.

You and I, unfortunately, are strangers there.

So outside, old Russian hut tall, large, its windows are small, but located high, the walls represent a mighty log massif, not dissected by a base and cornices horizontally, or blades and columns vertically. The roof grows out of the wall like a gable; it is immediately clear that behind the “gable” there are no usual rafters. The ridge is a powerful log with a characteristic sculptural projection. The parts are few and large, there is no lining or lining. In some places, individual ends of logs of not entirely clear purpose may protrude from the walls. Friendly old Russian hut I wouldn't call her, rather, silent and secretive.

There is a porch on the side of the hut, sometimes high and pillared, sometimes low and indistinct. However, it is precisely this that is the first Shelter under which the newcomer enters. And since this is the first roof, it means that the second roof (canopy) and the third roof (the hut itself) only develop the idea of ​​​​a porch - a covered paved elevation that projects the Earth and Heaven onto itself. The porch of the hut originates in the first sanctuary - a pedestal under the crown of the sacred tree and evolves all the way to the royal vestibule in the Assumption Cathedral. The porch of the house is the beginning of a new world, the zero of all its paths.

A low, wide door with a powerful slanted frame leads into the entryway from the porch. Its internal contours are slightly rounded, which serves as the main obstacle to unwanted spirits and people with unclean thoughts. The roundness of the doorway is akin to the roundness of the Sun and Moon. There is no lock, a latch that opens both from the inside and from the outside - from wind and livestock.

The canopy, called a bridge in the North, develops the idea of ​​a porch. Often they have no ceiling, just as there was no hut before - only the roof separates them from the sky, only it overshadows them.

The canopy is of heavenly origin. The bridge is earthly. Again, as in the porch, Heaven meets Earth, and they are connected by those who cut down old Russian hut with a vestibule, and those who live in it are a large family, now represented among the living link of the clan.

The porch is open on three sides, the entryway is closed on four, and there is little light in them from the glass windows (covered with boards).

The transition from the entryway to the hut is no less important than from the porch to the entryway. You can feel the atmosphere heating up...

The inner world of a Russian hut

We open the door, bending down, we enter. Above us is a low ceiling, although it is not a ceiling, but a floor - a flooring at the level of the stove bed - for sleeping. We are in a blanket shelter. And we can turn to the owner of the hut with good wishes.

Polatny kut - a porch inside a Russian hut. Any kind person can enter there without asking, without knocking on the door. The planks rest on the wall directly above the door with one edge, and on the canvas beam with the other. For this plated beam, the guest, at his will, is not allowed to go. Only the hostess can invite him to enter the next kut - the red corner, to family and ancestral shrines, and sit down at the table.

A refectory, consecrated with shrines, that’s what the red corner is.

So the guest masters the whole half of the hut; however, he will never go into the second, far half (behind the pastry beam), the hostess will not invite him there, because the second half is the main sacred part of the Russian hut - the woman's hut and the stove kuta. These two kuts are similar to the altar of the temple, and in fact this is an altar with an oven-throne and ritual objects: a bread shovel, a broom, grips, a kneading bowl. There the fruits of the earth, heaven and peasant labor are transformed into food of a spiritual and material nature. Because for a person of Tradition, food has never been about the number of calories and a set of textures and tastes.

The male part of the family is not allowed into the woman's kut; here the hostess, the big woman, is in charge of everything, gradually teaching future housewives how to perform sacred rites...

Men work most of the time in the field, in the meadow, in the forest, on the water, and in waste industries. In the house, the owner’s place is immediately at the entrance on a bench, in the ward kut, or at the end of the table farthest from the woman’s kut. It is closer to the small shrines of the red corner, further from the center of the Russian hut.

The housewife's place is in the red corner - at the end of the table from the side of the woman's kut and the oven - she is the priestess of the home temple, she communicates with the oven and the fire of the oven, she starts the kneading bowl and puts the dough in the oven, she takes it out transformed into bread. It is she who, along the semantic vertical of the stove column, descends through the golbets (special wooden extension to the stove) into the underground, which is also called a cabbage. There, in the golbets, in the basement ancestral sanctuary, the habitat of guardian spirits, they keep supplies. It's not so hot in summer, not so cold in winter. The golbets are akin to a cave - the womb of the Mother Earth, from which they come out and into which decaying remains return.

The hostess is in charge, she is in charge of everything in the house, she is in constant communication with the inner (hut) Earth (half-bridge of the hut, half-cabin), with the inner sky (beam-matitsa, ceiling), with the World Tree (stove pillar), connecting them , with the spirits of the dead (the same stove pillar and golbets) and, of course, with the current living representatives of their peasant family tree. It is her unconditional leadership in the house (both spiritual and material) that does not leave empty time for the peasant in a Russian hut, and sends him beyond the boundaries of the home temple, to the periphery of the space illuminated by the temple, to male spheres and affairs. If the housewife (the axis of the family) is smart and strong, the family wheel spins with the desired constancy.

Construction of a Russian hut

Situation old Russian hut full of clear, uncomplicated and strict meaning. There are wide and low benches along the walls, five or six windows are located low above the floor and provide rhythmic illumination rather than flooding with light. Directly above the windows there is a solid black shelf. Above are five to seven unhewn, smoked crowns of a log house; smoke rises here as the black stove is fired. To remove it, there is a smoke pipe above the door leading to the entryway, and in the entryway there is a wooden exhaust pipe that carries the already cooled smoke outside the house. Hot smoke economically warms up and antisepticizes living spaces. Thanks to him, there were no such severe pandemics in Rus' as in Western Europe.

The ceiling is made of thick and wide blocks (half-logs), and the floor of the bridge is the same. Under the ceiling there is a mighty matrix beam (sometimes two or three).

The Russian hut is divided into kutas by two raven beams (sheet and pie), laid perpendicular to the upper section of the stove column. The pastry beam extends to the front wall of the hut and separates the women's part of the hut (near the stove) from the rest of the space. It is often used to store baked bread.

There is an opinion that the stove column should not break off at the level of the crows, it should rise higher, right under the mother; in this case the cosmogony of the hut would be complete. In the depths of the northern lands, something similar was discovered, only, perhaps, even more significant, statistically reliably duplicated more than once.

In the immediate vicinity of the stove column, between the pastry beam and the mat, the researchers encountered (for some reason no one had seen before) a carved element with a fairly clear, and even symbolic meaning.

The tripartite nature of such images is interpreted by one of the modern authors as follows: the upper hemisphere is the highest spiritual space (the bowl of “heavenly waters”), the receptacle of grace; the lower one is the vault of heaven covering the Earth - our visible world; the middle link is a node, a ventel, the location of the gods who control the flow of grace into our lower world.

In addition, it is easy to imagine him as the upper (inverted) and lower Bereginya, Baba, Goddess with raised hands. In the middle link one can read the familiar horse heads - a symbol of the solar movement in a circle.

The carved element stands on the pastry beam and precisely supports the matrix.

Thus, in the upper level of the hut space, in the center old Russian hut, in the most significant, striking place, which not a single glance will pass by, the missing link is personally embodied - the connection between the World Tree (stove column) and the celestial sphere (matitsa), and the connection in the form of a complex, deeply symbolic sculptural and carved element. It should be noted that it is located immediately on two internal borders of the hut - between the habitable relatively light bottom and the black “heavenly” top, as well as between the common family half of the hut and the sacred altar forbidden for men - the women's and stove kutas.

It is thanks to this hidden and very timely found element that it is possible to build a series of complementary architectural and symbolic images of traditional peasant cultural objects and structures.

In their symbolic essence, all these objects are one and the same. However, exactly old Russian hut– the most complete, most developed, most in-depth architectural phenomenon. And now, when it seems that she is completely forgotten and safely buried, her time has come again. The Time of the Russian House is coming - literally.

Chicken hut

It should be noted that researchers recognize the Kurna (black, ore) Russian hut as the highest example of material folk culture, in which the smoke from the furnace went directly into the upper part of the internal volume. The high trapezoidal ceiling made it possible to stay in the hut during the fire. The smoke came out of the mouth of the stove directly into the room, spread along the ceiling, and then dropped to the level of the funnel shelves and was pulled out through a fiberglass window cut into the wall, connected to a wooden chimney.

There are several reasons for the long existence of ore huts, and first of all, climatic conditions - high humidity terrain. Open fire and the smoke from the furnace soaked and dried the walls of the log house, thus a kind of preservation of the wood took place, so the life of the black huts was longer. The chicken stove heated the room well and did not require much firewood. It was also convenient for housekeeping. The smoke dried clothes, shoes and fishing nets.

The transition to white stoves brought with it an irreparable loss in the structure of the entire complex significant elements Russian hut: the ceiling dropped, the windows rose, the voronets, the stove pillar, and the golbets began to disappear. The single zoned volume of the hut began to be divided into functional volumes - rooms. All internal proportions, appearance, and gradually old Russian hut ceased to exist, turning into a rural house with an interior similar to a city apartment. The whole “perturbation”, in fact, degradation, occurred over a hundred years, starting in the 19th century and ending by the middle of the 20th century. The last chicken huts, according to our information, were converted into white ones after the Great Patriotic War, in the 1950s.

But what should we do now? A return to truly smoking huts is possible only as a result of a global or national catastrophe. However, it is possible to return the entire figurative and symbolic structure of the hut, to saturate the Russian country house with it, even in the conditions technical progress and the ever-increasing welfare of the “Russians”...

To do this, in fact, you just need to start waking up from sleep. A dream inspired by the elite of our people just when the people themselves were creating masterpieces of their culture.

Based on materials from the magazine “Rodobozhie No. 7”

Russian national housing - in Russian traditional culture, which was widely used back in the late 19th - early 20th centuries, was a structure made of wood - a hut, built using log or frame technology.
The basis of the Russian national dwelling is a cage, a rectangular, covered, one-room simple log house without outbuildings (log house) or shack. The dimensions of the cages were small, 3 by 2 meters, and there were no window openings. The height of the cage was 10-12 logs. The cage was covered with straw. A cage with a stove is already a hut.

How did our ancestors choose places to live and building materials for their homes?
Settlements often arose in wooded areas, along the banks of rivers and lakes, since waterways were then natural roads that connected numerous cities of Rus'. In the forest there are animals and birds, resin and wild honey, berries and mushrooms, “To live near the forest, you won’t go hungry” they said in Rus'. Previously, the Slavs conquered living space from the forest, cutting and cultivating the cornfield. Construction began with the felling of forests and a settlement - a “village” - appeared on the cleared land. The word “village” is derived from the word “derv” (from the action “d’arati”) - something that is torn out by the roots (forest and thickets). It didn't take a day or two to build. First it was necessary to develop the site. They prepared the land for arable land, cut down, and uprooted the forest. This is how “zaimka” arose (from the word “to borrow”), and the first buildings were called “repairs” (from the word “initial”, i.e. beginning). Relatives and just neighbors settled nearby (those who “sat down” nearby). To build a house, our ancestors cut down coniferous trees (the most resistant to decay) and took only those that fell with their tops to the east. Young and old trees, as well as dead wood, were unsuitable for this. Single trees and groves that grew on the site of a destroyed church were considered sacred, so they were also not taken to build a house. They cut it down in cold weather because the tree was considered dead at that time (wood is drier at this time). They chopped it down, not sawed it: it was believed that the tree would be better preserved this way. The logs were stacked, the bark was removed from them in the spring, they were leveled, collected in small log houses and left to dry until the fall, and sometimes until the following spring. Only after this did they begin to select a location and build a house. This was the experience of centuries-old wooden construction.

“The hut is not cut for summer, but for winter” - what was the name of the peasant log house and how did they choose the place for it?
The most ancient and simplest type of Russian buildings consists of “cages” - small tetrahedral log houses. One of the cages was heated by a “hearth” and therefore was called “istba”, from the word “istobka”, hence the name of the Russian house - “izba”. IZBA is a wooden (log) log residential building. Large houses were built, grandfathers and fathers, grandchildren and great-grandchildren all lived together under one roof - “A family is strong when there is only one roof over it.” The hut was usually cut from thick logs, stacking them in a log house. The log house consisted of “crowns”. The crown is four logs laid horizontally in a square or rectangle and connected at the corners with notches (recesses so that the logs “sit” tightly on top of one another). From the ground to the roof, about 20 such “crowns” had to be assembled. The most reliable and warmest was considered to be the fastening of logs “in the oblo” (from the word “obly” - round), in which the round log ends of the logs were cut into each other and they came out a little outside the wall, the corners of such a house did not freeze. The logs of the log house were tied together so tightly that even a knife blade could not pass between them. The location for the house was chosen very carefully. They never built a hut on the site of an old one if the previous housing burned down or collapsed due to troubles. In no case was a hut built “on blood” or “on bones” - where even a drop of human blood fell on the ground or bones were found, this happened! A place where a cart once overturned (there will be no wealth in the house), or where a road once passed (misfortunes could come to the house along it), or where a crooked tree grew, was considered bad. People tried to notice where the cattle liked to rest: this place promised good luck to the owners of the house built there.

What are the names of the main elements of the decorative decoration of a hut?
1. “The Little Horse” is a talisman for the home against evil forces. The horse was hewn out of a very thick tree, which was dug up by the roots, the root was processed, giving it the appearance of a horse's head. Skates look into the sky and protect the house not only from bad weather. In ancient times, the horse was a symbol of the sun; according to ancient beliefs, the sun was carried across the sky by winged invisible horses, so they piled the horse on the roof to support the sun. 2. From under the ridge descended a skillfully carved board - “Towel”, so named for its resemblance to the embroidered end of a real towel and symbolizing the sun at its zenith; to the left of it the same board symbolized the sunrise, and to the right it symbolized sunset. 3. The facade of the house is a wall facing the street - it was likened to a person’s face. There were windows on the façade. The word “window” comes from the ancient name for the eye – “eye”, and windows were considered the eyes on the face of the house, which is why wooden carved window decorations are called “Clatbands”. Often the windows were supplemented with “shutters”. In the southern huts you could reach the windows with your hands, but in the north the houses were placed on a high “basement” (that is, what is under the cage). Therefore, to close the shutters, special bypass galleries were arranged - “gulbishchas”, which encircled the house at the level of the windows. Windows used to be closed with mica or bull's bubbles; glass appeared in the 14th century. Such a window let in little light, but in winter the hut retained heat better. 4. The roof of the house with the front and back walls in the form of log triangles symbolized the “forehead” on the face of the house, the Old Russian name for the forehead sounds like “chelo”, and the carved boards protruding from under the roof are “Prichelins”.

What did the upper and lower boundaries in the living space of the hut symbolize and how were they arranged?
The ceiling in the hut was made of planks (that is, from boards hewn from logs). The upper boundary of the hut was the ceiling. The boards were supported by “Matitsa” - a particularly thick beam, which was cut into the upper crown when the frame was erected. The matitsa ran across the entire hut, fastening and holding the walls, ceiling and base of the roof. For a house, the mother was the same as the root for a tree, and the mother for a person: the beginning, support, foundation. Various objects were hung from the motherboard. A hook was nailed here for hanging the ochep with a cradle (a flexible pole, even with a slight push, such a cradle swayed). Only that house was considered full-fledged, where the fireplace creaks under the ceiling, where the children, growing up, nurse the younger ones. Ideas about the father's house, happiness, and good luck were associated with the mother. It is no coincidence that when setting off on the road, it was necessary to hold on to the mat. The ceilings on the motherboard were always laid parallel to the floorboards. Floor is the boundary separating people from “non-humans”: brownies and others. The floor in the house was laid from halves of logs (hence the word “floorboards”), and it rested on thick beams cut into the lower crowns of the log house. The floorboards themselves were associated with the idea of ​​the path The bed (and in the summer they often slept right on the floor) was supposed to be laid across the floorboards, otherwise the person would leave the house. And during matchmaking, the matchmakers tried to sit so that they could look along the floorboards, then they would conspire and take the bride away from the house.

What was the inner world of a Russian hut like?
In a peasant hut, every corner had its own meaning. The main space of the hut was occupied by the stove. The stove was made of clay with the addition of stones. The Russian stove was used for heating, cooking food for people and animals, for ventilation and lighting of the room. The heated stove served as a bed for old people and children, and clothes were dried here. Babies were washed in the warm mouth of the stove, and if there was no bathhouse, then adult family members also “bathed” here. Things were stored on the stove, grain was dried, it healed - people took a steam bath in it for illnesses. On the bench next to the stove the housewife prepared food, and the bread taken out of the stove was also stored here. This place in the hut was called “Stove Corner” or “Woman’s Corner” - from the mouth of the stove to the front wall of the house - the kingdom of a woman, all the simple utensils that were in the household stood here, here she worked, rested, and raised children. Next to the stove, a cradle hung on a flexible pole attached to the mat. Here, right next to the window, hand millstones were always placed - a grinding device (two large flat stones), so the corner was also called “Millstone”. The front part of the hut was the “Red Corner”. No matter how the stove was located in the hut (to the right or left of the entrance), the red corner was always located diagonally from it. In the very corner there was always a “Goddess” with icons and a lamp, which is why the corner also received the name “Saint”. From time immemorial, the “back corner” has been masculine. Here they placed a “konnik” (“kutnik”) - a short, wide bench in the shape of a box with a hinged flat lid; tools were stored in it. It was separated from the door by a flat board, which was often shaped like a horse's head. This was the owner's place. Here he rested and worked. Here they wove bast shoes, repaired and made utensils, harnesses, knitted nets, etc.

What is the purpose and location of the table in a Russian hut?
The most honorable place in the “red corner” near the converging benches (long and short) was occupied by a table. The table must be covered with a tablecloth. In XI – XII centuries the table was made of adobe and motionless. It was then that his permanent place in the house was determined. Movable wooden tables appeared only in the 17th – 18th centuries. The table was made rectangular in shape and was always placed along the floorboards in the red corner. Any promotion of him from there could only be associated with a ritual or crisis situation. The table was never taken out of the hut, and when a house was sold, the table was sold along with the house. The table played a special role in wedding ceremonies. Each stage of matchmaking and preparation for the wedding necessarily ended with a feast. And before leaving for the crown, in the bride’s house there was a ritual walk around the table by the bride and groom and blessing them. The newborn was carried around the table. On ordinary days, it was forbidden to walk around the table; everyone had to leave from the side from which they entered. In general, the table was conceptualized as an analogue to the temple throne. The flat tabletop was revered as the “palm of God” that gives bread. Therefore, knocking on the table at which they were sitting, scraping a spoon on the dishes, throwing leftover food on the floor was considered a sin. People used to say: “Bread on the table, so is the table, but not a piece of bread, so is the table.” In normal times, between feasts, only bread wrapped in a tablecloth and a salt shaker could be on the table. The constant presence of bread on the table was supposed to ensure prosperity and well-being at home. Thus, the table was a place of family unity. Each household member had his own place at the table, which depended on his marital status. The most honorable place at the table - at the head of the table - was occupied by the owner of the house.

With what and how did they illuminate the interior of the hut?
Mica, and bubbles, and even glass of that time only let in a little light and the hut had to be additionally illuminated. The oldest device for lighting a hut is considered to be a “fireplace” - a small depression, a niche in the very corner of the stove. A burning splinter was placed in the fireplace; a well-dried splinter gave a bright and even light. A splinter was a thin sliver of birch, pine, aspen, oak, ash, and maple. A little later, the fireplace was illuminated by a torch inserted into the “Svetets”. To obtain thin (less than 1 cm) long (up to 70 cm) wood chips, the log was steamed in an oven over a cast iron pot with boiling water and split at one end with an ax, then torn into splinters by hand. They inserted splinters into the lights. The simplest light was a wrought iron rod with a fork at one end and a point at the other. With this point, the light was inserted into the gap between the logs of the hut. A splinter was inserted into the fork. And to catch the falling embers, they placed a trough of water under the light. Later, forged lights appeared, in which several torches burned. On major holidays, expensive and rare candles were lit in the hut to provide full light. With candles in the dark they walked into the hallway and went down to the underground. In winter, they threshed with candles on the “threshing floor” (covered area for threshing). The candles were greasy and waxy. Tallow candles were more often "Macans". To make them, they took beef, lamb, goat fat, melted it and dipped a wick thrown over a splinter into it, froze it and so on several times, they got “Makans”, which often came out skinny and uneven. Wax candles were made by rolling. The wax was heated in hot water, rolled it into a roller, flattened it into a long flat cake and, placing a flax or hemp wick on the edge of the flat cake, rolled it back into the roller.

How were the poker, grip, broom and bread shovel used in the house?
People used to say: “The poker is the mistress of the stove.” In the old days, a stove poker was one of the symbols of the hearth, providing food and warmth, without which family well-being is impossible. While the stove is heating, the owner’s poker works tirelessly. As soon as the firewood has flared up in the stove and the burning logs need to be moved deeper into the stove, the poker is right there. A log has fallen out of the fire and is smoking in the far corner of the firebox; the same poker comes to its aid. A “grab” was used to bring cast iron pots (from one and a half to ten liters) into the Russian stove. Before sending the cast iron into the furnace, it was placed on a pole near the mouth and the grip horns were brought under its body. Next to the cast iron, under the handle of the grip, they placed suitable size roller (round log). By pressing the end of the handle, the cast iron was slightly lifted and, resting the handle on the roller, rolled into the furnace and placed in the intended location of the hearth. It was not easy to do this without skill. The grips, like the pots, were of different sizes, so there were a lot of them near the stove, they were taken care of and they served people for a long time. “Pomelo” is invariably located near the Russian oven and is intended for cleaning the hearth and hearth. Most often, the oven floor was swept before baking pies. The broom was intended exclusively for the stove. It was strictly prohibited to use it for any other purposes. In the old days, when bread was baked in every village house, and pies were baked on holidays, the oven was supposed to have a wide wooden “shovel” on a long handle. A shovel made from a board was used to put bread into the oven. The bread shovel also required respectful attitude. It was placed only with the handle down.

Where were clothes, fabrics and valuable household items stored?
“Chest” - this word meant a large rectangular box made of sawn boards with a lid on hinges, closed with a lock. Russian people kept clothes and valuables in it. For centuries, various chest items formed an important part of the interior of peasant huts; it was displayed in a prominent place, testifying to the wealth of the family. The chests in which the bride's dowry was kept were often very large sizes and were brought into the house only once - during its construction. In Rus', when a girl was born, they immediately began to prepare a dowry for her - this was called “pumping up the chests.” A dowry was the key to a successful marriage. After marriage, the girl left her home and took with her dowry chests: pillows, feather beds, blankets, towels (made by the bride herself), clothes, household utensils, jewelry. In many houses, chests of different sizes were displayed in the form of a slide, i.e. stacked one on top of the other, sometimes their numbers reached the ceiling. In a peasant house, chests were used not only to store goods, but also served as a pillow stand, a bench, and sometimes a place for an afternoon nap. Chests, headrests, caskets, hideaways, caskets were richly decorated. Usually they were bound for strength with strips of iron, tinned or blued. Customers presented certain artistic demands to chest makers: chests should not only be spacious and durable, but also beautiful. For this purpose, chests were painted with tempera paints diluted in egg yolk. Images of a lion or griffin were often found on chest items; they were considered strong, courageous animals, good defenders of the goods acquired by man.

What was the significance of an embroidered towel in peasant life?
In Rus', towels were hung in the hut for festive decoration. Their colorful patterns enlivened its log walls, adding festivity and making the home elegant. They surrounded the shrine in the red corner with a towel and hung it on windows, mirrors, and walls. In the old peasant life, a towel was called a sheet of home-made white fabric, trimmed with embroidery, a woven colored pattern, ribbons, stripes of colored chintz, lace, etc. The length of the towels was from 2 to 4 m, width 3638 cm. It was decorated, as a rule, at the ends; the cloth was rarely ornamented. The large “hand-knitted” towel, the so-called “wall” (the length of the wall), was especially richly decorated. During the hand-waving ceremony it was given to the groom, hanging it around his neck. This meant that the bride had been matched, and the groom threw the towel to his relatives. The shrine was decorated with it for the entire duration of the wedding, and during the trip to the crown it was tied to the arch of the wedding cart. “Gift” towels, which the bride gave to the groom’s relatives, were less decorated than hand-knitted ones. The bride was covered with a towel (and a shawl on top) when she was taken to church. The bride and groom were tied with a towel, as if symbolizing the strength of their family life. The towel played a significant role in maternity and baptismal rites, as well as in funeral and memorial rites. According to custom, richly ornamented towels were a necessary part of a girl's trousseau. On the second day of the wedding, the young woman hung her handmade towels in the hut on top of her mother-in-law’s towels so that all the guests could admire her work. The towel was present in many customs and rituals of the Russian family. This purpose of the towel precluded its use for wiping hands, face, or floor. For this purpose, they used a “rucker or wiping.”

What vegetable and animal oils were produced in Rus'?
So what exactly is “butter”? Whatever you say, you love it or you don’t love it, but without fat, which forms the basis of oil, human life would be impossible, since every cell of our body is surrounded by a protective fatty film. The most commonly used vegetable oils in Rus' have always been flaxseed and hemp. And the sunflower oil we are accustomed to came into use much later, at the beginning of the 19th century. The use of vegetable oils was allowed even during the strictest multi-day fasts, which is why its second “popular” name is vegetable oil. Hemp oil is a fatty vegetable oil obtained from the fruits of the hemp plant, usually by pressing, it has excellent nutritional, protective and regenerating properties. Unfortunately, nowadays cannabis is perceived as narcotic plant and is prohibited from cultivation. Flaxseed oil was not inferior to hemp oil and has always been one of the most valuable and important food products. Flax oil is food, medicine, and cosmetics. But, if flaxseed oil has a specific smell, then pumpkin and cedar oils are among the most delicious. Rosehip and nut oils were often used for medicinal purposes. Animal butter in Rus' was churned from cream, sour cream and whole milk. The most common way to prepare butter was to melt sour cream or cream in a Russian oven. The separated oily mass was cooled and beaten with wooden whorls, spatulas, spoons, and often with hands. The finished oil was washed in cold water. Since fresh butter could not be stored for a long time, peasants melted it in ovens to obtain clarified butter.

Why did they say in Rus' - “Without salt, without bread - half a meal”?
There was always bread on the table in a Russian house, and a salt shaker stood next to it; salt was a kind of amulet, because our ancestors believed that salt protected from hostile forces. In the old days, when subsistence farming dominated, salt was almost the only product purchased by the Eastern Slavs. Salt was very expensive and was taken care of. This explains the widespread sign that spilling salt is not good - punishment will follow. A loaf of bread and a salt shaker decorated the wedding table, it was given as a housewarming gift, they came with it to a newborn child, as if with a blessing, and when they met a traveler setting off on a journey and a dear guest, they brought bread and salt with a wish for wealth and prosperity, thereby expressing your disposition towards them. Once upon a time, the word “loaf” was pronounced and written as “korovai”. A long time ago, in order to appease the Gods, people sacrificed domestic animals (cows), but life did not allow them to part with their cow nurse. That’s when they began to make cows from dough, and later - bread with horns, which was called “korovai”. Since the main grain crop was rye, they baked mainly rye bread. In Rus', since ancient times, rye bread was the main food product; it was kneaded with natural leaven and was of three varieties: 1) fur, or chaff, from poorly winnowed rye and wholemeal; 2) sieve made from rye flour, sifted through a very thin sieve (sieve); 3) sieve made from rye flour, sifted through a regular fine sieve. But where wheat was sown, white bread was also baked. The best was considered “brick” bread, baked from well-sifted wheat flour. The grinding of flour and the thoroughness of its sifting determined the taste of the bread.

“The porridge is good, but the cup is small” - they loved porridge in Rus', but what cereals were they prepared from?
Since medieval antiquity, rye, oats, wheat, barley, millet, and buckwheat have been cultivated in our country. Today in our country the following types of cereals are produced from these cereals: from buckwheat - core and prodel; from millet - polished millet; from oats - cereals: uncrushed, rolled, flakes and oatmeal; from barley - pearl barley and barley; When durum wheat is ground, semolina is produced. Our ancestors long ago borrowed the skills of making flour and mastered the “secrets” of baking various products from fermented dough. That is why pies, pies, pancakes, pies, kulebyaki, pancakes, pancakes, etc. are of significant importance in the food of our ancestors. Many of these products have long become traditional for festive tables: kurniks - at weddings, pies, pancakes - at Maslenitsa, "larks" "from dough - on spring holidays, etc. No less typical for Russian traditional cuisine are dishes from all kinds of cereals: various porridges, krupeniki, oatmeal jelly, casseroles. In the more northern regions of our country, dishes prepared from millet are of particular importance. Millet served as a raw material for producing flour, cereals, brewing beer, kvass, preparing soups and sweet dishes. This folk tradition continues to this day. Porridge was an everyday food and there were three main types - crumbly, viscous and liquid; milk, fat, butter, eggs, mushrooms, etc. were added to it. There are more than twenty of them in Rus': plain buckwheat, buckwheat with peas, millet, oatmeal, wheat, carrot, turnip, pea, etc. “Kutia” was a special dish in Rus'; it was prepared from wheat grains with the addition of honey.

What vegetable crops were cultivated in Rus'?
Not only grain crops were cultivated by our ancestors. From ancient times, through the centuries, such crops as cabbage, beets, turnips, rutabaga, pumpkin, carrots, and peas have come down to the present day and have become the main crops in our garden. The most widely used cabbage in Rus' was sauerkraut, which could be preserved until the next harvest. Cabbage served as an indispensable snack and seasoning for various dishes. Cabbage soup made from various types of cabbage is the well-deserved pride of our national cuisine, although they were prepared back in Ancient Rome, where a lot of cabbage was specially grown. Just many vegetable plants and recipes for dishes “migrated” from Ancient Rome through Byzantium to Rus' after the adoption of Christianity in Rus'. Turnips in Russia until the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th centuries. was as important as potatoes are today. Turnips were used everywhere and many dishes were prepared from turnips, stuffed, boiled, steamed. Turnips were used as a filling for pies, and kvass was made from it. Turnips contain very valuable biochemical sulfur compounds, which are excellent immunostimulants when eaten regularly. Later, turnips began to fall out of use, but potatoes and the proverb appeared - “Potatoes help bread,” and tomatoes and cucumbers began to be cultivated. Pumpkin appeared in Rus' in the XYI century and immediately became popular among peasants due to its productivity, unpretentiousness, usefulness and ability for long-term storage. Beetroot was considered exclusively healing product, from early spring to late autumn they ate both root vegetables and tops of the plant.

“When it’s hot in the oven, then it’s cooked” - how does a Russian oven work?
For Russians, already in ancient times, the so-called “Russian stove” appeared and became firmly established in everyday life. A good stove is the pride of the owner, the holy of holies of the home. The fire burning in the stove provided light and warmth, and food was cooked on it. This unique structure played the role of a kind of vital center for the family. Russian stoves have always been installed on the stove. This is a small log house with three or four crowns of round logs. A horizontal “roll-up” was arranged on top of it, which was covered with sand and smeared with a thick layer of clay. This clay served as a “hearth” for the furnace. A grip, a poker, and a scoop were kept in the “oven”; it was believed that the brownie lived there. The stove was made of stone (brick) and coated with clay on top; it was supposed to hold heat for as long as possible and require as little firewood as possible. The design of the stove is also related to the shape of the clay dishes in which food was prepared (the so-called “Slavic pots.” The fact is that in this stove the dishes are heated from the sides and therefore must have a large lateral surface. In addition, the shape of the pots is best suited for grips. The size of the oven was almost cubic: length 1.8-2 m, width 1.6-1.8 m, height 1.7 m. The upper part of the oven was made wide and flat, comfortable for lying on. The interior space of the oven - " firebox", "crucible" - made large: 1.2-1.4 m high, up to 1.5 m wide, with a vaulted ceiling and a flat bottom - "hearth". The rectangular hole in the front of the furnace is the "brow", " the mouth" - was tightly closed with a large "damper" to avoid heat loss. In front of the mouth, a platform was set up - a wide board - a "pole", on which utensils were placed in order to push them into the oven with a handle. "ash pits" were located to the right and left of the pole, where hot coals were stored for a year.

“One day feeds a year” - why was the timing of land cultivation important for the farmer?
The peasants lived surrounded by beautiful but harsh nature. Their life depended on drought and rain, the number of workers in the family, and the safety of the harvest. Their main occupation is gradually becoming “farming”. First, in the winter, a section of the forest was cut down. In the spring it was burned, the ash served as fertilizer. After this, they loosened it with a hoe, mixing the ash with the soil, and then the field was sown. In most of Russia, the main arable tool was the “plow” or “plow”; along with the plow, the “roe deer” was known, which was used to raise new soil (uncultivated soil). For loosening the soil after plowing, mixing layers and removing weeds they used “bough harrows” (this was the name given to a large tree branch with branches that were not completely cut off). Throughout Russia, baskets called “seeders” were used for sowing grain, flax seeds and hemp; “sickles” were used for harvesting; they were the most common harvesting tool; “flails” were used for threshing grain crops; “rollers” were used for threshing flax and hemp. ”, for winnowing - “shovels”, for processing grain into flour at home - “millstones”. Peasants sowed millet, wheat, barley, oats, rye, buckwheat, hemp, flax, and less often beans and peas. The Slavs called bread “zhit” (from the word “to live”), because they could not live without it: it was the main food product. Each village had its own experts who determined the timing of agricultural work. The peasant determined the right moment of “ripeness” of the land for plowing based on the centuries-old experience of his ancestors: taking a handful of soil and squeezing it tightly in his fist, he released it. If the lump crumbles when it falls, it means the soil is ready for sowing; if it falls in a lump, it means it is not yet ripe (i.e., has not dried out). In June, haymaking began, in July and August - the hard time of harvesting grain.

Where did the proverb come from: “When you sow flax, you reap gold”?
Since ancient times, flax was cultivated in Rus', which fed and clothed people; our ancestors said about it with respect: “You sow flax, and you reap gold.” To process flax stems into fiber, from fiber into thread, they used “beaters”, “ruffles”, “combs”, “rollers”, “spinning wheels”, “self-spinning wheels”, “spindles”. The spinning wheel was a necessary item of peasant household use: it was a tool of labor, a decoration for the hut, and a wedding gift. For centuries, the technology of growing and processing flax has remained unchanged. Ripe flax is tugged, that is, pulled out of the ground, along with the roots. Then it is dried, freed from the seed heads (combed), threshed, soaked, which makes it possible to separate the fiber from the woody part of the stem, crumpled and crushed. The frayed flax is combed and a thin twisted ribbon is obtained - a roving. On long winter evenings, women spun flax yarn from it - twisting flax fibers into thread on spindles or spinning wheels. During spinning, the fingers of the left hand had to be wetted to give the thread “strength.” Spinning is a rather complex and monotonous job; to make work more fun, the girls gathered in some hut, sang and had conversations there, but did not forget about work. Everyone tried to work as best as possible, because the girl’s skill will be judged by what kind of thread it turns out. Having received a sufficient number of threads, they were used to make fabric on a handloom. Flax in Rus' was grown not only to obtain linen fabric, which was very valuable in its properties. It is known that in ancient Rus', delicious bread and flatbreads were baked from flaxseed flour, obtained from ground flax seeds, and flaxseed oil was added to food on fasting days.

What material was used to make dishes in Rus'?
The peasants did everything they needed for the household themselves. Dishes were made from tree bark (carts, bowls, buckets, barrels), carved from wood (spoons, cups, basins), sculpted from clay, then fired over a fire in an oven. Utensils for the same purpose, but made from different materials: a vessel made of clay - “pot”, made of cast iron - “cast iron”, made of copper - “coppler”. Clay pots and jugs were used for cooking for people for a very long time. Pots were made in a variety of sizes. The main advantage of the pot was its strength. On the farm they treasured the pots and took care of them. If a pot was cracked, it was braided with birch bark ribbons and cereals were stored in it. Later, the pot was replaced by cast iron - tinned metal vessels; they retained the shape of the pot. Over the centuries, a huge variety of products made of wood, clay, and metal have been created. Among them there were many truly artistic creations, when an everyday object, without losing its utilitarian qualities, at the same time became a work of high aesthetic level. It is difficult to imagine a peasant house without numerous utensils that have accumulated over decades. “Utensils” are utensils for preparing, preparing and storing food, serving it on the table - pots, patches, tubs, krinkas, bowls, dishes, valleys, ladles, crusts (they drank honey, kvass, beer from them), etc. .; all kinds of containers for collecting berries and mushrooms - baskets, bodies, containers, etc.; various chests, caskets, caskets for storing household items, clothing and cosmetics; items for lighting a fire and interior lighting at home - flint, lights, candlesticks and much more.

“Only the bast shoes are woven on both legs, but the mittens are different” - what and how did they dress in Rus'?
The work of Russian craftsmen served a variety of aspects of peasant life, including the production of clothing and shoes. For peasants, the main clothing was the “shirt,” for both men and women. It was believed that all vulnerable spots of the human body should have been covered. Everyone had casual and festive shirts. Everyday people only sewed red thread along the seams and edges to block the path of evil. Festive shirts were richly decorated with embroidery. It was believed that a person conveys his requests to God using the language of the pattern. In different regions of Rus', they put a “poneva” or “sarafan”, an “apron” or “soul warmer” on a shirt, and they were decorated in every possible way. The Russian headdress has always been an important part of the costume. Girls wore “ribbons,” and married women covered their heads with a scarf or hid them under a kokoshnik, which was called differently in different places: kika, duckweed, heel. Men wore wide trousers - “portos” and “blouse shirts”. All clothes were belted with a “sash”. They wore a cap on their heads. In winter and summer, peasants put “bast shoes” on their feet. They were woven from the inner part of linden or birch bark - bast. Bast shoes were usually worn on canvas (in summer), wool or cloth (in winter) wrappings (“onuchi”). Onuchi were secured to the leg with “frills” - leather or hemp ropes; they were attached to the bast shoes, wrapped around the leg and tied under the knee. The bast shoes were woven without distinction between the right and left legs. Everyday bast shoes without additional accessories had a shelf life of three to ten days. Weaving bast shoes was mainly done by old people. A good craftsman could weave two pairs of bast shoes in a day.

Litvinova Elena Evgenevna

For many centuries, the wooden peasant hut was the predominant dwelling for 90% of the Russian population. This is an easily worn-out building, and the huts that have reached us are no older than the middle of the 19th century. But in their design they preserved ancient building traditions. They were usually built from thin-layered pine, and in some areas of the Mezen and Pechora rivers from larch.

Russian hut on a high basement with a gallery. The basement was used for storing supplies. The hut is located in the Vitoslavitsa Museum of Wooden Architecture near Novgorod.

The hut is combined under a common roof with outbuildings. The peasant's dwelling consisted of a cage, a hut, a passage, an upper room, a basement and a closet. The main living space is a hut with a Russian stove. The interior of the hut: fixed wide benches, tightly attached to the walls, shelves above them; wooden elements adjacent to the stove; an open dish cabinet, a cradle and other details of home furnishings have a history of many centuries.

BAKE. Particularly interesting in the interior of a Russian hut is the arrangement of the stove. Combined with its wooden parts with the internal architecture of the hut into one whole, it embodies the idea of ​​a home. That is why folk craftsmen put so much love into the architectural processing of the stove and its wooden parts.

Sometimes a cooking corner was set up near the stove, separated by a brightly painted wooden paneled partition that did not go all the way to the top. Often this partition was turned into a double-sided and painted built-in wardrobe. The painting was either geometric in nature (sun motif) or depicted flowers. The predominant colors in the painting were green, white, red, pink, yellow, and black.

STORE. Fixed benches were usually arranged along the walls of the entire room. On one side they were tightly adjacent to the wall, and on the other they were supported either by stands cut from a thick board, or by carved and turned pillars-legs. Such legs tapered towards the middle, which was decorated with a round, chiseled apple.

If the stand was made flat by sawing out of a thick board, then its design retained the silhouette of a similar chiseled leg. A piece of wood decorated with some simple carving was sewn to the edge of the bench. A bench decorated in this way was called pubescent, and its legs were called stamishki. Sometimes sliding doors were installed between the stashishkas, turning the wall benches into a kind of chests for storing household items.

A portable bench with four legs or with blank boards replacing them on the sides, on which the seat was installed, was called a bench. The backs could be thrown from one end of the bench to the opposite. Such benches with a flip-up back were called saddle benches, and the backrest itself was called a saddle bench. Carvings were mainly used to decorate the backs, which were made blind or through - through carpentry, latticework, carving or turning. The length of the bench is slightly longer than the length of the table. The benches in the upper rooms were usually covered with a special fabric - a shelf cloth. There are benches with one side - a carved or painted board. The side was used as a support for a pillow or was used as a spinning wheel.

Chairs in peasant homes spread later, in the 19th century. The influence of the city was most noticeably reflected in the design of the chair. In folk art, the stable symmetrical shape of a chair with a square plank seat, a square through back and slightly curved legs predominates. Sometimes the chair was decorated with wooden fringe, sometimes with a patterned back. The chairs were painted in two or three colors, for example blue and crimson. Chairs are characterized by some rigidity, which makes them similar in shape to a bench.

TABLE- usually was of considerable size for a large family. The table cover is rectangular, it was made from good boards without knots and carefully processed until particularly smooth. The underframe was designed in different ways: in the form of plank sides with a recess at the bottom, connected by a leg; in the form of legs connected by two legs or a circle; without a drawer or with a drawer; with one or two drawers. Sometimes the edges of the table board and the edges of massive legs, ending in their lower part with carved interceptors, were covered with carvings.

In addition to lunch ones, they made kitchen tables for cooking - suppliers who were placed near the stove. The shelves were higher than the dining tables, so that it was convenient to work at them while standing, and had shelves at the bottom with closing doors and drawers. Small tables on which stood a casket or a book were also common; they had a more decorative solution.

CHESTS- a mandatory accessory of the hut. They stored clothes, canvases and other household utensils.

Chests were made large - up to 2 m long and small ones - 50-60 cm (laying). Sometimes chests were lined on all sides with short-haired animal skin (elk, deer). Strengthened chests metal parts, which also served as decoration.

A carved ornament was made in the metal strips, clearly protruding against the background of the chest painted in a bright color (green or red). Handles placed on the sides of the chest, locks and keys were intricately decorated. The locks were made with a ringing sound, even a melody and in a cunning way closures and master keys. The inside of the chests was also decorated with carvings and paintings; the most common theme was a floral pattern. Wedding chests were especially richly and brightly painted. Chests made of cedar wood were highly valued, the specific smell of which repels moths.

SHELVES. Shelves were widely used in the hut, tightly fixed to the wall. Shelves adjacent to the wall along the entire length were called hanging (from the word hang), shelves supported only by the ends were called voronets.

Voronets regiments divided the hut premises into independent parts. Shelves can also include hanging flooring - flooring that was made above the front door; between the stove and the wall. Above the benches there was a shelf-overhead, which was located slightly above the windows. Such shelves were supported by shaped brackets.

SUPPLIER CABINETS. Over time (XVIII-XIX centuries), cabinets of various sizes and types began to appear in peasant homes. Small lockers varied in artistic design (carving, turning parts, profiles, painting). The patterns are geometric or floral in nature, usually a flowerpot with flowers. Sometimes there are images of genre scenes. Often, through-threads were used in cabinets, which was done to ventilate food.

The supply cabinets consisted of two parts: the lower one was equipped with shelves with closing doors or drawers (two to five) and had a folding board, which was used as a table cover. In the smaller upper part there were shelves, closed with blind or glazed doors.

BEDS. For sleeping they used benches, chests with a flat lid, built-in and mobile beds. The built-in bed was located in the corner, tightly attached to the walls on both sides and had one backrest. Hanging cradles, cradles or cradles were intended for infants, which were decorated with carvings, turning parts, paintings, and figured cutouts in the boards.

Presenter color scheme was golden ocher with the introduction of white and red colors. Golden-ocher tones are characteristic of the walls of the hut, wooden furniture, dishes, utensils. The towels on the icons were white, the red color sparkled in small spots in clothes, towels, in plants on the windows, in the paintings of household utensils.

A modern version of the Russian house performed by the Russian House company

All photographs are protected by copyright. Any reproduction of photographs without the written permission of the author is prohibited. You can purchase a license to reproduce the photo, order a full-size photo, a photo in RAW format from Andrey Dachnik or purchase it on Shutterstock.
2014-2016 Andrey Dachnik

A hut in the form of a caged wooden frame of various configurations is a traditional Russian dwelling for rural areas. The traditions of the hut go back to dugouts and houses with earthen walls, from which purely wooden log cabins without external insulation gradually began to rise.

A Russian village hut usually represented not only a house for people to live in, but a whole complex of buildings that included everything necessary for the autonomous life of a large Russian family: living quarters, storage rooms, rooms for livestock and poultry, rooms for food supplies (haylofts), workshop premises, which were integrated into one fenced and well-protected peasant yard from bad weather and strangers. Sometimes part of the premises was integrated under a single roof with the house or was part of a covered courtyard. Only baths, considered a habitat for evil spirits (and sources of fires), were built separately from the peasant estate.

For a long time In Russia, huts were built exclusively with the help of an ax. Devices such as saws and drills appeared only in the 19th century, which to some extent reduced the durability of Russian wooden huts, since saws and drills, unlike an ax, left the wood structure “open” for the penetration of moisture and microorganisms. The ax “sealed” the tree, crushing its structure. Metal was practically not used in the construction of huts, as it was quite expensive due to its artisanal mining (swamp metal) and production.

Since the fifteenth century, the Russian stove, which could occupy up to one quarter of the area of ​​the living part of the hut, became the central element of the hut's interior. Genetically, the Russian oven goes back to the Byzantine bread oven, which was enclosed in a box and covered with sand to retain heat longer.

The design of the hut, verified over centuries of Russian life, did not undergo major changes from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. To this day, wooden buildings are preserved, which are 100-200-300 years old. The main damage to wooden housing construction in Russia was caused not by nature, but by the human factor: fires, wars, revolutions, regular property limits and “modern” reconstruction and repair of Russian huts. Therefore, every day there are fewer and fewer unique wooden buildings around, decorating the Russian Land, having their own soul and unique identity.

Russian hut: where and how our ancestors built huts, structure and decor, elements of the hut, videos, riddles and proverbs about the hut and reasonable housekeeping.

“Oh, what mansions!” - this is how we often talk now about a spacious new apartment or cottage. We speak without thinking about the meaning of this word. After all, a mansion is an ancient peasant dwelling, consisting of several buildings. What kind of mansions did the peasants have in their Russian huts? How was the Russian traditional hut built?

In this article:

—Where were huts built before?
— attitude towards the Russian hut in Russian folk culture,
- arrangement of a Russian hut,
- decoration and decor of a Russian hut,
- Russian stove and red corner, male and female halves of a Russian house,
- elements of the Russian hut and peasant yard (dictionary),
- proverbs and sayings, signs about the Russian hut.

Russian hut

Since I come from the north and grew up on the White Sea, I will show photographs of northern houses in the article. And as the epigraph to my story about the Russian hut, I chose the words of D. S. Likhachev:

“Russian North! It is difficult for me to express in words my admiration, my admiration for this region. When for the first time, as a boy of thirteen years old, I traveled along the Barents and White Seas, along the Northern Dvina, visited the Pomors, in peasant huts, listened to songs and fairy tales, looked at these unusually beautiful people, behaved simply and with dignity, I was completely stunned. It seemed to me that this is the only way to truly live: measuredly and easily, working and receiving so much satisfaction from this work... In the Russian North there is the most amazing combination of present and past, modernity and history, watercolor lyricism of water, earth, sky, the formidable power of stone , storms, cold, snow and air" (D.S. Likhachev. Russian culture. - M., 2000. - P. 409-410).

Where were huts built before?

The favorite place to build a village and build Russian huts was the bank of a river or lake. The peasants were also guided by practicality - proximity to the river and boat as a means of transportation, but also by aesthetic reasons. From the windows of the hut, standing on a high place, one could see beautiful view to the lake, forests, meadows, fields, as well as to your yard with barns, to a bathhouse near the river.

Northern villages are visible from afar, they were never located in the lowlands, always on the hills, near the forest, near the water on the high bank of the river, they became the center of a beautiful picture of the unity of man and nature, and fit organically into the surrounding landscape. At the highest place they usually built a church and a bell tower in the center of the village.

The house was built thoroughly, “to last for centuries”; the place for it was chosen to be quite high, dry, protected from cold winds - on a high hill. They tried to locate villages where they were fertile lands, rich meadows, forest, river or lake. The huts were placed in such a way that they had good access and access, and the windows were turned “towards the summer” - to the sunny side.

In the north, they tried to place houses on the southern slope of the hill, so that its top would reliably cover the house from the violent cold northern winds. The south side will always warm up well, and the house will be warm.

If we consider the location of the hut on the site, then they tried to place it closer to its northern part. The house protected the gardening part of the site from the wind.

In terms of the orientation of the Russian hut according to the sun (north, south, west, east) there was also a special structure of the village. It was very important that the windows of the residential part of the house were located in the direction of the sun. For better illumination of houses in rows they were placed in checkerboard pattern relative to each other. All the houses on the streets of the village “looked” in one direction - towards the sun, towards the river. From the window one could see sunrises and sunsets, the movement of ships along the river.

A safe place to build a hut it was considered a place where cattle lay down to rest. After all, cows were considered by our ancestors as a fertile life-giving force, because the cow was often the breadwinner of the family.

They tried not to build houses in swamps or near them; these places were considered “chill”, and the crops there often suffered from frosts. But a river or lake near the house is always good.

When choosing a place to build a house, the men guessed - they used an experiment. Women never participated in it. They took sheep's wool. It was placed in a clay pot. And they left it overnight at the site of the future home. The result was considered positive if the wool became damp by morning. This means the house will be rich.

There were other fortune-telling experiments. For example, in the evening they left chalk on the site of the future house overnight. If the chalk attracted ants, it was considered a good sign. If ants do not live on this land, then it is better not to build a house here. The result was checked in the morning the next day.

They began cutting down the house in early spring (Lent) or in other months of the year on the new moon. If a tree is cut down on the waning Moon, it will quickly rot, which is why there was such a ban. There were also more stringent daily regulations. Timber harvesting began from winter Nikola on December 19th. The best time for harvesting wood was considered to be December - January, after the first frost, when excess moisture leaves the trunk. They did not cut down dry trees or trees with growths for the house, trees that fell to the north when felled. These beliefs applied specifically to trees; other materials were not subject to such standards.

They did not build houses on the sites of houses burned by lightning. It was believed that Elijah the prophet used lightning to strike places of evil spirits. They also did not build houses where there had previously been a bathhouse, where someone had been injured with an ax or a knife, where human bones had been found, where there had previously been a bathhouse or where a road had previously passed, where some misfortune had occurred, for example, a flood.

Attitude to the Russian hut in folk culture

A house in Rus' had many names: hut, hut, tower, holupy, mansion, khoromina and temple. Yes, don’t be surprised – a temple! Mansions (huts) were equated to a temple, because a temple is also a house, the House of God! And in the hut there was always a holy, red corner.

The peasants treated the house as a living being. Even the names of the parts of the house are similar to the names of the parts of the human body and his world! This is a feature of the Russian house - “human”, that is anthropomorphic names of parts of the hut:

• Brow of the hut- this is her face. The pediment of the hut and the outer opening in the stove could be called chel.
• Prichelina- from the word “brow”, that is, decoration on the brow of the hut,
• Platbands- from the word “face”, “on the face” of the hut.
• Ocelye- from the word “eyes”, window. This was the name of a part of a woman’s headdress, and the same name was given to the decoration of a window.
• Forehead- that was the name of the frontal plate. There were also “heads” in the design of the house.
• Heel, foot- that was the name of part of the doors.

There were also zoomorphic names in the structure of the hut and yard: “bulls”, “hens”, “horse”, “crane” - well.

The word "hut" comes from the Old Slavic “istba”. “Istboyu, stokkoyu” was the name for a heated residential log house (and “klet” was an unheated log house for a residential building).

The house and the hut were living models of the world for people. The house was that secret place in which people expressed ideas about themselves, about the world, built their world and their lives according to the laws of harmony. Home is a part of life and a way to connect and shape your life. Home is a sacred space, an image of family and homeland, a model of the world and human life, a person’s connection with the natural world and with God. A house is a space that a person builds with his own hands, and which is with him from the first to last days his life on Earth. Building a house is a repetition by man of the work of the Creator, because the human home, according to the ideas of the people, is a small world created according to the rules of the “big world”.

By the appearance of a Russian house one could determine the social status, religion, and nationality of its owners. In one village there were not two completely identical houses, because each hut carried individuality and reflected the inner world of the clan living in it.

For a child, a home is the first model of the outside big world; it “feeds” and “raises” the child, the child “absorbs” from the house the laws of life in the big adult world. If a child grew up in a bright, cozy, kind home, in a house in which order reigns, then this is how the child will continue to build his life. If there is chaos in the house, then there is chaos in the soul and in a person’s life. From childhood, the child mastered a system of ideas about his home - the house and its structure - the matitsa, the red corner, the female and male parts of the house.

Dom is traditionally used in Russian as a synonym for the word “homeland”. If a person does not have a sense of home, then there is no sense of homeland! Attachment to home and caring for it were considered a virtue. The house and the Russian hut are the embodiment of a native, safe space. The word “house” was also used in the sense of “family” - so they said “There are four houses on the hill” - this meant four families. In a Russian hut, several generations of the family lived and ran a common household under one roof - grandfathers, fathers, sons, grandchildren.

The interior space of a Russian hut has long been associated in folk culture as the space of a woman - she looked after it, restored order and comfort. But the external space - the courtyard and beyond - was the space of a man. My husband’s grandfather still recalls the division of responsibilities that was customary in the family of our great-grandparents: a woman carried water from a well for the house, for cooking. And the man also carried water from the well, but for cows or horses. It was considered a shame if a woman began to perform men's duties or vice versa. Since we lived in large families, there were no problems. If one of the women could not carry water now, then another woman in the family did this work.

The house also strictly observed male and female halves, but this will be discussed later.

In the Russian North, residential and economic premises were combined under the same roof, so that you can run a household without leaving your home. This is how the life ingenuity of the northerners, living in harsh, cold natural conditions, was manifested.

The house was understood in folk culture as the center of the main life values– happiness, prosperity, family prosperity, faith. One of the functions of the hut and house was a protective function. A carved wooden sun under the roof is a wish for happiness and prosperity to the owners of the house. Image of roses (which do not grow in the north) - a wish happy life. The lions and lionesses in the painting are pagan amulets that scare away evil with their terrible appearance.

Proverbs about hut

On the roof there is a heavy wooden ridge - a sign of the sun. There was always a household goddess in the house. S. Yesenin wrote interestingly about the horse: “The horse, both in Greek, Egyptian, Roman, and Russian mythology, is a sign of aspiration. But only one Russian man thought of putting him on his roof, likening his hut under him to a chariot” (Nekrasova M.A. Folk art Russia. – M., 1983)

The house was built very proportionally and harmoniously. Its design is based on the law of the golden ratio, the law of natural harmony in proportions. They built it without measuring instruments or complex calculations - by instinct, as their soul dictated.

A family of 10 or even 15-20 people sometimes lived in a Russian hut. In it they cooked and ate, slept, weaved, spun, repaired utensils, and did all household work.

Myth and truth about the Russian hut. There is an opinion that Russian huts were dirty, there was unsanitary conditions, disease, poverty and darkness. I used to think so too, that’s what we were taught at school. But this is completely untrue! I asked my grandmother shortly before she passed away, when she was already over 90 years old (she grew up near Nyandoma and Kargopol in the Russian North in the Arkhangelsk region), how they lived in their village in her childhood - did they really wash and clean the house once? a year and lived in the dark and in the dirt?

She was very surprised and said that the house was always not just clean, but very light and cozy, beautiful. Her mother (my great-grandmother) embroidered and knitted the most beautiful valances for the beds of adults and children. Each crib and cradle was decorated with her valances. And each crib has its own pattern! Imagine what kind of work this is! And what beauty is in the frame of each crib! Her dad (my great-grandfather) carved beautiful designs on all household utensils and furniture. She recalled being a child under the care of her grandmother along with her sisters and brothers (my great-great-grandmother). They not only played, but also helped adults. It used to be that in the evening her grandmother would tell the children: “Soon mother and father will come from the field, we need to clean the house.” And oh - yes! Children take brooms and rags, put everything in order so that there is not a speck of dust in the corner, and all things are in their places. When mother and father arrived, the house was always clean. The children understood that the adults had come home from work, were tired and needed help. She also remembered how her mother always whitewashed the stove so that the stove would be beautiful and the house would be cozy. Even on the day of giving birth, her mother (my great-grandmother) whitewashed the stove, and then went to the bathhouse to give birth. The grandmother recalled how she, being the eldest daughter, helped her.

It was not like the outside was clean and the inside was dirty. They cleaned very carefully both outside and inside. My grandmother told me that “what appears on the outside is how you want to appear to people” (outward is the appearance of clothes, a house, a closet, etc. - how they look to guests and how we want to present ourselves to people clothes, appearance of the house, etc.). But “what’s inside is who you really are” (inside is the backside of embroidery or any other work, the backside of clothes that should be clean and without holes or stains, the inside of cabinets and others invisible to other people, but visible moments of our lives). Very instructive. I always remember her words.

Grandmother recalled that only those who did not work had poor and dirty huts. They were considered like holy fools, a little sick, they were pitied as people who were sick at heart. Those who worked - even if he had 10 children - lived in bright, clean, beautiful huts. Decorated your home with love. They ran a large household and never complained about life. There was always order in the house and yard.

Construction of a Russian hut

The Russian house (hut), like the Universe, was divided into three worlds, three tiers: the lower one is the basement, underground; middle – these are living quarters; the upper one under the sky is the attic, the roof.

Hut as a structure was a log house made of logs that were tied together into crowns. In the Russian North it was customary to build houses without nails, very durable houses. Minimal amount nails were used only for attaching decor - piers, towels, platbands. They built houses “as proportion and beauty dictate.”

Roof– top part hut - provides protection from the outside world and is the border between the inside of the house and space. No wonder the roofs were so beautifully decorated in houses! And the ornaments on the roof often depicted symbols of the sun - solar symbols. We know such expressions: “father’s roof”, “live under one roof”. There were customs - if a person was sick and could not leave this world for a long time, then so that his soul could more easily pass into another world, they would remove the ridge on the roof. It is interesting that the roof was considered a feminine element of the house - the hut itself and everything in the hut should be “covered” - the roof, buckets, dishes, and barrels.

Upper part of the house (rails, towel) decorated with solar, that is solar signs. In some cases, the full sun was depicted on the towel, and only half of the solar signs were depicted on the sides. Thus, the sun appeared at the most important points on its path across the sky - at sunrise, zenith and sunset. In folklore there is even an expression “three-bright sun”, reminiscent of these three key points.

Attic was located under the roof and items not needed were stored on it this moment removed from home.

The hut was two-story, the living rooms were located on the “second floor”, as it was warmer there. And on the “ground floor,” that is, on the lower tier, there was basement It protected living quarters from the cold. The basement was used for storing food and was divided into 2 parts: the basement and the underground.

Floor they made it double to preserve heat: at the bottom there was a “black floor”, and on top of it there was a “white floor”. Floor boards were laid from the edges to the center of the hut in the direction from the facade to the exit. This was important in some rituals. So, if they entered the house and sat on a bench along the floorboards, it meant that they had come to make a match. They never slept and laid the bed along the floorboards, since they laid the dead person along the floorboards “on the way to the doors.” That’s why we didn’t sleep with our heads towards the exit. They always slept with their heads in the red corner, towards the front wall, on which the icons were located.

The diagonal was important in the design of the Russian hut. “The red corner is the stove.” The red corner always pointed to noon, to the light, to God's side (the red side). It has always been associated with wotok (sunrise) and the south. And the stove pointed to sunset, to darkness. And was associated with the west or north. They always prayed to the icon in the red corner, i.e. to the east, where the altar in the temples is located.

Door and the entrance to the house, the exit to the outside world is one of the most important elements of the house. She greets everyone who enters the house. In ancient times, there were many beliefs and various protective rituals associated with the door and threshold of the house. Probably not without reason, and now many people hang a horseshoe on the door for good luck. And even earlier, a scythe (a gardening tool) was placed under the threshold. This reflected people's ideas about the horse as an animal associated with the sun. And also about metal, created by man with the help of fire and which is a material for protecting life.

Only a closed door preserves life inside the house: “Don’t trust everyone, lock the door tightly.” That is why people stopped at the threshold of the house, especially when entering someone else's house; this stop was often accompanied by a short prayer.

At a wedding in some places, a young wife, entering her husband’s house, was not supposed to touch the threshold. That is why it was often carried in by hand. And in other areas, the sign was exactly the opposite. The bride, entering the groom's house after the wedding, always lingered on the threshold. This was a sign of that. That she is now one of her own in her husband’s family.

The threshold of a doorway is the border between “one’s own” and “someone else’s” space. In popular belief, this was a borderline, and therefore unsafe, place: “They don’t say hello across the threshold,” “They don’t shake hands across the threshold.” You cannot accept gifts through the threshold. Guests are greeted outside the threshold, then let in ahead of them through the threshold.

The height of the door was below human height. When entering, I had to bow my head and take off my hat. But at the same time, the doorway was quite wide.

Window- another entrance to the house. Window is a very ancient word, first mentioned in chronicles in the year 11 and found among all Slavic peoples. In popular beliefs, it was forbidden to spit through the window, throw out garbage, or pour something out of the house, since “the angel of the Lord is standing under it.” “Give (to a beggar) through the window - give to God.” Windows were considered the eyes of the house. A man looks through the window at the sun, and the sun looks at him through the window (the eyes of the hut). That is why signs of the sun were often carved on the frames. The riddles of the Russian people say this: “The red girl is looking out the window” (the sun). Traditionally in Russian culture, windows in a house have always been oriented “toward the summer”—that is, to the east and south. The largest windows of the house always looked out onto the street and the river; they were called “red” or “slanting”.

Windows in a Russian hut could be of three types:

A) The fiberglass window is the most ancient look windows Its height did not exceed the height of a horizontally placed log. But its width was one and a half times its height. Such a window was closed from the inside with a bolt that “dragged” along special grooves. That’s why the window was called “volokovoye”. Only dim light entered the hut through the fiberglass window. Such windows were more often found on outbuildings. Smoke from the stove was taken out (“dragged out”) from the hut through a fiberglass window. Basements, closets, sheds and barns were also ventilated through them.

B) Box window - consists of a deck made up of four beams firmly connected to each other.

C) A slanted window is an opening in the wall, reinforced with two side beams. These windows are also called “red” windows, regardless of their location. Initially, the central windows in the Russian hut were made like this.

It was through the window that the baby had to be handed over if children born in the family died. It was believed that this could save the child and ensure his long life. In the Russian North there was also a belief that a person’s soul leaves the house through a window. That is why a cup of water was placed on the window so that the soul that had left a person could wash itself and fly away. Also, after the funeral, a towel was hung on the window so that the soul would use it to ascend into the house and then descend back. Sitting by the window, they waited for news. The place by the window in the red corner is a place of honor, for the most honored guests, including matchmakers.

The windows were located high, and therefore the view from the window did not bump into neighboring buildings, and the view from the window was beautiful.

During construction, free space (sedimentary groove) was left between the window beam and the log of the house wall. It was covered with a board, which is well known to all of us and is called platband(“on the face of the house” = platband). The platbands were decorated with ornaments to protect the house: circles as symbols of the sun, birds, horses, lions, fish, weasel (an animal considered the guardian of livestock - they believed that if a predator was depicted, it would not harm domestic animals), floral ornaments, juniper, rowan .

From the outside, the windows were closed with shutters. Sometimes in the north, to make it convenient to close the windows, galleries were built along the main facade (they looked like balconies). The owner walks along the gallery and closes the shutters on the windows for the night.

Four sides of the hut facing the four cardinal directions. Appearance The hut is facing the outside world, and the interior is facing the family, the clan, the person.

Porch of a Russian hut it was often open and spacious. Here those family events took place that the entire street of the village could see: soldiers were seen off, matchmakers were greeted, newlyweds were greeted. On the porch they talked, exchanged news, relaxed, and talked about business. Therefore, the porch occupied a prominent place, was high and rose up on pillars or frames.

Porch – “ business card home and its owners,” reflecting their hospitality, prosperity and cordiality. A house was considered uninhabited if its porch was destroyed. The porch was decorated carefully and beautifully, the ornament used was the same as on the elements of the house. It could be a geometric or floral ornament.

What word do you think the word “porch” came from? From the word “cover”, “roof”. After all, the porch had to have a roof that protected it from snow and rain.
Often in a Russian hut there were two porches and two entrances. The first entrance is the front entrance, where benches were set up for conversation and relaxation. And the second entrance is “dirty”, it served for household needs.

Bake was located near the entrance and occupied approximately a quarter of the hut’s space. The stove is one of the sacred centers of the house. “The oven in the house is the same as the altar in the church: bread is baked in it.” “The stove is our dear mother,” “A house without a stove is an uninhabited house.” The stove had a feminine origin and was located in the female half of the house. It is in the oven that the raw, undeveloped is transformed into cooked, “our own”, mastered. The stove is located in the corner opposite the red corner. They slept on it, it was used not only in cooking, but also in healing, in folk medicine, small children were washed in it in winter, children and old people warmed themselves on it. In the stove, they always kept the damper closed if someone left the house (so that they would return and the journey would be happy), during a thunderstorm (since the stove is another entrance to the house, the connection between the house and the outside world).

Matica- a beam running across a Russian hut on which the ceiling is supported. This is the boundary between the front and back of the house. A guest coming to the house could not go further than the mother without the permission of the owners. Sitting under the mother meant wooing the bride. In order for everything to succeed, it was necessary to hold on to the mother before leaving home.

The entire space of the hut was divided into female and male. Men worked and rested, received guests on weekdays in the men's part of the Russian hut - in the front red corner, to the side of it towards the threshold and sometimes under the curtains. The man's workplace during repairs was next to the door. Women and children worked and rested, staying awake in the women's half of the hut - near the stove. If women received guests, then the guests sat at the threshold of the stove. Guests could only enter the women's area of ​​the hut at the invitation of the hostess. Representatives of the male half never entered the female half unless absolutely necessary, and women never entered the male half. This could be taken as an insult.

Stalls served not only as a place to sit, but also as a place to sleep. A headrest was placed under the head when sleeping on a bench.

The bench at the door was called “konik”, it could be the workplace of the owner of the house, and any person who entered the house, a beggar, could also spend the night there.

Above the benches, above the windows, shelves were made parallel to the benches. Hats, thread, yarn, spinning wheels, knives, awls and other household items were placed on them.

Married adult couples slept in beds, on a bench under the blankets, in their own separate cages - in their own places. Old people slept on the stove or near the stove, children - on the stove.

All utensils and furniture in a Russian northern hut are located along the walls, and the center remains free.

Svetlyceum The room was called a small room, a little room on the second floor of the house, clean, well-groomed, for handicrafts and clean activities. There was a wardrobe, a bed, a sofa, a table. But just like in the hut, all objects were placed along the walls. In the gorenka there were chests in which dowries for daughters were collected. There are as many marriageable daughters as there are chests. Girls lived here - brides of marriageable age.

Dimensions of a Russian hut

In ancient times, the Russian hut did not have internal partitions and was shaped like a square or rectangle. The average size of the hut was from 4 x 4 meters to 5.5 x 6.5 meters. Middle and wealthy peasants had large huts - 8 x 9 meters, 9 x 10 meters.

Decoration of a Russian hut

In the Russian hut there were four corners: stove, woman's kut, red corner, back corner (at the entrance under the curtains). Each corner had its own traditional purpose. And the entire hut, according to the corners, was divided into female and male halves.

Women's half of the hut runs from the furnace mouth (furnace outlet) to the front wall of the house.

One of the corners of the women's half of the house is the woman's kut. It is also called “baking”. This place is near the stove, women's territory. Here they prepared food, pies, utensils and millstones were stored. Sometimes the “women’s territory” of the house was separated by a partition or screen. On the women's side of the hut behind the stove there were lockers for kitchen utensils and food supplies, shelves for tableware, buckets, cast iron, tubs, oven equipment (bread shovel, poker, grip). The “long shop”, which ran along the women’s half of the hut along the side wall of the house, was also women’s. Here women spun, weaved, sewed, embroidered, and a baby’s cradle hung here.

Men never entered “women’s territory” and did not touch those utensils that are considered female. But a stranger and guest could not even look into the woman’s kut, it was offensive.

On the other side of the stove there was male space, "The male kingdom of the home." There was a threshold men's shop here, where men did housework and rested after a hard day. Underneath there was often a cabinet with tools for men's work. It was considered indecent for a woman to sit on the threshold bench. They rested during the day on a side bench at the back of the hut.

Russian stove

About a fourth, and sometimes a third, of the hut was occupied by a Russian stove. She was a symbol of home. They not only prepared food in it, but also prepared feed for livestock, baked pies and bread, washed themselves, heated the room, slept on it and dried clothes, shoes or food, and dried mushrooms and berries in it. And they could keep chickens in the oven even in winter. Although the stove is very large, it does not “eat up”, but, on the contrary, expands the living space of the hut, turning it into a multi-dimensional, multi-height space.

No wonder there is a saying “dance from the stove”, because everything in a Russian hut begins with the stove. Remember the epic about Ilya Muromets? The epic tells us that Ilya Muromets “lay on the stove for 30 and 3 years,” that is, he could not walk. Not on the floors or on the benches, but on the stove!

“The oven is like our own mother,” people used to say. Many folk healing practices were associated with the stove. And signs. For example, you cannot spit in the oven. And it was impossible to swear when the fire was burning in the stove.

The new oven began to be heated gradually and evenly. The first day began with four logs, and gradually one log was added every day to heat the entire volume of the stove and so that it was without cracks.

At first in Russian houses there were adobe ovens, which were heated in black. That is, there was no oven then exhaust pipe for smoke to escape. The smoke was released through the door or through a special hole in the wall. Sometimes they think that only beggars had black huts, but this is not so. Such stoves were also found in rich mansions. The black stove produced more heat and stored it longer than the white one. The smoke-stained walls were not afraid of dampness or rot.

Later, the stoves began to be built white - that is, they began to make a pipe through which the smoke came out.

The stove was always located in one of the corners of the house, which was called the stove, door, small corner. Diagonally from the stove there was always a red, holy, front, large corner of a Russian house.

Red corner in a Russian hut

The Red Corner is the central main place in the hut, in a Russian house. It is also called “saint”, “God’s”, “front”, “senior”, “big”. It is illuminated by the sun better than all other corners in the house, everything in the house is oriented towards it.

The goddess in the red corner is like the altar of an Orthodox church and was interpreted as the presence of God in the house. The table in the red corner is the church altar. Here, in the red corner, they prayed to the icon. Here at the table all meals and main events in the life of the family took place: birth, wedding, funeral, farewell to the army.

Here there were not only images, but also the Bible, prayer books, candles, branches of consecrated willow were brought here on Palm Sunday or birch branches on Trinity.

The red corner was especially worshiped. Here, during the wake, they placed an extra device for another soul who had passed into the world.

It was in the Red Corner that the chipped birds of happiness, traditional for the Russian North, were hung.

Seats at the table in the red corner were firmly established by tradition, not only during holidays, but also during regular meals. The meal united the clan and family.

• Place in the red corner, in the center of the table, under the icons, was the most honorable. Here sat the owner, the most respected guests, and the priest. If a guest went and sat in the red corner without the owner’s invitation, this was considered a gross violation of etiquette.
• The next most important side of the table is the one to the right of the owner and the places closest to him on the right and left. This is a "men's shop". Here the men of the family were seated according to seniority along the right wall of the house towards its exit. The older the man, the closer he sits to the owner of the house.
• And on the “lower” end of the table on the “women’s bench”, Women and children sat down along the front of the house.
• Mistress of the house was placed opposite the husband from the side of the stove on the side bench. This made it more convenient to serve food and host dinners.
• During the wedding newlyweds They also sat under the icons in the red corner.
• For guests It had its own guest shop. It is located by the window. It is still a custom in some areas to seat guests by the window.

This arrangement of family members at the table shows the model of social relations within the Russian family.

Table- he was given great importance in the red corner of the house and in the hut in general. The table in the hut was in a permanent place. If the house was sold, then it was necessarily sold along with the table!

Very important: The table is the hand of God. “The table is the same as the throne in the altar, and therefore you need to sit at the table and behave as in church” (Olonets province). It was not allowed to place foreign objects on the dining table, because this is the place of God himself. It was forbidden to knock on the table: “Don’t hit the table, the table is God’s palm!” There should always be bread on the table - a symbol of wealth and well-being in the house. They used to say: “Bread on the table is the throne!” Bread is a symbol of prosperity, abundance, and material well-being. That's why it always had to be on the table - God's palm.

A small lyrical digression from the author. Dear readers of this article! You probably think that all this is outdated? Well, what does bread have to do with it on the table? And you can bake yeast-free bread at home with your own hands - it’s quite easy! And then you will understand that this is a completely different bread! Not like store bought bread. Moreover, the loaf is shaped like a circle, a symbol of movement, growth, development. When for the first time I baked not pies or cupcakes, but bread, and my whole house smelled of bread, I realized what a real home is - a house where it smells... of bread! Where do you want to return? Don't have time for this? I thought so too. Until one of the mothers whose children I work with, and she has ten of them!!!, taught me how to bake bread. And then I thought: “If a mother of ten children finds time to bake bread for her family, then I definitely have time for this!” Therefore, I understand why bread is the head of everything! You have to feel it with your own hands and your soul! And then the loaf on your table will become a symbol of your home and will bring you a lot of joy!

The table must be installed along the floorboards, i.e. the narrow side of the table was directed towards the western wall of the hut. This is very important because... the direction “longitudinal - transverse” was given a special meaning in Russian culture. The longitudinal one had a “positive” charge, and the transverse one had a “negative” charge. Therefore, they tried to lay all the objects in the house in the longitudinal direction. This is also why they sat along the floorboards during rituals (matchmaking, as an example) - so that everything would go well.

Tablecloth on the table in the Russian tradition it also had a very deep meaning and forms a single whole with the table. The expression “table and tablecloth” symbolized hospitality and hospitality. Sometimes the tablecloth was called “bread-salter” or “self-assembled”. Wedding tablecloths were kept as a special heirloom. The table was not always covered with a tablecloth, but in special cases. But in Karelia, for example, the tablecloth had to always be on the table. For a wedding feast, they took a special tablecloth and laid it inside out (from damage). A tablecloth could be spread on the ground during a funeral service, because a tablecloth is a “road”, a connection between the cosmic world and the human world; it is not for nothing that the expression “a tablecloth is a road” has come down to us.

The family gathered at the dinner table, crossed themselves before eating and said a prayer. They ate sedately, and it was forbidden to get up while eating. The head of the family - a man - began the meal. He cut food into pieces, cut bread. The woman served everyone at the table and served food. The meal was long, leisurely, long.

On holidays, the red corner was decorated with woven and embroidered towels, flowers, and tree branches. Embroidered and woven towels with patterns were hung on the shrine. On Palm Sunday, the red corner was decorated with willow branches, on Trinity - with birch branches, and with heather (juniper) - on Maundy Thursday.

It's interesting to think about our modern houses:

Question 1. The division into “male” and “female” territory in the house is not accidental. And in our modern apartments there is a “women’s secret corner” - personal space as a “female kingdom”, do men interfere in it? Do we need him? How and where can you create it?

Question 2. And what is in the red corner of our apartment or dacha - what is the main spiritual center of the house? Let's take a closer look at our home. And if we need to fix something, we’ll do it and create a red corner in our home, let’s create it to truly unite the family. Sometimes you can find advice on the Internet to put a computer in the red corner as the “energy center of the apartment” and organize your workplace in it. I'm always surprised by such recommendations. Here, in the red - the main corner - be what is important in life, what unites the family, what carries true spiritual values, what is the meaning and idea of ​​​​the life of the family and clan, but not a TV or an office center! Let's think together about what it could be.

Types of Russian huts

Nowadays, many families are interested in Russian history and traditions and are building houses as our ancestors did. It is sometimes believed that there should be only one type of house based on the arrangement of its elements, and only this type of house is “correct” and “historic”. In fact, the location of the main elements of the hut (red corner, stove) depends on the region.

Based on the location of the stove and the red corner, there are 4 types of Russian huts. Each type is characteristic of a specific area and climatic conditions. That is, it is impossible to say directly: the stove has always been strictly here, and the red corner is strictly here. Let's look at them in more detail in the pictures.

The first type is the Northern Central Russian hut. The stove is located next to the entrance to the right or left of it in one of the rear corners of the hut. The mouth of the stove is turned towards the front wall of the hut (the mouth is the outlet of a Russian stove). Diagonally from the stove there is a red corner.

The second type is the Western Russian hut. The stove was also located next to the entrance to the right or left of it. But its mouth was turned towards the long side wall. That is, the mouth of the stove was located near the entrance door to the house. The red corner was also located diagonally from the stove, but food was prepared in a different place in the hut - closer to the door (see picture). A sleeping area was made on the side of the stove.

The third type is the eastern South Russian hut. The fourth type is the Western South Russian hut. In the south, the house was placed towards the street not with its facade, but with its long side. Therefore, the location of the furnace here was completely different. The stove was placed in the corner farthest from the entrance. Diagonally from the stove (between the door and the front long wall hut) there was a red corner. In eastern South Russian huts, the mouth of the stove was turned towards the front door. In western South Russian huts, the mouth of the stove was turned towards the long wall of the house, facing the street.

Despite different types huts, they adhere to the general principle of the structure of Russian housing. Therefore, even if he found himself far from home, the traveler could always find his way around the hut.

Elements of a Russian hut and a peasant estate: a dictionary

In a peasant estate the farm was large - each estate had from 1 to 3 barns for storing grain and valuables. There was also a bathhouse - the building farthest from the residential building. Every thing has its place. This proverbial principle has always been observed everywhere. Everything in the house was thought out and arranged intelligently so as not to waste extra energy and time on unnecessary actions or movements. Everything is at hand, everything is convenient. Modern home ergonomics comes from our history.

The entrance to the Russian estate was from the street through a strong gate. There was a roof over the gate. And at the gate on the side of the street there is a bench under the roof. Not only village residents, but also any passerby could sit on the bench. It was at the gate that it was customary to meet and see off guests. And under the roof of the gate one could welcome them cordially or talk goodbye.

Barn– a separate small building for storing grain, flour, and supplies.

Bath– a separate building (the furthest building from a residential building) for washing.

Crown- logs of one horizontal row in the log house of a Russian hut.

Anemone- a carved sun attached instead of a towel to the gable of the hut. Wishing a rich harvest, happiness, and prosperity to the family living in the house.

Barn floor– a platform for threshing compressed bread.

Cage- design in wood construction, is formed by crowns of logs placed on top of each other. The mansions consist of several cages, united by passages and vestibules.

Chicken-elements of the roof of a Russian house built without nails. They said: “Chickens and a horse on the roof - it will be quieter in the hut.” This refers specifically to the elements of the roof - the ridge and the chicken. A water tank was placed on the chicken - a log hollowed out in the form of a gutter to drain water from the roof. The image of “chickens” is not accidental. The chicken and the rooster were associated in the popular mind with the sun, since this bird notifies about the sunrise. Rooster crow folk beliefs, drove away evil spirits.

Glacier– the great-grandfather of the modern refrigerator – a room with ice for storing food

Matica- a massive wooden beam on which the ceiling is laid.

Platband– decoration of a window (window opening)

Barn– a building for drying sheaves before threshing. The sheaves were laid out on the flooring and dried.

Stupid– horse – connects the two wings of the house, two roof slopes together. The horse symbolizes the sun moving across the sky. This required element roof structures built without nails and protect the house. Okhlupen is also called “shelo” from the word “helmet”, which is associated with the protection of the house and means the helmet of an ancient warrior. Perhaps this part of the hut was called “okhlupny”, because when put in place it makes a “pop” sound. Ohlupni were used to do without nails during construction.

Ochelye – this was the name of the most beautifully decorated part of the Russian women's headdress on the forehead (“on the brow”And also called part of the decoration of the window - the upper part of the “decoration of the forehead, brow” of the house. Ochelie - the upper part of the platband on the window.

Povet– a hayloft, you could drive here directly on a cart or sleigh. This room is located directly above barnyard. Boats, fishing gear, hunting equipment, shoes, and clothes were also stored here. Here they dried and repaired nets, crushed flax and did other work.

Podklet– the lower room under the living quarters. The basement was used for storing food and household needs.

Polati- wooden flooring under the ceiling of a Russian hut. They settled between the wall and the Russian stove. It was possible to sleep on the floors, as the stove kept the heat for a long time. If the stove was not heated for heating, then vegetables were stored on the floors at that time.

Policemen– figured shelves for utensils above the benches in the hut.

Towel- a short vertical board at the junction of two piers, decorated with the symbol of the sun. Usually the towel repeated the pattern of the hairstyles.

Prichelina- boards on the wooden roof of a house, nailed to the ends above the pediment (edge ​​of the hut), protecting them from rotting. The piers were decorated with carvings. The pattern consists of a geometric ornament. But there is also an ornament with grapes - a symbol of life and procreation.

Svetlitsa- one of the rooms in the mansion (see “mansions”) on the women’s side, in the upper part of the building, intended for needlework and other household activities.

Seni- a cold entrance room in the hut; usually the entryway was not heated. As well as the entrance room between the individual cages in the mansions. This is always a utility room for storage. Household utensils were stored here, there was a bench with buckets and milk pans, work clothes, rockers, sickles, scythes, and rakes. They did dirty work in the hallway homework. The doors of all rooms opened into the canopy. Canopy - protection from the cold. The front door opened, the cold was let into the hallway, but remained in them, not reaching the living quarters.

Apron– sometimes “aprons” decorated with fine carvings were made on houses on the side of the main facade. This is a board overhang that protects the house from precipitation.

Stable- premises for livestock.

Mansions- large residential wooden house, which consists of separate buildings united by vestibules and passages. galleries. All parts of the choir were different in height - the result was a very beautiful multi-tiered structure.

Russian hut utensils

Dishes for cooking, it was stored in the stove and near the stove. These are cauldrons, cast iron pots for porridges, soups, clay patches for baking fish, cast iron frying pans. Beautiful porcelain dishes were stored so that everyone could see them. She was a symbol of wealth in the family. Festive dishes were stored in the upper room, and plates were displayed in the cupboard. Everyday dishes were kept in wall cabinets. Dinnerware consisted of a large bowl made of clay or wood, wooden spoons, birch bark or copper salt shaker, cups of kvass.

Painted baskets were used to store bread in Russian huts. boxes, brightly colored, sunny, joyful. The painting of the box distinguished it from other things as a significant, important thing.

They drank tea from samovar.

Sieve it was used for sifting flour, and as a symbol of wealth and fertility, it was likened to the vault of heaven (the riddle “A sieve is covered with a sieve”, the answer is heaven and earth).

Salt is not only food, but also a talisman. That’s why they served bread and salt to guests as a greeting, a symbol of hospitality.

The most common was earthenware pot. Porridge and cabbage soup were prepared in pots. The cabbage soup cooked well in the pot and became much tastier and richer. Even now, if we compare the taste of soup and porridge from a Russian oven and from the stove, we will immediately feel the difference in taste! Tastes better out of the oven!

For household needs, barrels, tubs, and baskets were used in the house. They fried food in frying pans, just like now. The dough was kneaded in wooden troughs and vats. Water was carried in buckets and jugs.

Good owners immediately after eating all the dishes were washed clean, dried and placed overturned on the shelves.

Domostroy said this: “so that everything is always clean and ready for the table or for delivery.”

To put the dishes in the oven and take them out of the oven you needed grips. If you have the opportunity to try to put a full pot filled with food into the oven or take it out of the oven, you will understand how physically difficult work this is and how strong women used to be even without fitness classes :). For them, every movement was exercise and exercise. I’m serious 🙂 - I tried it and appreciated how difficult it is to get a large pot of food for a large family using a grab handle!

Used for raking coals poker.

In the 19th century replaced clay pots came metal. They're called cast iron (from the word “cast iron”).

Clay and metal were used for frying and baking. frying pans, patches, frying pans, bowls.

Furniture in our understanding, this word was almost absent in the Russian hut. Furniture appeared much later, not so long ago. No wardrobes or chests of drawers. Clothes and shoes and other things were not stored in the hut.

The most valuable things in a peasant house - ceremonial utensils, festive clothes, dowries for daughters, money - were kept in chests. Chests always had locks. The design of the chest could tell about the prosperity of its owner.

Russian hut decor

A house painting master could paint a house (they used to say “bloom”). They painted strange patterns on a light background. These are symbols of the sun - circles and semicircles, and crosses, and amazing plants and animals. The hut was also decorated with wood carvings. Women weaved and embroidered, knitted and decorated their homes with their handicrafts.

Guess what tool was used to make carvings in a Russian hut? With an axe! And the painting of the houses was done by “painters” - that’s what the artists were called. They painted the facades of houses - pediments, platbands, porches, porches. When white stoves appeared, they began to paint the huts, partitions, and cabinets.

The decor of the roof pediment of a northern Russian house is actually an image of space. Signs of the sun on the racks and on the towel - an image of the path of the sun - sunrise, sun at its zenith, sunset.

Very interesting ornament decorating the piers. Below the solar sign on the piers you can see several trapezoidal protrusions - the legs of waterfowl. For the northerners, the sun rose from the water and also set in the water, because there were many lakes and rivers around, which is why waterfowl were depicted - underwater birds. underworld. The ornament on the sides represented the seven-layered sky (remember the old expression - “to be in seventh heaven”?).

In the first row of the ornament there are circles, sometimes connected with trapezoids. These are symbols of heavenly water - rain and snow. Another series of images from triangles is a layer of earth with seeds that will wake up and produce a harvest. It turns out that the sun rises and moves across a seven-layer sky, one of which contains moisture reserves, and the other contains plant seeds. At first the sun does not shine at full strength, then it is at its zenith and finally sets down so that the next morning it begins its path across the sky again. One row of the ornament does not repeat the other.

The same symbolic ornament can be found on the platbands of a Russian house and on the decor of windows in central Russia. But window decoration also has its own characteristics. On the lower board of the casing there is an uneven relief of a hut (a plowed field). At the lower ends of the side boards of the casing there are heart-shaped images with a hole in the middle - a symbol of a seed immersed in the ground. That is, we see in the ornament a projection of the world with the most important attributes for the farmer - the earth sown with seeds and the sun.

Proverbs and sayings about the Russian hut and housekeeping

• Houses and walls help.
• Every house is held by its owner. The house is being painted by the owner.
• What it’s like at home is the same for yourself.
• Make a stable, and then some cattle!
• Not according to the house is the lord, but the house according to the lord.
• It is not the owner who paints the house, but the owner who paints the house.
• At home, not away: once you’ve been there, you won’t leave.
• A good wife will save the house, but a thin one will shake it with her sleeve.
• The mistress of the house is like pancakes in honey.
• Woe to him who lives in a disorderly house.
• If the hut is crooked, the mistress is bad.
• As is the builder, so is the monastery.
• Our hostess is busy with work – and the dogs wash the dishes.
• To lead a house is not to weave bast shoes.
• In the house the owner is more than the bishop
• Getting a pet at home means walking around without opening your mouth.
• The house is small, but it doesn’t allow you to lie down.
• Whatever is born in the field, everything in the house will be useful.
• He is not an owner who does not know his farm.
• Prosperity is not determined by the place, but by the owner.
• If you don't manage a house, you can't manage a city.
• The village is rich, and so is the city.
• A good head feeds a hundred hands.

Dear friends! In this hut I wanted to show not just the history of the Russian home, but also to learn from our ancestors how to run a household - reasonable and beautiful, pleasing to the soul and eye, to live in harmony with both nature and your conscience. In addition, many points in relation to the house as a home our ancestors are very important and relevant now for us living in the 21st century.

The materials for this article were collected and studied by me for a very long time, checked in ethnographic sources. I also used materials from the stories of my grandmother, who shared her memories with me early years your life in northern village. And only now, during my vacation and my life - being in the countryside in nature, I finally completed this article. And I understood why it took me so long to write it: in the bustle of the capital, in an ordinary panel house in the center of Moscow, with the roar of cars, it was too difficult for me to write about harmonious world Russian house. But here, in nature, I completed this article very quickly and easily, with all my heart.

If you would like to learn more about the Russian home, below you will find a bibliography on this topic for adults and children.

I hope that this article will help you talk interestingly about the Russian house during your summer travels to the village and to museums of Russian life, and will also tell you how to look at illustrations to Russian fairy tales with your children.

Literature about the Russian hut

For adults

1. Bayburin A.K. Dwelling in the rituals and beliefs of the Eastern Slavs. – L.: Science, 1983 (Institute of Ethnography named after N.N. Miklouho-Maclay)
2. Buzin V.S. Ethnography of Russians. – St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg University Publishing House, 2007
3. Permilovskaya A.B. Peasant house in the culture of the Russian North. – Arkhangelsk, 2005.
4. Russians. Series "Peoples and Cultures". – M.: Nauka, 2005. (Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology named after N. N. Miklukho-Maclay RAS)
5. Sobolev A.A. Wisdom of the ancestors. Russian yard, house, garden. – Arkhangelsk, 2005.
6. Sukhanova M. A. House as a model of the world // Human House. Materials of the interuniversity conference – St. Petersburg, 1998.

For children

1. Alexandrova L. Wooden architecture of Rus'. – M.: White City, 2004.
2. Zaruchevskaya E. B. About peasant mansions. Book for children. – M., 2014.

Russian hut: video

Video 1. Children's educational video tour: Children's Museum of Village Life

Video 2. Film about a northern Russian hut (Museum of Kirov)

Video 3. How to build a Russian hut: documentary for adults

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