ИСТИНА

My report explores claims about how to understand the phenomenon of alcohol drinking in North of Russia. It traces interactions observed during fieldwork in 2006–2013in Pinezhski, Leshukonski and Mezenski areas of Arkhangelskaya oblast`. Most of Russian ethnographers don’t consider alcohol drinking as a serious scientific theme. But it is highly ritualized. For example, when informants are speaking about ‘commemorating a person’ in 95% of cases they mean ‘drinking for the person’. And vice versa if some people are drinking they use the name of some feast to mark it: “fiuluguliaem” (we are celebrating harvest-feast) or “7-oe noiabriaprazdnuiem” (we are celebrating the 7th of November). It means that the ‘drinking’ has strong connotations with rituals. I`ll try to showcase several research axes of drinking through the concept of liminality. 1) Drinking as fastest way to begin the rite of passage, to make situation liminal. For example, drinking with someone means making him friend, letting him become a member of some social group. But also drinking with friends make liminal in another sense: transition from casual to festive reality. 2) Drinking is the way to stability. The soviet kolkhoz-culture was reformist, the collective farm chairmen prohibited traditional feasts and rites as irrational. For a good ‘kolkhoznik’ it was impossible to conduct irrational acts, but for a drinking or drunk people it was possible.The description of wedding: “Podvypili i stali bit` posudu” (got drunk and began to break the dish). Breaking the dish is wedding ritual, but in soviet kolkhoz culture it was possible only when the people were drunk. So drinking is a `permanent liminality` between soviet and traditional. 3) Liminality assumes the possibility to break the rules. “Vypil i rubanul emu pravdu-matku” (He drank a bit and told him the truth). This example showcases the same way to face higher status people and to contradict them. 4) In contemporary village the total drinking is the only answer to the total liminality of modernity. So, drinking in soviet Russian village was a never-ending liminality, a strange kind of a rite of passage, without creation of the new reality, new senses.Drinking gave possibility to preserve some of the rituals, hiding them in the liminal space of drunkenness.