Projects The Language and Folklore of the Russian-Belorussian Borderlands: Areal Structure of the Ethnocultural Zone and Adaptive culture mechanisms of the Russian-Belarusian borderland: the fate of folk tradition in a changing world are supported by grants from Russian Humanitarian Science Foundation and Belorussian Republican foundation for Fundamnental Research (№ 15-24-01004, № 13-24-01003, № 17-24-01004 ).
First is dedicated to the interdisciplinary examination of the areal distribution, interactions and modifications of folklore plots, ceremonial forms and dialectic peculiarities in Russian-Belorussian cultural borderlands. Considering the fact that investigations on the subject of the borderland's folklore have no well-defined methodology, conceptional dictionary and conceptual base, participants of the project have to define such phenomenon as cultural areal of the borderland. The language and the structure of folklore texts will be examined, described and mapped to define clearly boundary lines of the Boarderland, beginning of the contact zone and borders of metropoly. The analysis of texts can help us to reveal, does the Borderland areal obey the structural division which is significant for administrative region, does it have it's centre and periphery, is the Borderland a static formation or it has inward and outward dynamic processes in folklore and it's language. In what way are folklore subjects and motives spread, do we have oycotypes and endemic plots; how the multiculturality of the population and confession identity are reflecting on the folklore narratives and oral texts.

   Second one aims to study the adaptive mechanisms of Russian-Belarusian folklore and mythological tradition in the frames of modern social and cultural paradigm. A few years ago there was no theoretical and conceptual framework for such a study: there was a lack of materials and articles, there was no appropriate collection of folklore texts, no conceptual vocabulary existed as well. After collaborative work of Belarusian and Russian research teams (grants RHF-BRFFR #11-24-01002 and #13-24-01003) and a number of consequent publications, the correlations realtion between folklore, ethnocultural, language and administrative borders in cultural space of Russian-Belarusian borderland became clear). After our research the concept of "Russian-Belarusian ethnocultural borderland" have been legitimized: distribution of folklore texts and ritual practices do not match a rigid structure of a modern administrative division, and it is better to talk of "buffer zones" and/or "floating gaps". Further research in the framework of the project "Adaptive culture mechanisms of the Russian-Belarusian borderland: the fate of folk tradition in a changing world" aims to show how the historical memory of traditional cross-cultural community, which uses an oral method of transmission of information, is not lost, scattered in time, but, on the contrary, preserved, becoming tied to event-situational moments and local points of narrative and ritual performance. We have some preliminary hypotheses.
1. Switch of partly forgotten traditional ritual and narrative forms to "cultural heritage" status. Professional executors take from the "reservoir" of collective memory an information, which is relevant to a modern audience (including academic folklorists and linguists). As a result of actualization (in which the active part is taken not by amateurs, but professional scientists) modern folklore regional brands become legitimized (e.g. the holy spring "Bryazgun" [the village Norki, Cherikov district of Mogilev region, Rep. Belarus], ritual and ceremonial complex of which had been fixed by our team during the field research in 2014; emerging local cult of the holy springs "Pyatinka" and "Kryzhik" in Velizh region near Smolensk, as recorded by us in 2013).
2. Folklorization and change of personal observation material's pragmatic status. In the course of time the original personal stories are becoming a part of the collective memory, causing the characteristic gap between the generation of direct observation and generation for which this material is only part of the generalized collective history that leads to a change in the status of these texts from "fair" to "unreliability".
3. Decreasing the range of traditional characters of actual beliefs and individualization of mythology: instead of "common" it becomes "personal". Analysis of a large number of recorded material will clarify these trends of the transition from typical to personal, and make clear whether this phenomenon is widespread or it depends on the specific conditions in the region

   Third project is intended to investigate the concept of border (ethnic, confessional, ethnodialectal, ethnocultural) using the case of Belarussian-Russian borderland, seen in the context of other transborder connections (Belarussian-Polish, Belarussian-Lithuanian, Belarussian-Ukrainian, Belarussian-Jewish, Russian-Jewish, Ukrainian-Jewish, Russian-Ukrainian). In terms of the project, to work with enclaves and traditional multi-ethnic population within one state (Slavic-Baltic-Jewish ethnocultural interaction), we applied the concepts of “internal border” and “hybrid identities”. Project goal – to evaluate the amount of ethnocultural interaction in the borderland regions, to define the patterns that underlie the understanding of “borderland” in traditional cultures of the corresponding regions, to investigate the ways ethnic, ethnocultural and ethnoconfessional identity is built, to understand the role of the “border” concept in the linguistic and ethnocultural world picture of borderland inhabitants, and find the specific features of the folklore tradition and oral history narratives spread in these areas.

An Interactive Map of our Fieldwork