Native penates, in which our ancestors were born, in which the life of the family passed, in which they died ...

The name of the original Russian wooden house comes from ancient "true", which means "house, bath" or "source" from "The Tale of Bygone Years...". The Old Russian name of a wooden dwelling is rooted in the Proto-Slavic "jüstba" and is considered to be borrowed from the Germanic "stuba". In Old German "stuba" meant "warm room, bath".

Also in "The Tale of Bygone Years..." the chronicler Nestor writes that the Slavs lived in clans, each clan in its place. The way of life was patriarchal. The clan was the residence of several families under one roof, connected by blood ties and the power of a single ancestor - the head of the family. As a rule, the family consisted of older parents - father and mother and their numerous sons with wives and grandchildren, who lived in one hut with a single hearth, all worked together and obeyed the elder brother to the younger, the son to the father, and the father to the grandfather. If the clan was too large, there was not enough space for everyone, then the hut with a warm hearth grew with additional outbuildings - cages. Crate - an unheated room, a cold hut without a stove, an extension from a log house to the main, warm dwelling. Young families lived in the cages, but the hearth remained the same for everyone; food common to the whole clan was prepared on it - lunch or dinner. The fire that kindled in the hearth was a symbol of the family, as a source of family warmth, as a place where the whole family, the whole family gathered to solve the most important life issues.

In ancient times huts were "black" or "chicken". Such huts were heated by stoves without a chimney. The smoke during the firebox did not come out through the chimney, but through the window, door or chimney in the roof.

The first blond huts, according to archaeological data, appeared in Russia in the 12th century. At first, rich, wealthy peasants lived in such huts with a stove and chimneys, gradually the tradition of building a hut with a stove and a chimney began to be adopted by all peasant classes, and already in the 19th century it was rare to find a black hut, except perhaps only baths. in Russia they built in black until the twentieth century, it is enough to recall the famous song of V. Vysotsky "Banka in black":

"...Sink!
Oh, today I will wash myself white!
Cropi,
In the bath, the walls are smoky sprinkles.
Swamp,
Do you hear? Bath me in a black swamp! "....

According to the number of walls in the hut, wooden houses were divided into four-walls, five-walls, crosses and six-walls.

Four-wall hut- the simplest structure of logs, houses of four walls. Such huts were sometimes built with a canopy, sometimes without them. The roofs in these houses were gabled. In the northern territories, a vestibule or cages were attached to the four-walled huts so that frosty air in winter would not immediately enter a warm room and cool it.

Hut-five-wall - log house with the fifth main transverse wall inside the frame, the most common type of hut in Russia. The fifth wall in the frame of the house divided the room into two unequal parts: most of it was a chamber, the second served either as a vestibule or an additional residential part. The upper room served as the main room common to the whole family; there was a stove here - the essence of the family hearth, which heated the hut during harsh winters. The upper room served as both a kitchen and a dining room for the whole family.

Hut-cross- this is a log cabin with internal transverse fifth and longitudinal sixth walls. The roof in such a house was most often hipped (if in a modern way - hip), without gables. Of course, the cross huts were built larger than the usual five-walls, for large families, with separate rooms, separated by capital walls.

Hut-six-wall- this is the same as the five-wall hut, only with two transverse, parallel to each other fifth and sixth main walls made of logs.

Most often, huts in Russia were built with a yard - additional household wooden rooms. The courtyards in the house were divided into open and closed and were located away from the house or around it. In central Russia, open yards were most often built - without a common roof. All outbuildings: sheds, stables, stables, barns, woodsheds, etc. stood at a distance from the hut.

In the north, closed yards were built, under a common roof, and lined with wooden panels on the ground, along which it was possible to move from one outbuilding to another without fear of getting caught in rain or snow, the territory of which was not blown by a through wind. The courtyards covered with a single roof adjoined the main residential hut, which made it possible in harsh winters or rainy autumn-spring days to get from a warm hut to a woodshed, barn or stable without the risk of being soaked by rain, sprinkled with snow or being weathered by street drafts.

When building a new hut, our ancestors followed the rules developed over the centuries, because the construction of a new house is a significant event in the life of a peasant family and all traditions were observed to the smallest detail. One of the main precepts of the ancestors was the choice of a place for the future hut. A new hut should not be built on the site where there was once a cemetery, road or bathhouse. But at the same time, it was desirable that the place for the new wooden house was already inhabited, where people lived in complete prosperity, bright and in a dry place.

The main requirement for building material it was the same - the log house was cut from: from pine, spruce or larch. future home was erected from a log house, in the first year the log house was defended, and the next season it was finished in the new wooden house a family settled in with a stove. Trunk coniferous trees he was tall, slender, well axed and at the same time was durable, the walls of pine, spruce or larch retained heat well in the house in winter and did not heat up in summer, in the heat, keeping a pleasant coolness. At the same time, the choice of a tree in the forest was regulated by several rules. For example, it was forbidden to cut down diseased, old and withered trees, which were considered dead and could, according to legend, bring illness to the house. It was forbidden to cut down the trees that grew on the road and along the roads. Such trees were considered "violent" and in a log house such logs, according to legend, can fall out of the walls and crush the owners of the house.

You can read more about the construction of wooden houses in Russia in a book written at the beginning of the 20th century by the famous Russian architect, historian and researcher of Russian wooden architecture M.V. Krasovsky. His book contains a grandiose material on the history of wooden architecture in Russia from the most ancient times to the beginning of the 20th century. The author of the book studied the development of ancient traditions in the construction of wooden buildings from residential buildings to church churches, studied the techniques of building pagan wooden temples and temples. M.V. Krasovsky wrote about all this in his book, arranging it with drawings with explanations.

) the hut was a log building, partially (up to a third) going into the ground. That is, a recess was dug out and the hut itself was completed in 3-4 rows of thick logs above it, which thus was a semi-dugout. Initially, there was no door, it was replaced by a small inlet, approximately 0.9 meters by 1 meter, covered by a pair of log halves tied together and a canopy. In the depths of the hut there was a hearth made of stones. There was no smoke outlet; in order to save heat, the smoke was kept in the room, and the excess went out through the inlet. There were no floors as such, the earthen floor was simply watered and swept, becoming smooth and hard. The head of the family slept in a place of honor by the hearth, the woman and children - to the right of the entrance. Directly at the entrance housed livestock, such as a farrowing pig with small piglets. This structure persisted for a long time. Over the centuries, the hut has been improved, first receiving windows in the form of holes in the side wall for the exit of smoke, then a stove, then holes on the roof for the exit of smoke.

Bake

The inner walls were whitewashed, sheathed with hemp, or linden boards. Along the walls were benches and chests. They slept on benches or on the floor. Back in the 19th century, in poor houses, the bed played a decorative role - the owners continued to sleep on the floor.

There were shelves on the walls. Above the entrance, between the wall and the stove, a bed was arranged.

In addition to the red corner in the hut, there was a "woman's corner" (or "kut") - opposite the stove brow. Male corner, or "konik" - at the entrance. Zakut - behind the stove.

Hut types

Four-wall hut

The simplest four-wall dwelling. Often a temporary building.

Hut-five-wall

A five-wall or five-wall hut is a residential wooden building, rectangular in plan, divided by an internal transverse wall into two unequal parts: a hut (room) and a canopy (usually a non-residential room)

Hut-six-wall

Hut-six-wall (six-wall) - a house with two transverse walls.

red corner

In a Russian hut, usually oriented to the sides of the horizon, a red corner was arranged in the far corner of the hut, on the east side, in the space between the side and facade walls, diagonally from the oven. It has always been the most illuminated part of the house: both walls forming the corner had windows. The icons were placed in the "red" or "front" corner of the room in such a way that the icon was the first thing a person entering the room paid attention to.

A table was installed in the front corner, which was called big. Another table was attached to a large table along the wall, which was called direct. There were benches along the walls of the hut. The shop located in the red corner was called big shop. In the red corner, on a large bench, the owner of the house was sitting at the table. The place of the owner of the house was called great place. The rest of the family sat down at the table in order of seniority. If everyone did not fit at a large and straight table, they attached to a straight table at an angle curved table.

A large seat was considered honorary and was offered to important guests. The guest had to ritually refuse the seat. The clergy sat in a large place without refusing. The last place at the crooked table was called striped timber, as it was located under the ceiling beam, on which the floor was laid. In epics, at princely feasts, the heroes usually sat on a cloth beam, and then they moved to more honorable places, based on their exploits.

Hut in national culture

The hut is an important part of Russian national culture and folklore, it is mentioned in proverbs and sayings (“ The hut is not red with corners, it is red with pies”), in Russian folk tales (“ Hut on chicken legs”).

see also

	Izba in Wiktionary
	Izba at Wikimedia Commons

• Vitoslavlitsy - Novgorod Museum of Folk Wooden Architecture

Literature

• // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: In 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg. , 1890-1907.
• Ivan Zabelin. "Home Life of Russian Tsars in the 16th and 17th Centuries". Publishing house Transitkniga. Moscow. 2005 ISBN 5-9578-2773-8
• Ivan Zabelin. "Home Life of the Russian People in the 16th and 17th Centuries: In 2 Volumes" M., 1862-1869.
• D. A. Baranov, I. I. Shangina “Russian hut. Illustrated encyclopedia: the interior of the hut, furniture and decoration of the hut, household and household utensils. Art-SPB, 1999 ISBN 5-210-01589-0
• L. V. Tudman "Izba, house, palace: Russian residential interior from 1700 to 1840s". From Progress-Tradition. ISBN 5-89826-061-7
• L. V. Belovinsky "Izba and mansions: from the history of Russian everyday life." Profizdat, 2002 ISBN 5-88283-030-3
• O. N. Shelegina, Lidia Mikhailovna Rusakova "Essays on the material culture of Russian peasants in Western Siberia: XVIII - first half of the XIX century." VO "Science", 1992

Links

• Traditions of the construction business of Medieval Russia and house building of the Old Believers of the Upper Ob region in the late 19th - early 20th centuries
• Virtual journey through the house of a Karelian peasant on the website of the Kizhi ethnographic museum

Living spaces, premises, houses
residential buildings	Apartment (Municipal apartment Studio apartment Gostinka) Dormitory Dacha Cottage Townhouse Barrack Dugout Bungalow Villa Penthouse Hut (Chum Tipi Wigwam Igloo Yaranga Yurt Kibitka) Barracks Apartment Hotel (Hotel / Guest House) Loft Izba Mansions Chambers Palace Castle Gallery House Saklia
Living spaces	Room Hall Bedroom Study Triclinium Living room Alcove Svetlitsa Cage Upper room Boudoir Dining room
utility rooms and outbuildings

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

"Oh, what mansions!" - so often we talk now about a spacious new apartment or cottage. We speak without thinking about the meaning of the word. After all, mansions are 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 arranged?

In this article:

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

Russian hut

Since I am from the north and grew up on the White Sea, I will show photos of northern houses in the article. And as an 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 land. When for the first time, as a boy of thirteen, I drove through the Barents and to the White Seas, along the Northern Dvina, visited the coast-dwellers, in peasant huts, listened to songs and fairy tales, looked at these unusual beautiful people, who carried themselves simply and with dignity, I was completely stunned. It seemed to me that this is the only way to truly live: in a measured and easy way, working and getting so much satisfaction from this work ... In the Russian North amazing combination 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?

A favorite place for the construction of a village and the construction of Russian huts was the bank of a river or lake. At the same time, the peasants were guided by practicality - proximity to the river and the boat as a means of transportation, but also by aesthetic reasons. From the windows of the hut, standing on a high place, there was a beautiful view of the lake, forests, meadows, fields, as well as the courtyard with barns, the bathhouse near the river itself.

The 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, fit organically into the surrounding landscape. On the highest place they usually built a church and a bell tower in the center of the village.

The house was built thoroughly, "for centuries", a place for it was chosen high enough, dry, protected from cold winds - on a high hill. Villages tried to locate where they were fertile lands, rich meadows, forest, river or lake. The huts were placed in such a way that they were provided with a good entrance and approach, and the windows were turned "for the summer" - on 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 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 was sheltered from the wind horticultural part of the site.

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 a checkerboard pattern relative to each other. All the houses on the streets of the village "looked" in one direction - at the sun, at the river. From the window one could see sunrises and sunsets, the movement of ships along the river.

Prosperous place for the construction of a hut was considered a place where cattle lie 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 or near swamps, these places were considered "chilly", and the crops on them 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. She was placed in a clay pot. And left for the night at the site of the future home. The result was considered positive if the wool was damp by morning. So the house will be rich.

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

Started 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 a waning moon, then it will quickly rot, which is why there was such a ban. There were also more stringent prescriptions for the days. The forest began to be harvested from the winter Nikola, from December 19th. The best time for harvesting a tree was considered December - January, according to the first frosts, when excess moisture comes out of the trunk. They did not cut dry trees or trees with growths for the house, trees that fell to the north during felling. These beliefs related specifically to trees, other materials were not furnished with such norms.

They did not build houses on the site of houses burned by lightning. It was believed that lightning Elijah - the prophet strikes places evil spirits. They also did not build houses where there used to be a bathhouse, where someone was injured with an ax or a knife, where human bones were found, where there used to be a bathhouse or where a road used to pass, where some kind of misfortune occurred, for example, a flood.

Attitude to the Russian hut in folk culture

The house in Russia had many names: a hut, a hut, a tower, kholupy, a mansion, a horomina and a temple. Yes, do not be surprised - the temple! Mansions (huts) were equated with the temple, because the 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 its world! This is a feature of the Russian house - "human", that is, anthropomorphic names of parts of the hut:

• Chelo hut is her face. Chelom could be called the pediment of the hut and the outer opening in the furnace.
• Prichelina- from the word "brow", that is, the decoration on the forehead of the hut,
• platbands- from the word "face", "on the face" of the hut.
• Ochelie- from the word "eyes", a window. This was the name of the part of the female headdress, the window decoration was also called.
• Forehead- so the frontal board was called. There were also "fronts" in the design of the house.
• Heel, foot- so the part of the doors was called.

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

The word "hut" comes from the Old Slavic "ist'ba". “Istboy, firebox” was a heated residential log house (and a “cage” is an unheated log house of 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 part of life and a way to connect and shape your life. The house is a sacred space, an image of the 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 the last days of his life on Earth. Building a house is a repetition of the work of the Creator by a person, because a human dwelling, 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, it was possible to determine the social status, religion, and nationality of its owners. In one village there were no two completely identical houses, because each hut carried an individuality and reflected the inner world of the family living in it.

For a child, the house is the first model of the outer big world, it “feeds” and “nurtures” the child, the child “absorbs” the laws of life in the big adult world from the house. If a child grew up in a light, cozy, kind house, 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 chaos is in the soul and in the life of a person. From childhood, the child mastered the system of ideas about his house - the outcrop and its structure - the mother, the red corner, the female and male parts of the house.

The house is traditionally used in Russian as a synonym for the word "motherland". If a person does not have a sense of home, then there is no sense of homeland! Attachment to the house, taking care of it was 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” - they said “There are four houses on the hill” - this meant that there were four families. In a Russian hut under one roof they lived and led common household several generations of the family - grandfathers, fathers, sons, grandchildren.

The inner space of the Russian hut has long been associated in folk culture as the space of a woman - she followed him, put things in order and comfort. But the outer space - the courtyard and beyond - was the space of a man. My husband's grandfather still remembers such a division of duties, which was accepted 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 they lived in large families, there were no problems. If one of the women could not carry water now, then this work was done by another woman in the family.

The male and female half were also strictly observed in the house, but this will be discussed further.

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

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

Proverbs about the hut

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

The house was built very proportionately and harmoniously. In its design - the law of the golden section, the law of natural harmony in proportions. Built without measuring tool and complex calculations - by instinct, as the soul prompted.

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

Myth and truth about the Russian hut. There is an opinion that in Russian huts it was dirty, there was unsanitary conditions, diseases, poverty and darkness. I used to think so too, that's how we were taught in school. But this is absolutely not true! I asked my grandmother shortly before her departure to another world, 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 darkness and mud?

She was very surprised and said that the house was always not just clean, but very light and comfortable, beautiful. Her mother (my great-grandmother) embroidered and knitted the most beautiful valances for the beds of adults and children. Each bed and cradle was decorated with her valances. And each bed has its own pattern! Imagine what a job it is! And what a beauty in the frame of each bed! Her dad (my great-grandfather) carved beautiful ornaments 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. Sometimes, in the evening, her grandmother would say to the children: “Soon mother and father will come from the field, we need to clean up the house.” And oh yes! Children take brooms, rags, put things in order so that there is not a speck in the corner, not a speck of dust, and all things are in their places. By the time 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 was beautiful and the house was cozy. Even on the day of childbirth, her mother (my great-grandmother) whitewashed the stove, and then went to give birth in the bathhouse. Grandmother recalled how she, being the eldest daughter, helped her.

There was no such thing as clean on the outside and dirty on the inside. Cleaned very carefully both outside and inside. My grandmother told me that “what is outside is how you want to appear to people” (outside is the appearance of clothes, house, closet, etc. - how they look for guests and how we want to present ourselves to people clothes, appearance of the house, etc.). But “what’s inside is what you really are” (inside is the wrong side of embroidery or any other work, the wrong side of clothes that must be clean and without holes or stains, the inside of cabinets and other invisible to other people, but visible us 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 as if holy fools, a little sick, they were pitied as people with a sick soul. Who worked - even if he had 10 children - lived in bright, clean, beautiful huts. Decorate your home with love. They ran a large household and never complained about life. There was always order in the house and in the yard.

The device of the Russian hut

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

Hut as a design It was a frame made of logs, which were tied together into crowns. In the Russian North, it was customary to build houses without nails, very durable houses. The minimum number of nails was used only for attaching decor - prichelin, towels, platbands. They built houses "as measure and beauty will say."

Roof- the upper part of the hut - gives protection from the outside world and is the border of the inside of the house with space. No wonder the roof was so beautifully decorated in the houses! And in the ornament on the roof, symbols of the sun were often depicted - solar symbols. We know such expressions: "father's shelter", "to live under one roof". There were customs - if a person was sick and could not leave this world for a long time, then in order for his soul to more easily pass into another world, then they removed the skate on the roof. It is interesting that the roof was considered a female element of the house - the hut itself and everything in the hut should be “covered” - the roof, and buckets, and dishes, and barrels.

The upper part of the house (prichelina, towel) were 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 berths. Thus, the sun was shown at the most important points of its path across the sky - at sunrise, at zenith and at sunset. There is even an expression in folklore, "the three-light sun," reminiscent of these three key points.

Attic was located under the roof and on it were stored items that were not needed at the moment, removed from the house.

The hut was two-story, 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 He protected the living quarters from the cold. The basement was used for food storage and was divided into 2 parts: the basement and the underground.

Floor they made it double to keep warm: at the bottom there is a “black floor”, and on top of it is a “white floor”. The floor boards were laid from the edges to the center of the hut in the direction from the facade to the exit. It mattered in some ceremonies. So, if they entered the house and sat on a bench along the floorboards, then this meant that they had come to woo. They never slept and did not lay the bed along the floorboards, As the dead person was laid along the floorboards "on the way to the doors." That is why we did not 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.

Important in the arrangement of the Russian hut was the diagonal "red corner - oven." The red corner always pointed to noon, to the light, to God's side (red side). It has always been associated with Votok (sunrise) and the south. And the stove pointed to the sunset, to darkness. And associated with the west or north. They always prayed for 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 braid was laid under the threshold ( garden tools). This reflected people's ideas about the horse as an animal associated with the sun. And also about the metal created by man with the help of fire and which is a material for protecting life.

Only closed door saves life inside the house: "Do not trust everyone, lock the door tighter." That is why people stopped in front of 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 localities, a young wife, entering her husband's house, was not supposed to touch the threshold. That is why it was often brought 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. It was a sign of that. That she is now her own kind of husband.

The threshold of the doorway is the border of "one's own" and "alien" space. In popular beliefs, it was a borderline, and therefore unsafe place: “They don’t greet people across the threshold”, “They don’t shake hands across the threshold.” You can't even accept gifts across the threshold. Guests are met outside the threshold, then let in ahead of them through the threshold.

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

Window- another entrance to the house. Window is a very ancient word, it was first mentioned in the annals in the year 11 and is found among all Slavic peoples. In folk beliefs, it was forbidden to spit through the window, throw out garbage, pour something out of the house, since under it "there is an angel of the Lord." “Give (to the beggar) through the window - give to God.” Windows were considered the eyes of the house. A person 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 architraves. The riddles of the Russian people say this: “The red girl looks out the window” (the sun). The windows in the house traditionally in Russian culture have always tried to be oriented “for the summer” - that is, to the east and south. The largest windows of the house always faced the street and the river, they were called "red" or "skewed".

Windows in a Russian hut could be of three types:

A) Volokovoe window - the most ancient type of windows. Its height did not exceed the height of a horizontally laid log. But in width it was one and a half times the height. Such a window was closed from the inside with a latch, “dragging” along special grooves. Therefore, the window was called "portage". Only dim light penetrated the hut through the porthole window. Such windows were more common in outbuildings. Through the portage window, the smoke from the stove was taken out (“dragged out”) from the hut. They also ventilated basements, closets, winds and cowsheds.

B) A box window - consists of a deck made up of four bars firmly connected to each other.

C) An oblique window is an opening in the wall, reinforced with two side beams. These windows are also called "red" 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 passed if the children born in the family died. It was believed that this way you can save the child and ensure him a long life. In the Russian North, there was also such a belief that the soul of a person leaves the house through the window. That is why a cup of water was placed on the window so that the soul that left the person could wash and fly away. Also, after the commemoration, a towel was hung on the window so that the soul would rise into the house through it, and then descend back. Sitting at the window, waiting for news. A 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, between the window beam and the log, the walls of the house left free space (sedimentary groove). It was covered with a board, which is well known to all of us and is called platband("on the face of the house" = casing). The platbands were decorated with ornaments to protect the house: circles as symbols of the sun, birds, horses, lions, fish, weasel (an animal that was considered the guardian of livestock - it was believed that if a predator was depicted, it would not harm pets), floral ornament, juniper, mountain ash .

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 at night.

Four sides of the hut facing the four directions of the world. The appearance of the hut is turned to the outside world, and the interior decoration - to the family, to the clan, to the person.

Russian hut porch was more open and spacious. Here were those family events that the whole street of the village could see: they saw off the soldiers, met the matchmakers, met the newlyweds. On the porch they talked, exchanged news, rested, talked about business. Therefore, the porch occupied a prominent place, was high and rose up on pillars or log cabins.

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

What do you think, from what word the word "porch" was formed? From the word "cover", "roof". After all, the porch was necessarily with a roof that protected from snow and rain.
Often in a Russian hut there were two porches and two entrances. The first entrance is the main one, where benches were set up for conversation and relaxation. And the second entrance is “dirty”, it served for household needs.

Bake located near the entrance and occupied about a quarter of the space of the hut. 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.” “Our mother bake us”, “A house without a stove is an uninhabited house”. The stove had feminine and was in the women's part of the house. It is in the oven that the raw, undeveloped turns into boiled, “own”, mastered. The furnace 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 the elderly 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 road was happy), during a thunderstorm (because the stove is another entrance to the house, the connection of the house with the outside world).

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

The entire space of the hut was divided into female and male. Men worked and rested, received guests on weekdays in the male part of the Russian hut - in the front red corner, away from it to the threshold and sometimes under the curtains. The man's workplace during the repair was next to the door. Women and children worked and rested, stayed awake in the female half of the hut - near the stove. If women received guests, then the guests sat at the threshold of the stove. Guests could enter the female territory of the hut only at the invitation of the hostess. Representatives of the male half, without a special emergency, never went to the female half, and women to 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 the bench.

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

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

Married adult couples slept in the boots, on the bench under the curtains, in their separate cages - in their places. The old people slept on the stove or by the stove, the children on the stove.

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

Svetlitsy the room was called - a light room, a burner on the second floor of the house, clean, well-groomed, for needlework and clean classes. There was a wardrobe, a bed, a sofa, a table. But just like in the hut, all items were placed along the walls. There were chests in the gorenka, in which they collected dowry for daughters. How many marriageable daughters - so many chests. Here lived girls - marriageable brides.

The dimensions of the Russian hut

In ancient times, the Russian hut did not have internal partitions and was square or rectangular in shape. The average dimensions of the hut were from 4 x 4 meters to 5.5 x 6.5 meters. The middle peasants and wealthy peasants had large huts - 8 x 9 meters, 9 x 10 meters.

The decoration of the Russian hut

In the Russian hut, four corners were distinguished: oven, woman's kut, red corner, back corner (at the entrance under the floor). Each corner had its own traditional purpose. And the whole hut, in accordance with the angles, was divided into the female and male halves.

The female half of the hut runs from the mouth of the furnace (furnace outlet) to the front wall of the house.

One of the corners of the female half of the house is a woman's kut. It is also called "bake". This place is near the stove, women's territory. Here they cooked food, pies, stored utensils, millstones. Sometimes the "women's territory" of the house was separated by a partition or screen. In the female half of the hut, behind the stove, there were cabinets for kitchen utensils and food, shelves for tableware, buckets, cast iron, tubs, stove appliances (bread shovel, poker, tong). The “long bench” that ran along the female half of the hut along the side wall of the house was also female. Here women spun, weaved, sewed, embroidered, and a baby cradle hung here.

Men have never entered the "women's territory" and touched the utensils that are considered women's. And a stranger and a guest could not even look into a woman's kut, it was insulting.

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

Russian stove

Approximately a fourth, and sometimes a third of the hut was occupied by a Russian stove. She was a symbol of the hearth. They not only cooked food in it, but also prepared fodder for livestock, baked pies and bread, washed themselves, heated the room, slept on it and dried clothes, shoes or food, dried mushrooms and berries in it. And even in winter they could keep chickens in the oven. 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 multidimensional, uneven height.

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

“Bake us like a mother,” people used to say. Many folk healing practices were associated with the stove. And omens. For example, you can not spit in the oven. And it was impossible to swear when the fire burned in the furnace.

The new furnace began to warm up gradually and evenly. The first day began with four logs, and gradually one log was added every day to ignite the entire volume of the furnace and so that it was without cracks.

At first, in Russian houses there were adobe stoves that were heated in black. That is, the furnace then did not have an exhaust pipe for smoke to escape. Smoke was released through the door or through a special hole in the wall. It is sometimes thought that only the poor had black huts, but this is not so. Such stoves were also in rich mansions. The black oven gave more heat and kept it longer than the white one. Smoked walls were not afraid of dampness or rot.

Later, stoves were built white - that is, they began to make a pipe through which smoke escaped.

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

Red corner - the central main place in the hut, in a Russian house. It is also called "holy", "divine", "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 for the image. Here, at the table, all the meals and the main events in the life of the family were held: birth, wedding, funeral, seeing off to the army.

There were not only icons here, but also the Bible, prayer books, candles, consecrated willow twigs were brought here on Palm Sunday or birch twigs on Trinity.

The red corner was especially worshiped. Here, during the commemoration, they put an extra device for another soul who had gone 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 rigidly fixed by tradition, And not only during the holidays, but also during regular meals. The meal brought family and family together.

• Place in the red corner, in the center of the table, under the icons, was the most honorable. The host, the most respected guests, the priest were sitting here. If a guest, without the invitation of the host, passed and sat in a red corner, this was considered a gross violation of etiquette.
• The next most important side of the table is right from the owner and the places closest to him on the right and left. This is a men's shop. Here, according to seniority, the men of the family were seated 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 "lower" end of the table on the "women's bench", women and children sat down along the pediment of the house.
• mistress of the house was placed opposite her husband from the side of the stove on a side bench. So it was more convenient to serve food and arrange lunch.
• During the wedding newlyweds also sat under the icons in the red corner.
• For guests had its own guest shop. It is located by the window. Until now, there is such a custom in some areas to seat guests by the window.

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

Table- he was given great importance in the red corner of the house and in general in the hut. The table in the hut stood in a permanent place. If the house was sold, then it must be 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 the 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 impossible to knock on the table: "Do not hit the table, the table is God's palm!" There should always be bread on the table - a symbol of prosperity and well-being in the house. They said this: “Bread on the table - and the table is the throne!”. Bread is a symbol of prosperity, abundance, material well-being. Therefore, he always had to be on the table - God's palm.

A small lyrical digression from the author. Dear readers of this article! Perhaps you think that all this is outdated? Well, what's with the bread on the table? And you 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. Yes, and a loaf in shape - a circle, a symbol of movement, growth, development. When for the first time I baked not pies, not cupcakes, but bread, and my whole house smelled of bread, I realized what a real house is - a house where it smells of .. bread! Where would you like 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!!!, taught me how to bake bread. And then I thought: “If the 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 hands and your soul! And then the loaf on your table will become a symbol of your home and bring you a lot of joy!

The table was necessarily 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" in Russian culture was given a special meaning. The longitudinal one had a “positive” charge, and the transverse one had a “negative” one. Therefore, they tried to lay all the objects in the house in the longitudinal direction. This is also why it was along the floorboards that they sat down 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 is integral with the table. The expression "table and tablecloth" symbolized hospitality, hospitality. Sometimes the tablecloth was called "holy-solker" or "samobranka". Wedding tablecloths were kept as a special relic. The tablecloth was not always covered, but on special occasions. But in Karelia, for example, the tablecloth had to be always on the table. At the wedding feast, they took a special tablecloth and laid it inside out (from spoilage). A tablecloth could be spread on the ground during a commemoration, because a tablecloth is a “road”, a connection between the cosmic world and the human world, it is not for nothing that the expression “tablecloth is a road” has come down to us.

Per dining table the family gathered, were baptized before meals and read a prayer. They ate decorously, it was impossible to get up while eating. The head of the family, the man, started the meal. He cut food into pieces, cut bread. The woman served everyone at the table, served food. The meal was long, slow, 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 is 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 “women's kingdom”, do men interfere in it? Do we need it? How and where can you create it?

Question 2. And what is in the red corner of an apartment or cottage - what is the main spiritual center of the house? Let's take a look at our home. And if something needs to be corrected, then we will do it and create a red corner in our house, we will create it to really unite the family. Sometimes there are tips on the Internet to put a computer in the red corner as in the "energy center of the apartment", to organize your workplace in it. I am always surprised by such recommendations. Here, in the red - the main corner - to 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 family, but not a TV or an office center! Let's think together what it could be.

Types of Russian huts

Now many families are interested in Russian history and traditions and build houses as our ancestors did. Sometimes it is believed that there should be only one type of house according to the arrangement of its elements, and only this type of house is "correct" and "historical". In fact, the location of the main elements of the hut (red corner, stove) depends on the region.

According to the location of the stove and the red corner, 4 types of Russian hut are distinguished. Each type is characteristic of a particular area and climatic conditions. That is, it is impossible to say directly: the oven has always been strictly here, and the red corner is strictly here. Let's take a closer look at the pictures.

The first type is the North 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 to the front wall of the hut (The mouth is the outlet of the Russian stove). Diagonal from the stove is a red corner.

The second type is the Western Russian hut. The furnace was also located next to the entrance to the right or left of it. But it was turned by its mouth to a long side wall. That is, the mouth of the furnace was near the front door to the house. The red corner was also located diagonally from the stove, but the food was cooked in a different place in the hut - closer to the door (see picture). At the side of the stove they made flooring for sleeping.

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

In spite of different types huts, they observe general principle structures of the Russian dwelling. Therefore, even being far from home, the traveler could always orient himself in the hut.

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

In a peasant estate the economy was large - in each estate there were from 1 to 3 barns for storing grain and valuables. And there was also a bath - the most remote building from the residential building. Every thing has its place. This principle from the proverb was observed always and everywhere. Everything in the house was thought out and arranged reasonably so as not to waste extra time and energy 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 side of the street through a strong gate. There was a roof over the gate. And at the gate on the side of the street under the roof there is a shop. Not only the villagers, but also any passer-by 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 meet them cordially or say goodbye.

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

Bath- a separate building (the building farthest from the 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 on the pediment of the hut. Wishing a rich harvest, happiness, well-being to the family living in the house.

barn- platform for threshing compressed bread.

crate- a structure in wooden construction, formed by crowns of logs laid on top of each other. Mansions consist of several stands, united by passages and passages.

Chicken-elements of the roof of a Russian house built without nails. They said this: "Chickens and a horse on the roof - it will be quieter in the hut." It is precisely the elements of the roof that are meant - the ridge and chickens. A water drain was laid on the chickens - a log hollowed out in the form of a gutter to drain water from the roof. The image of the "hens" is not accidental. The chicken and the rooster were associated in the popular mind with the sun, since this bird announces the sunrise. The cry of a rooster, according to popular belief, drove away evil spirits.

Glacier- the great-grandfather of the modern refrigerator - an ice room for food storage

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

platband- decoration of the window (window opening)

Barn- a building for drying sheaves before threshing. Sheaves were laid out on the floor and dried.

ohlupen- horse - connects the two wings of the house, two roof slopes together. The horse symbolizes the sun moving across the sky. This is an indispensable element of the roof construction, built without nails and a talisman of the house. Okhlupen is also called "shelom" 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 “cool”, because when laid in place, it makes a “clap” sound. Ohlupni used to do without nails during construction.

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

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

basement- the lower room under the living quarters. The basement was used for food storage and household needs.

Polaty- 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 heat for a long time. If the heating stove was not heated, then vegetables were stored on the floors at that time.

Police- curly shelves for utensils above the benches in the hut.

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

Prichelina- boards on the wooden roof of the house, nailed to the ends above the gable (hut hut), protecting them from decay. The prichelins 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 choir (see "mansions") in the female half, in the upper part of the building, intended for needlework and other household activities.

canopy- the entrance cold room in the hut, usually the canopy was not heated. As well as the entrance room between the individual cells in the mansions. This is always a utility room for storage. Household utensils were stored here, there was a shop with buckets and pails, work clothes, rocker arms, sickles, scythes, rakes. They did their dirty housework in the hallway. The doors of all the rooms opened into the canopy. Canopy - protection from the cold. The front door opened, the cold let in into the vestibule, but remained in them, not reaching the living quarters.

Apron- sometimes "aprons" decorated with fine carvings were made on the houses from the side of the main facade. This is a wooden overhang that protects the house from rain.

barn- a place for livestock.

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

Utensils of a Russian hut

Tableware for cooking was stored in the stove and by the stove. These are boilers, pots for porridges, soups, clay patches for baking fish, cast-iron pans. Beautiful porcelain dishes were kept so that everyone could see them. She was a symbol of prosperity in the family. Festive dishes were kept in the upper room, and plates were displayed in the cupboard. Everyday utensils were kept in hanging cabinets. Dinner utensils consisted of a large clay or wood bowl, wooden spoons, a birch bark or copper salt shaker, and cups of kvass.

To store bread in a Russian hut, painted box, brightly colored, sunny, joyful. The painting of the box distinguished it from other things as a significant, important thing.

Drinking tea from samovar.

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

Salt- this is not only food, but also a talisman. Therefore, they served bread and salt to the guests as a greeting, a symbol of hospitality.

The most common was earthenware pot. Porridge and cabbage soup were prepared in pots. Shchi in a pot was well rebuked and became much tastier and richer. And even now, if we compare the taste of soup and porridge from the Russian oven and from the stove, we will immediately feel the difference in taste! Out of the oven - delicious!

Barrels, tubs, baskets were used for household needs in the house. They fried food in pans, as they do now. The dough was kneaded in wooden troughs and vats. Water was carried in buckets and jugs.

For good hosts, immediately after a meal, all the dishes were washed clean, dried and put upside down 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 get them out of the oven, they needed grips. If you have the opportunity to try to put a full pot filled with food in the oven or take it out of the oven, you will understand how physically difficult this work is and how strong women used to be even without fitness :). For them, every movement was exercise and physical education. I'm serious 🙂 - I tried and appreciated how difficult it is to get a large pot of food for a large family with a tong!

Used for raking coal poker.

In the 19th century, clay pots were replaced by metal ones. They're called cast iron (from the word "cast iron").

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

furniture in our understanding of this word, there was almost no 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 were always with locks. The design of the chest could tell about the prosperity of its owner.

Russian hut decor

To paint a house (they used to say “bloom”) a master in painting could. Outlandish patterns were painted on a light background. These are the 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 home with their needlework.

Guess what tool was used to carve in a Russian hut? With an ax! And the painting of houses was done by "painters" - that was the name of the artists. They painted the facades of houses - pediments, architraves, porches, chapels. When white stoves appeared, they began to paint guardianships and partitions, lockers in the huts.

The decoration of the pediment of the roof of the northern Russian house is actually an image of the cosmos. Signs of the sun on the berths and on the towel - the image of the path of the sun - sunrise, sun at its zenith, sunset.

Very interesting an ornament that adorns the berths. Below the solar sign on the chapels, you can see several trapezoidal ledges - the paws of waterfowl. For the northerners, the sun rose from the water, and also set into the water, because there were many lakes and rivers around, and therefore waterfowl were depicted - the underwater-underground world. The ornament on the porches personified the seven-layer sky (remember the old expression - “to be in the seventh heaven with happiness”?).

In the first row of the prichelin ornament there are circles, sometimes connected with trapeziums. These are symbols of heavenly water - rain and snow. Another row of images from triangles is a layer of earth with seeds that will wake up and give a harvest. It turns out that the sun rises and moves across the seven-layer sky, one of the layers of which contains moisture reserves, and the other contains plant seeds. The sun at first does not shine at full strength, then it is at its zenith and at the end rolls down to start its journey through the sky again the next morning. One row of ornament does not repeat the other.

The same symbolic ornament can be found on the architraves of a Russian house and on the decor of windows. middle lane Russia. But the decor of the windows has its own characteristics. On the lower board of the casing there is an uneven relief of the hut (a plowed field). On 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 kept by the owner. The house is being painted by the owner.
• What is it like at home - like this yourself.
• Make a barn, and there the cattle!
• Not according to the house of the master, but the house according to the master.
• It is not the owner's house that paints, but the owner the house.
• At home - not away: after sitting, you will not leave.
• A good wife will save the house, and 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 disorder in the house.
• If the hut is crooked, the hostess is bad.
• What is the builder - such is the abode.
• Our hostess has everything at work - and the dogs wash the dishes.
• Leading the house - do not weave bast shoes.
• In the house, the owner is more archiere
• Start a pet at home - do not open your mouth to walk.
• The house is small, but does not order to lie.
• Whatever is born in the field, everything in the house will come in handy.
• Not the owner, who does not know his economy.
• Prosperity is not maintained by the place, but by the owner.
• If you don’t manage the house, you can’t manage the city either.
• The village is rich, and the city is rich.
• A good head feeds a hundred hands.

Dear friends! I wanted to show in this hut not just the history of the Russian house, but also to learn from our ancestors, together with you, housekeeping - reasonable and beautiful, pleasing to the soul and eye, living in harmony with nature and with your conscience. In addition, many points in relation to the house as to hearth of our ancestors are very important and relevant even 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. And I also used materials from the stories of my grandmother, who shared her memories with me early years his life in the 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 I could not write it for so long: in the bustle of the capital in the usual panel house in the center of Moscow, under the roar of cars, it was too difficult for me to write about the harmonious world of the Russian home. And here, in nature, I completed this article very quickly and easily, from the bottom of my heart.

If you want to learn more about the Russian house, then below you will find a bibliography on this topic for adults and children.

I hope that this article will help you to tell about the Russian house in an interesting way during your summer trips to the village and to museums of Russian life, and also tell you how to look at illustrations for Russian fairy tales with your children.

Literature about the Russian hut

For adults

1. Baiburin A.K. Dwelling in the rituals and ideas of the Eastern Slavs. - L .: Nauka, 1983 (Institute of Ethnography named after N.N. Miklukho - Maclay)
2. Buzin V.S. Russian ethnography. - 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. The wisdom of the ancestors Russian yard, house, garden. - Arkhangelsk, 2005.
6. Sukhanova M.A. The house as a model of the world // House of man. Materials of the interuniversity conference - St. Petersburg, 1998.

For kids

1. Alexandrova L. Wooden architecture of Russia. – M.: Bely Gorod, 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 rural life

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

Video 3. How a Russian hut is built: a documentary for adults

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"Speech development from 0 to 7 years: what is important to know and what to do. Cheat sheet for parents"

The interior of Russian huts is mostly very similar and includes a number of elements that can be found in any home. If we talk about the device of the hut, then it consists of:

• 1-2 living quarters
• upper room
• lumber room
• terrace

The first thing a guest came across when entering the house was the canopy. This is a kind of zone between the heated room and the street. All the cold lingered in the hallway and did not enter the main room. The canopy was used by the Slavs for economic purposes. In this room they kept a yoke and other things. Located in the hallway lumber room. This is a room that was separated from the hallway by a partition. It housed a chest with flour, eggs and other products..

The heated room and the vestibule were separated by a door and a high threshold. Such a threshold was made so that it was more difficult for cold air to penetrate into a warm room. In addition, there was a tradition the guest, entering the room, had to bow, greet the hosts and the brownie. The high threshold just "forced" the guests to bow, entering the main part of the house. Since the entrance without bowing ensured hitting the head on the jamb. With the advent of Christianity in Russia, the bow to the brownie and the owners was supplemented by the overshadowing of oneself with the sign of the cross and the bow to the icons in the red corner.

Stepping over the threshold, the guest entered the main room of the hut. The first thing that caught my eye was the stove. It was located immediately to the left or right of the door. The Russian stove is the main element of the hut. The absence of a furnace indicates that the building is non-residential. And the Russian hut got its name precisely because of the stove, which allows you to heat the room. Another important feature of this device is cooking food. Still no more useful way cooking than in the oven. Currently, there are various double boilers that allow you to save a maximum of useful elements in food. But all this is not comparable to cooked food from the oven. There are many beliefs associated with the oven. For example, it was believed that it was a favorite vacation spot for brownies. Or, when a child lost a milk tooth, he was taught to throw the tooth under the stove and say:

"Mouse, mouse, you have a burdock tooth, and you give me a bone tooth"

It was also believed that garbage from the house should be burned in a furnace so that the energy does not go outside, but remains inside the room.

Red corner in a Russian hut

The red corner is an integral part of the interior decoration of the Russian hut. It was located diagonally from the stove (most often this place fell on eastern part at home - a note to those who do not know where to set the red corner in a modern home). It was a sacred place where there were towels, icons, faces of ancestors and divine books. A necessary part of the red corner was the table. It was in this corner that our ancestors ate food. The table was considered a kind of altar, on which there was always bread:

"Bread on the table, so the table is the throne, but not a piece of bread - so is the table board"

Therefore, even today, tradition does not allow sitting on the table. And leaving knives and spoons is considered a bad omen. Until today, another belief associated with the table has survived: young people were forbidden to sit on the corner of the table in order to avoid the fate of celibacy.

Shop with a chest in the hut

Everyday household items in a Russian hut played their role. A hiding place or chest for clothes was important elements at home. Skrynya was inherited from mother to daughter. It included the dowry of the girl, which she received after marriage. This element of the interior of the Russian hut was located most often next to the stove.

Benches were also an important element of the interior of the Russian hut. Conventionally, they were divided into several types:

• long - differs from the rest in length. It was considered a women's place where they did embroidery, knitting, etc.
• short - during the meal, men sat on it.
• kutnaya - was installed near the furnace. Buckets of water, shelves for dishes, pots were placed on it.
• threshold - went along the wall where the door is located. Used as a kitchen table.
• judgment - a shop higher than others. Designed to store shelves with dishes and pots.
• Konik - a square-shaped men's shop with a carved horse's head on the side. It was located next to the door. On it, men were engaged in small crafts, so tools were stored under the bench.
• "beggar" was also located at the door. Any guest who entered the hut without the permission of the owners could sit on it. This is due to the fact that the guest cannot enter the hut further than the mother (a log that serves as the basis for the ceiling). Visually, the matrix looks like a protruding log across the main stacked boards on the ceiling.

The upper room is another living space in the hut. Wealthy peasants had it, because not everyone could afford such a room. The chamber was most often arranged on the second floor.Hence its name gornitsa - "mountain". In it was another oven called dutch. This is a round stove. In many village houses they are still standing, being an ornament. Although even today you can find huts that are heated by these old appliances.

Enough has already been said about the stove. But it is impossible not to mention the tools that were used in working with Russian stoves. Poker is the most famous item. It is an iron rod bent end. A poker was used to stir and rake coals. Pomelo was used to clean the stove from coals..

With the help of a fork, it was possible to drag or move pots and cast iron. It was a metal arc that made it possible to grab the pot and carry it from place to place. The grip made it possible to put the cast iron in the oven without fear of getting burned..

Another item used in working with the stove is bread shovel. With it, the bread is placed in the oven and pulled out after cooking. And here is the word chaplya"Not many people know. This tool is called a frying pan in another way. It was used to grab a frying pan.

The cradle in Russia had various forms. There were hollowed out, and wicker, and hanging, and "roly-poly" ones. Their names were surprisingly varied: cradle, unsteady, coliche, rocking chairs, lullaby. But a number of traditions are associated with the cradle, which remained unchanged. For example, it was considered necessary to place the cradle in the place where the baby could watch the dawn. Rocking an empty cradle was considered bad luck. We believe in these and many other beliefs to this day. After all, all the traditions of the ancestors were based on their personal experience, which the new generation adopted from their ancestors.

let `s talk about old Russian hut, or let's take even a little wider - 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 house-yard with a residential old Russian hut.

The Russian house remains for many either some kind of allegory of Christian Russia, or a hut with three windows with carved architraves. For some reason, the exhibits of museums of wooden architecture do not change this stable opinion. Maybe because no one has clearly explained in this way - what, in fact, is old Russian hut– literally?

Russian hut from the inside

A stranger masters the dwelling first from the outside, then goes inside. Your own is born inside. Then, gradually expanding his world, he brings it to the size of ours. Appearance for him - then, inside - first.

Unfortunately, you and I are strangers there.

So outside old Russian hut it is high, large, its windows are small, but located high, the walls represent a mighty log array, not divided horizontally by a plinth and cornices, vertically by shoulder blades and columns. The gable roof grows out of the wall, it is immediately clear that there are no usual rafters behind the “pediment”. A powerful log with a characteristic sculptural extension serves as a ridge. Details are few, large, there is no lining, lining. In some places, individual ends of logs of a not entirely clear purpose can protrude from the walls. friendly old Russian hut can not be called, rather, silent, secretive.

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

From the porch, a low wide door in a powerful slanting frame leads into the entrance hall. Its inner contours are slightly rounded, which serves as the main obstacle for unwanted spirits and people who are impure in 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 the wind and livestock.

The canopy, called a bridge in the North, develops the idea of ​​a porch. Often there is no ceiling in them, as there was not before in the hut - only the roof separates them from the sky, only it overshadows them.

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

The porch is open on three sides, the entrance hall is closed on four, there is little light in them from the portage (veiled with boards) windows.

The transition from the vestibule to the hut is no less responsible than from the porch to the porch. You can feel the atmosphere rising...

The inner world of the Russian hut

We open the door, bending down, we enter. There is a low ceiling above us, although this is not a ceiling, but a floor - a flooring at the level of the stove bench - for sleeping. We are in a flat hut. And we can turn to the mistress of the hut with a good wish.

Polatny kut - a vestibule inside a Russian hut. Anyone can enter there. kind person without asking, without knocking on the door. The boards rest with one edge on the wall directly above the door, with the other - on the board beam. The guest, at his will, does not have to go for this flat bar. Only the hostess can invite him to enter the next kut - the red corner, to family and ancestral shrines, to sit down at the table.

The 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 cake beam), his hostess will not invite him there, because the second half is the main sacred part of the Russian hut - the woman's and oven kuta. These two kutas are similar to the altar of the temple, and in fact this is the altar with the oven-throne and ritual objects: a bread shovel, broomstick, tongs, sourdough. There, the fruits of the earth, heaven and peasant labor are transformed into spiritual and material food. Because food has never been a quantity of calories and a set of textures and tastes for a person of Tradition.

The male part of the family is not allowed in the woman's kut, here the hostess, the big woman, is in charge of everything, gradually teaching the future hostesses the sacred rites ...

The peasants work most of the time in the field, in the meadow, in the forest, on the water, in lairs. In the house, the owner’s place is right at the entrance on the horse bench, in the ward kut, or behind 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 place of the hostess is in the red corner - behind the end of the table from the side of the woman's kut and the oven - it is she who is the priestess of the home temple, she communicates with the oven and the fire of the oven, she starts the kneading pot and puts the dough into the oven, she takes it out turned into bread. It is she who, along the semantic vertical of the stove column, descends through the golbets (a special wooden extension to the stove) into the underground, which is also called golbets. There, in golbets, in the basement ancestral sanctuary, the habitat of guardian spirits, supplies are kept. It's not so hot in summer, not so cold in winter. Golbets is akin to a cave - the womb of the Earth-Mother, from which decaying remains come out and into which return.

The hostess runs, dances everything in the house, she is in constant communication with the inner (hut) Earth (half-bridge of the hut, underground hollow), with the inner sky (matrix beam, ceiling), with the World Tree (furnace 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 a peasant in a Russian hut, sends him outside the home temple, to the periphery of the space illuminated by the temple, to male spheres and affairs. If the hostess (the axis of the family) is smart and strong, the family wheel spins with desired constancy.

The device of the 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 rhythmically illuminate, rather than flood with light. Directly above the windows is a solid black shelf. Above - five or seven unhewn, smoked crowns of a log house - smoke goes here during the burning of a black stove. To remove it, there is a chimney above the door leading to the hallway, and in the hallway there is a wooden exhaust pipe that carries the already cooled smoke outside the house. Hot smoke economically heats and antiseptics the living space. Thanks to him, there were no such severe pandemics in Russia as in Western Europe.

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

The Russian hut is divided into huts by two vorontsi bars (clothed and cake), laid perpendicular to the upper cut of the stove column. The cake beam stretches to the front wall of the hut and separates the female 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 pillar should not break off at the level of the crows, it should rise higher, under the very 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 pillar, between the cake beam and the mat, the researchers came across (for some reason no one had ever met before) a carved element of 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 bagodati; the lower one is the vault of heaven covering the Earth - our visible world; the middle link is a knot, a valve, 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 Beregina, Baba, the Goddess with her hands raised. In the middle link, the usual horse heads are read - a symbol of the solar movement in a circle.

The carved element stands on the cake beam and supports the mat.

Thus, in the upper level of the hut space, in the center old Russian hut, in the most significant, impactful place, which no glance can pass by, the missing link is personally embodied - the connection of the World Tree (furnace pillar) and the celestial sphere (matrix), and the connection is in the form of a complex deeply symbolic sculptural and carved element. It should be noted that it is located at once 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 woman's and oven kuts.

It is thanks to this hidden and very timely found element that it is possible to build a number 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, it is old Russian hut- the most complete, most developed, most profound 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 smoke (black, ore) Russian hut as the highest example of material folk culture, in which smoke, when the stove was fired, entered directly into the upper part of the internal volume. The high trapezoidal ceiling made it possible to stay in the hut during the furnace. The smoke came out of the mouth of the furnace directly into the room, spread along the ceiling, and then descended to the level of the voron shelves and was drawn out through a portage window cut in the wall, connected to a wooden chimney.

There are several reasons for the long existence of ore huts, and above all, climatic conditions - high humidity of the area. Open fire and smoke from the stove impregnated and dried the walls of the log house, thus, a kind of conservation of wood took place, so the age of black huts is longer. The smoke oven warmed the room well and did not require a lot of 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 arrangement of the whole complex of significant elements of the Russian hut: the ceiling went down, windows rose, voronets, stove pillar, golbets began to disappear. A single zoned volume of the hut began to be divided into functional volumes-rooms. Distorted beyond recognition, all internal proportions, appearance and gradually old Russian hut ceased to exist, turning into a rural house with an interior close to a city apartment. The whole “perturbation”, in fact, degradation, took place 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 about now? A return to truly smoky huts is possible only as a result of a worldwide or national catastrophe. However, it is possible to return the entire figurative-symbolic structure of the hut, to saturate the Russian country house with it - even in the conditions of technological progress and the ever-increasing well-being of "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.

According to the materials of the magazine "Rodobozhie No. 7