Between the Lord and the Jew: Some Remarks on the Identity Structure of Belarusian kolkhozniks in the Late Twentieth and Early Twenty first Centuries

Following an ethnographic field study, the author presents her findings on the cognitive collective identity of Belarusian kolkhozniks. Their self-definition as a group is based on the semiotic oppositions: peasant–‘lord’, peasant–Jew, and Christian–Jew, and it testifies to a longevity, or longue durée, of pre-modern mechanisms of conceptualising the social reality. The contemporary kolkhoznik defines himself as a simple (uneducated) but assiduous man, as opposed to his lord; in contrast to Jews, the kolkhozniks cultivate the land (as farmers) and are baptised. The post-serfdom identity of the ‘Christian kolkhozniks of-this-place’ is immersed in a mythical worldview and indifferent to any modern ideological and/or political projects.