Peoples of Russia: "In the Forests and on the Hills: Life of Volga Region Old Believers" exhibition opened in Saint-Petersburg

"In the Forests and on the Hills: Life of the Old Believers of Volga Region" was opened on March 13, 2020, in the Russian Museum of Ethnography (Saint-Petersburg).

The exhibition features life, crafts, customs and rites of Volga Region Old Believers, as well as some aspects of the skete (monastic community in Eastern Christianity) life. It showcases about 250 items from the museum's collection. It presents costumes of nuns, everyday and festive dresses of youth and married people.

The exposition includes the scenes of a baptismal dinner, monastery's meetings, work in a turning workshop and a bookshop. A number of expositional complexes spotlight the topics of men's crafts and women's crafts. A special place is given to the attributes of the Old Believers' Orthodox tradition.

The Melnikov-Pechersky's oeuvre contains lots of information about the Old Believers. The exhibition also includes fragments from his novels "In the Forests" and "On the Hills" along with exhibits from the museum’s collection. They are a kind of documents that preserved the atmosphere of the life of the Nizhny Novgorod Old Believers of the XIX century.