Fanatical inhabitants of Chernobyl? The image of the 19th-century city in the texts of Lavrenty Pochilievich and Konstantin Paustovsky

Abstract

The article is an attempt to reconstruct the socio-religious life of the inhabitants of Chernobyl and its external image in the last decades of the Russian Empire on the basis of an analysis of texts by Lavrenty Pochilievich and Konstantin Paustovsky. The multicultural character of Chernobyl in the 19th century was a result of the intolerant policy of the Russian authorities as well as the town's geographic and economic location. Chernobyl's Jewish and Christian residents (Orthodox, Old Believers and Roman Catholics) were an example of symbiosis in the conditions of an autocratic empire, which at the end of the 19th century was Tsarist Russia.  History of Chernobyl shows that for centuries the city has been a reservoir of tolerance and a refuge for communities persecuted for reasons of economic and religious prejudice. At the same time, Chernobyl retained the eclectic appearance of a provincial shtetl typical of right-bank Ukraine, with its own customs, differences and mental diversity.