"Fasting, Mother...": noble families and religious food restrictions (second half of XIX - early XX centuries)
The article characterizes the attitude of the Orthodox nobles to one of the fundamental religious restrictions - fasting. Attention is drawn to the almost complete noble families' denial of the observance of day fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays and highly selective attitude to seasonal ones. From four seasonal fasts (the Lent, the Apostles' fast, the Assumption fast and the Christmas fast) the majority of nobles treated relatively seriously only the Lent. However, it was not fully observed, mostly some days during the fast or the whole 1-2 weeks of 7. In those days, such as Christmastime or Good Friday, when the complete denial of food was supposed, even religious noble families took ritualized meatless meals. Noble-parents rarely observing fasts extended this practice to their children, forming the nihilistic attitude toward this church requirement. It is concluded that on the one hand, widespread of denial to fulfill one of the essential requirements of the church in the noble families became the important factor of growth of indifferent attitude to other rules of Orthodoxy among the noble youth, until the development of nihilistic and atheistic attitudes. On the other hand, noble intelligentsia, even those who stated their commitment to Christian tradition, opposed their “civilized” religion to people's “ritual” faith by the fact of denial the ritual side of Orthodoxy.