THE MENNONITE GERMANS IN THE OMSK REGION: ON THE SUBJECT OF ETHNOCULTURAL IDENTITY
The article presents an analysis of the ethno-linguistic and the cultural-historical data collected in the course of a dialect study expedition in the rural areas of the Omsk region the population of which speaks the Plattdeutsch or Ploutditsch dialect of the German language and call themselves “Ploutditsch”. The majority of the interviewed informants were the representatives of the Mennonite communities - the unique islands of culture which to this day maintained a specific way of life, preserved the traditional values and the language of their ancestors. The study focused on the problems of ethnocultural identity of the German Mennonites in the Omsk region which was formed initially as a merger of two cultures - the German and the Russian. Thus the ethnic picture of the world which formed in their minds was Russian-German; the same was true about their self-identification. Nonetheless, a personality which developed in this cultural environment was devoid of any signs of cultural dualism. Its characteristic attribute was integrity formed as a result of absorption of a wider range of values and accommodation of internal conflicts. The paper provides a description of the markers constituting the basis of the informants ethnocultural self-identification: the endonym (or an ethnicon), the native language and linguistic practices, the religion, the historical memory and common history, marriage and family, including the parents' and the spouses' ethnicity, own ethnicity, etc. Who are the Omsk “Ploutditsch” today, what are the models of their collective identity, what modern markers compose/decompose it, influence the nature of inter-ethnic processes inside the studied communities - this was the list of some of the issues discussed in the article.