FUNERAL CEREMONIES OF OLD-BELIEVERS OF TRANSBAIKALIA

The folk ceremonial culture was directly connected with three main events of human life: birth, wedding, and path to the next world. The most ancient and the best-preserved in world's history is the funeral rite, which is one of the most ethnic signs of culture. In comparison with other rites, it is one of the most conservative, because embodies a slowly changing vision of the death, the spirit world, and the relationship between dead and alive. However funeral rite vulnerable to transformation, which attests to a complex process, on the one hand, it says about internal development of the culture, on the other hand, it tells about the interaction between them throughout human history. In Transbaikalia, the greatest interest from all ethno-confessional groups represent a group of Old-Believers, or, how they are called in the Region, semeiskie. They differ from other groups of local and alien population in their folk and ecclesiastical culture. The study revealed that complexes of funeral and memorial ceremonies of semeiskie saved a lot of archaic features, that currently lost in other Eastern Slav groups of Siberia. At the same time, some individual features can be distinguished, that they are not founded on Russians' old-timers in Siberia. Currently, due to decline of culture pillars of Old- Believers' traditions happens a harmonization of rite complex, because of simplifying and elimination of archaic elements