Elena P. Martynova

Doctor of Science (History), Professor, Professor of the Department of History and Archeology

Tula State Lev Tolstoy Pedagogical University

(Tula, Russia)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.22405/2712-8407-2024-4-100-113

Abstract. The Ugric studies include a large array of data. However, there are different, sometimes mutually exclusive, hypotheses about the essence of Khanty and Mansi division into Mos and Por groups. These data and research approaches are the subject of the author's study in this article. It aims to give a general overview of approaches to the interpretations of the Por/Mos division among the ObUgric peoples and to show different angles of coverage of this confusing problem. At the same time, the author in no way aims to refute previous views and confirm his own. The work analyses the concepts of ethnographers, starting from the end of the 19th century and ending with modern observations. First of all, the author focuses on Soviet northerners (V. Chernetsov, A. Zolotarev, Z. Sokolova), who put forward and substantiated the idea of the formation and long-term preservation of dual-phratry organisation among Khanty and Mansi in an evolutionary-Marxist manner. In the 1990s, the spectrum of interpretations of the division into groups of Mos and Por in the Siberian Ugrians expanded. The ethnogenetic hypothesis, which treats these social groups as different ethnic communities that participated in the ethnogenesis of Khanty and Mansi, takes the first place. It is most fully presented in the works of E. Martynova and E. Perevalova. The author notes the merits of the famous Hungarian researcher P. Veres, who linked the opposing groups of Por and Mos with the ancient worldview of the Ugrian peoples, who still preserve dualism and binarity in their spiritual culture. It is important to emphasize that the basis of the concept explaining the division into Por and Mos is a lot of ethnographic, folklore, linguistic, archaeological data interpreted in different ways. Thus, they can (and should) be the scientific heritage of Ugra.
Keywords: Ugric studies, Ob Ugrians (Khanty and Mansi), social organization, phratry, dual exogamy, worldview.

Full text of the article (PDF)

For citation: Martynova, EP 2024, ‘Phratries Among Ob Ugrians: Polemics in Ugric Studies as a Scientific Heritage of Yugra’, Tula Scientific Bulletin. History. Linguistics, issue 4 (20), pp. 100–113, http://doi.org/10.22405/2712-8407-2024-4-100-113 (in Russ.)

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