The Relationship between Church and State and Their Impact on Traditional Culture

The article attempts to identify adaptation mechanisms that are activated in folk culture when conditions of existence change, using the example of special forms of popular religiosity that arose in response to a radical revision of the relationship between church and state in Soviet times. Persecution of the church and serious ideological dictatorship during the fairly long Soviet period could not completely change the traditional worldview of the Russian peasantry striving to preserve its identity. At the same time, they gave rise to special, hidden from prying eyes, forms of manifestation of popular religiosity that varied in different regions, which is due to their historical and cultural characteristics.