EN
Following an ethnographic field study, the author presents her findings on the cognitive collective identity of Belarusian kolkhozniks. Their self-definition as a group is based on the semiotic oppositions: peasant–‘lord’, peasant–Jew, and Christian–Jew, and it testifies to a longevity, or longue durée, of pre-modern mechanisms of conceptualising the social reality. The contemporary kolkhoznik defines himself as a simple (uneducated) but assiduous man, as opposed to his lord; in contrast to Jews, the kolkhozniks cultivate the land (as farmers) and are baptised. The post-serfdom identity of the ‘Christian kolkhozniks of-this-place’ is immersed in a mythical worldview and indifferent to any modern ideological and/or political projects.