PROBLEMS OF CULTURAL SELF-IDENTIFICATION OF YAZIDIS IN MODERN RUSSIA

The article deals with the problems of religious and cultural self-determination of the Yazidis. Currently, a large number of representatives of this people live on the territory of modern Russia. Their distinctive feature at this stage is the desire to revive their culture, restore lost knowledge. This fact updates the issues of this work. The present article attempts to analyse the complex issues of ethnicity of this people, their attitude towards other peoples, issues in identification of the language, time and place of religion emergence. The problems of preserving and recording sacred texts («Kavla» «Jilve» («Shine» or «Book of Revelations»), «Mashafe Rush» («Black Book»), their content, which determines the essence of the religious teachings of the Yazidis are difficult. Being a complex, syncretic spiritual phenomenon, Yazidism asked and keeps asking both researchers and its carriers many problems. Their significant number is associated with the antiquity of religion, the closed nature of its teachings, but most importantly with the long-standing oral tradition of transmitting religious and cultural heritage, the guardians and bearers of which were not all Yazidis, but the Yazidi clergy – pirs and sheikhs. Works are the cornerstone materials of recently published sacred texts of Yazidi and also the articles and monographs devoted to questions of the yazidism and belonging to such famous researchers – to Yazidi as H. Omarkhali, D. Pirbari, K. Amoev, T. Avdoev, A. Avdal and also to some spiritual heads of Yazidi, such as pir A. A. Daleyan, D. R. Polatov and others. This makes it possible to consider a whole range of controversial problems from the inside, through the eyes of the Yazidis, compare their points of approach to solving the most controversial problems of Yazidism.