The Russian North owes such a good preservation of the deeply archaic elements of traditional folk culture to a number of historical reasons. First of all, it should be borne in mind that Christianity came to these parts quite late. So, around 1260, the chronicler of the Spaso-Kamenny Monastery testified that: “you don’t receive the holy baptism, but you don’t open many many unfaithful people to Kubensky.”
It is interesting that even in the second half of the 19th century, in such counties as Ustyuzhsky, Nikolsky, Solvychegodsky, which occupy most of the province, there were one Church in 150—200 populated areas. To a considerable degree, the relics of pre-Christian beliefs, and therefore traditional folk culture, were well preserved due to the fact that here, in the Russian North, there were no sharp ethnic shifts and the associated population changes, practically no wave of conquerors reached here, here there were devastating wars. Most of the Russian North did not know serfdom, and the peasants were personally free, and as a result of this, both the institution of the traditional peasant community and the ancient ritual-ritual practice were preserved for a very long time.
We can assume that the preservation of the elements of folk culture in the Russian North in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, often archaic not only of the ancient Greek, but also recorded in the Vedas, is due to the fact that the population of these places was largely descendants of the ancient population, formed here as a result of advances until the Bronze Age, a time when, perhaps, many social structures, mythological schemes, and those ornamental forms that were common to the vast Slavic-Indo-Iranian region and were preserved in relict form until our days. V. V. Stasov, a well-known researcher of Russian culture, wrote about such relic ornamental forms: “In the ornament of Russian embroidery are precious and as yet untouched materials for studying different sides of ancient Russian nationality.” Indeed, for more than a century, Russian embroidery and abusive weaving have attracted the closest attention of researchers. At the end of the last century, a number of brilliant collections of works of these types of folk art were formed. The studies of V. V. Stasov, S. N. Shakhovskaya, V. Ya. Sidomon-Eristova and N. P. Shabelskaya laid the foundation for the systematization and classification of various types of Russian textile ornaments; they also made the first attempts to read complex “plot” compositions especially characteristic of the folk tradition of the Russian North.