Analysis

On the first step we analyzed mentifacts (the ideas, beliefs, and values that people hold).

Speaking about Russia of the 16^th century we should mention about most people’s society position – they were serfs. It meant the maximum limit of political and civil rights; at the same time serfs maintained individual and property rights and their lives were kept by the law.

Spiritual life of society was determined by religious ideology. In particular, norms of Christian morals had huge impact on family life, marriage and education of children. At this time the role of the head of the family, the father, was extremely great. It represented a family as a whole in all its external functions. In a family the power of the head was almost unlimited. He disposed property and destinies of each of his members.

Russian people had big families consisted of several generations of parents and children. Speaking about marriages, we should stress that the restrictions for marriage were quite rigid. First of all in the social relations which were regulated by customs. Moreover, divorce was pretty difficult. The Orthodox church allowed one person to marry no more than three times.

Political thought of problems of that time: about character and a government essence, about church, about a place of Russia among other countries, etc.

After analysis of sociofacts in this film we came to the conclusion that situations in England of the 16^th century and Russia of the 16^th century were very similar. It was time of two cruel rulers – Henry VIII (England) and Ivan IV (Russia).  

It was very important for the king or the tsar to have a son as an heir. But we can see difference between these two countries: Russia of the 10^th century was ruled by Princess Olga, when England had never been ruled by a woman. Unfortunately, in spite of this fact the society of the 16^th century couldn’t imagine a woman on the throne. For people it was an established stereotype of a man as a head of the state. Then their stereotype had been broken after the reins of Queen Elizabeth I in England and Empress Catherine I in Russia.

In that time a man was a head of the family, who worked, made crucial decisions, chose rich husbands with high social status for their daughters with the purpose of achievement of the best life and found well-paid jobs for sons to raise a status of the family.

In our country people had special old traditions: sing national songs with their visitors, dance, play musical instruments and have feasts with skomorokhs. In England dinners with guests were not so sincere, they were more intelligent with playing classical musical instruments, balls and polite conversations.  

The main difference between England and Russia of the 16^th century was religion, which influenced a lot of customs, traditions and views of people. Englishmen had the Catholic church, and the king was under the pressure of pope until Henry VIII had become the head of the government and the Catholic church. In that time Russian had the Orthodox church, and the tsar had the power over the government, but not the church.

This comparison of main sociofacts of the 16^th century in England and Russia helps us to see the difference of development of these powerful countries and understand the influence of traditions and customs of that time to our today’s life. It is the same as in 16^th century in many cases. In England we can see the royal family and the Catholic church, when in Russia we have presidents, who all are men, and the Orthodox church.   

After all we compared artifacts of England and Russia of the 16^th century. By the influence of two powerful leaders a lot of cultural things were similar in these countries of that time.

Portraits of kings and rich people help us to bring much information about artifacts of the 16^th century. We saw luxurious jewellery, symbols of power and splendid costumes of kings and their subjects. Indeed, silver, copper and tin tableware was very popular.

Moreover, a lot of people lived in two-storeyed houses, but in Russia people preferred wood to stone, when in England it was quiet on the contrary.

One of the most important artifacts was books. The members of a British royal family in their marvelous castle have impressive libraries with a huge amount of books with amazing drawn illustrations. The same picture we can see in Alexandrov Kremlin, where the tsar kept priceless books, a lot of which were written by monks and had old leather covers.

In conclusion, we want to concentrate student’s attention that it was not a huge amount of differences between life in England and Russia in the 16^th century according to the film “The Other Boleyn Girl”. After our analysis we understood that two main distinctions are religion and mentality. Today we can notice changes in these countries in many spheres (political, social, economical, ect.), which have made them completely different.     

Ann Aristova and Ann Lebihova