# общность быта



## CrownDweller

социальные группы, связанные общностью быта

общность быта : shared fate?, common lifestyle?, common everyday challenges?, common experience?

I get the idea that the emphasis here is on shared everyday challenges and experiences. Am I right?


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## Rosett

What exactly you are looking for? How to explain общность быта in English terms?


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## CrownDweller

I want to know what общность быта is exactly to begin with. GT says "community life", which seems a bit far off. Although a "communal lifestyle" would suit me because it comes from an quasi-scientific ironic text and in this context that would sound funny, but I'm afraid it doesn't apply either. I feel that общность быта covers all translations I listed above, so yes, I'm looking for an English expression that just sums it all up, if one exists. What I would like to know in particular is whether it has an active connotation, a matter of choice (lifestyle) or a passive one, a situation one happens to find oneself in (existence), or maybe both at the same time. I've noticed that it's a fairly common Russian expression, like in this example, where it too can be interpreted either way:

Задание 0 № 1416. Молодёжь как социальную группу отличает(-ют)

1) общность быта

2) единство политических взглядов

3) однородность, отсутствие дифференциации

4) сходные черты сознания и поведения


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## rusita preciosa

Without a clear context I am not 100% clear what that общность быта is, but of all options you offered in your two posts I would vote for shared lifestyle or common everyday life.


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## Rosett

"Общность быта" is a sort of awkward ideological expression invented apropos by illiterate Soviet ideologists in order to support the Moral Code. It refers to a uniformed lifestyle in families and in closely knit communities, that would normally share common amenities, family and social values. Israeli kibbutz is one of the greatest implementations of "общность быта".


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## CrownDweller

Now I get it. Thanks.


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## Q-cumber

Rosett said:


> "Общность быта" is a sort of awkward ideological expression invented apropos by illiterate Soviet ideologists in order to support the Moral Code. It refers to a uniformed lifestyle in families and in closely knit communities, that would normally share common amenities, family and social values. Israeli kibbutz is one of the greatest implementations of "общность быта".


Quite a strange and misleading  comment.


CrownDweller said:


> I want to know what общность быта is exactly to begin with. GT says "community life", which seems a bit far off. Although a "communal lifestyle" would suit me because it comes from an quasi-scientific ironic text and in this context that would sound funny, but I'm afraid it doesn't apply either. I feel that общность быта covers all translations I listed above, so yes, I'm looking for an English expression that just sums it all up, if one exists. What I would like to know in particular is whether it has an active connotation, a matter of choice (lifestyle) or a passive one, a situation one happens to find oneself in (existence), or maybe both at the same time. I've noticed that it's a fairly common Russian expression, like in this example, where it too can be interpreted either way:
> 
> Задание 0 № 1416. Молодёжь как социальную группу отличает(-ют)
> 
> 1) общность быта
> 
> 2) единство политических взглядов
> 
> 3) однородность, отсутствие дифференциации
> 
> 4) сходные черты сознания и поведения


This is a question from a social studies (обществознание) practice test. You need to choose one correct answer from the given variants. Please note that "общность быта" isn't the right answer (I think # 4 is), and it can be attributed as ironic. "Общность быта" term suggests some co-residence, shared housework duties, shared consumption and so on. So the most common sample of a social group with "общность быта" would be a family. Another samples: a student hostel (some) or an Izraeli kibbutz, indeed.


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## Ben Jamin

It seems to me that the idea of "быт" is older than the Soviet state, it was invented by Karl Marx himself.
The famous quotation "Existence determines the consciousness" comes from Marx.
I was once fed with the same Marxist ideology, where "быт" was an incredibly general term that could be renderes by "existence". Marxists substituted then anything that suited them while using this in their writing.
So "общность быта" can be translated as "the fact of common existence", and may be "fate" is the closest to the intended meaning.


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## Ben Jamin

Here is Marx in original: "Es ist nicht das Bewusstsein der Menschen, das ihr Sein, sondern umgekehrt ihr gesellschaftliches Sein, das ihr Bewusstsein bestimmt."
I don't know if the following translation to Russian is correct "Не сознание людей определяет их бытие, а, наоборот, их общественное бытие определяет их сознание."


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## rusita preciosa

Ben Jamin said:


> Here is Marx in original: "Es ist nicht das Bewusstsein der Menschen, das ihr Sein, sondern umgekehrt ihr gesellschaftliches Sein, das ihr Bewusstsein bestimmt."
> I don't know if the following translation to Russian is correct "Не сознание людей определяет их бытие, а, наоборот, их общественное бытие определяет их сознание."


I doubt Karl Marx invented the term быт; besides, бытие and быт in Russian are two different words. In general terms, быт is everyday life / lifestyle whereas бытие is a more general term, closer to "existence".


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## Ben Jamin

rusita preciosa said:


> I doubt Karl Marx invented the term быт; besides, бытие and быт in Russian are two different words. In general terms, быт is everyday life / lifestyle whereas бытие is a more general term, closer to "existence".


I never claimed that. It was only in the context of political meaning of the word that I mentioned Marx.


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## Awwal12

Ben Jamin said:


> I never claimed that. It was only in the context of political meaning of the word that I mentioned Marx.


But it isn't even the same word, is it?  *Быт* is a native Russian word, while *бытие* is a Church Slavonic loan, just like the great part of Russian scientific terminology (cf. original Russian *бытьё* - the third similar-looking word, by the way).
Anyway, I too find Rosett's statement pretty strange.


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## CrownDweller

I'll settle for "communal lifestyle" then, which has a nice ideological ring to it, very well-suited for use in an ironic context. We're talking about hypothetical organisms here, which spend their younger years in closely-knit groups with shared responsibilities, very much the idea of a "commune".


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## Cheburator

"общность быта" sounds like a rather awkward  phrase nowadays. I would understand it as "the same lifestyle", "similar lifestyles", but some inner feeling tells me that it's what Q-cumber said: "some co-residence, shared housework duties, shared consumption and so on". I doubt you can ever hear this prhase in everyday speech, unless you are teaching or studying Social Studies, and if you're studying, I'm sure it's one of the terms students have a hard time to learn the meaning of and then, after the final test, they are happy to forget it!


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## Rosett

CrownDweller said:


> I'll settle for "communal lifestyle" then, which has a nice ideological ring to it, very well-suited for use in an ironic context. We're talking about hypothetical organisms here, which spend their younger years in closely-knit groups with shared responsibilities, very much the idea of a "commune".


"Communal lifestyle" as a very good rendering of "общность быта" is well fit with student dorms and work camps as an obvious choice, but is also strictly enforced in prisons, in gulag-style work camps, and in summer camps for kids.


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## CrownDweller

Rosett said:


> "Communal lifestyle" as a very good rendering of "общность быта" is well fit with student dorms and work camps as an obvious choice, but is also strictly enforced in prisons, in gulag-style work camps, and in summer camps for kids.



And monasteries of course, which were after all the first "communes" in Europe. The creatures in question have a natural enemy, the zombie otters, which presumably force them to live in tightly packed communities, although this isn't mentioned explicitly. What I wanted to know is whether the emphasis is on the fact that they are forced to live in groups, or on the life in groups as such. I now understand it's the latter. If you want to learn more about zombie otters and their ways, look for the Великая Книга Ила.


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## Awwal12

Maybe we just should translate it as "communal ties", I am not sure. The Russian phrase doesn't really imply a lot, just that they are somehow connected by some common parts and/or features of their everyday life. And it looks like a normal scientific language to me, maybe with a slight scent of the old Marxism-based Soviet scholarship, but nevertheless; I wouldn't call that  "an ideological subtext".

While "быт" already has a vague enough meaning  in Russian, "общность быта" could mean many different things, and to know the exact meaning, we should either ask the author or have a great share of context.


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## Sobakus

CrownDweller said:


> What I wanted to know is whether the emphasis is on the fact that they are forced to live in groups, or on the life in groups as such.


I don't think it has anything to do with groups, to be honest. Общность is "commonality", but having a "commonality of the way of living" doesn't entail living in a community. If anything, it's the other way around.


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## CrownDweller

rusita preciosa said:


> Without a clear context I am not 100% clear what that общность быта is, but of all options you offered in your two posts I would vote for shared lifestyle or common everyday life.



To me it seems that общность быта is an example par excellence of a Russian expression that rather than to rely on much context, pulls an enormous amount of context into the narrative. Much like those socio-economic notions from the USSR like for example cпособ производства, which require a thorough knowledge of Communist ideology to be anywhere near understood, and even that's only half the story, since in the USSR actual attempts were made to put these ideas into practice, and these attempts then had different effects on the people who were subjected to these experiments, some positive, others very negative, depending on how they were implemented and which side the subject(s) in question happened to be on. So behind just a few words lies an entire world of meaning and associations which for an outsider (a westerner for example, but not necessarily) are practically impossible to grasp, while to native Russians the full meaning might be instantly clear even without much context, apart from perhaps a general background of irony or anger. And the use of a phrase like общность быта appears to point back even further than the USSR, its true meaning seems deeply rooted in the eastern idea of collectivism as opposed to western individualism, but I have to admit that I'm on thin ice there. Just a hunch.


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## CrownDweller

Sobakus said:


> I don't think it has anything to do with groups, to be honest. Общность is "commonality", but having a "commonality of the way of living" doesn't entail living in a community. If anything, it's the other way around.



If you enter общность быта into a GGL search form, the vast majority of the results refer to the "семья как социальная группа", so it does appear to apply to people living in groups, although not necessarily people who have chosen to live in the group in question.

Here's a very interesting sentence from Тысячелетие вокруг Каспия by Лев Гумилев:

"Хазар, барсилов, тюркютов, телесцев, печенегов связывала не общность быта, нравов, культуры и языка, а нечто другое: общность исторической судьбы: наличие общих врагов и единство политических задач, основной из которых было стремление не погибнуть, а уцелеть от агрессий халифата Омейядов."

Here's общность быта appears to refer to what is supposed to be a positive, voluntary and "natural" form of cooperation, as opposed to one which is merely enforced by external circumstances. It does seem like a pretty condescending view btw.


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## Sobakus

CrownDweller said:


> If you enter общность быта into a GGL search form, the vast majority of the results refer to the "семья как социальная группа", so it does appear to apply to people living in groups, although not necessarily people who have chosen to live in the group in question.
> 
> Here's a very interesting sentence from Тысячелетие вокруг Каспия by Лев Гумилев:
> 
> "Хазар, барсилов, тюркютов, телесцев, печенегов связывала не общность быта, нравов, культуры и языка, а нечто другое: общность исторической судьбы: наличие общих врагов и единство политических задач, основной из которых было стремление не погибнуть, а уцелеть от агрессий халифата Омейядов."
> 
> Here's общность быта appears to refer to what is supposed to be a positive, voluntary and "natural" form of cooperation, as opposed to one which is merely enforced by external circumstances. It does seem like a pretty condescending view btw.


From the bottom of my heart, I can't even begin to see your interpretation in this fragment; all it says to me is "they had a common lifestyle" (semi-nomad presumably). I don't think these peoples even belonged to any common permanent political entity (just parts of the various alliances and khaganates that replaced each other), let alone lived together. The only hint at cooperation comes towards the end of the sentence, and it's being *contrasted* with «общность быта, нравов, культуры etc».

And take those other words in that phrase: «общность культуры/нравов/языка» means just that – "having a common culture/moral values/language". Would you say they mean "having a group or cooperative language" instead?

The only noun in Russian that can theoretically result in this meaning is _обще́ственность _"the quality of being public, social or communal", from _обще́ственный_ "public, social, communal"_. Общность_ "the quality of being common" is formed from _о́бщий _"common".

As for its use to refer to the living conditions of a family, as I said earlier living together presupposes having a common way of life – but not vice versa.

Edit #bignumber: there's also _общи́нный,_ from _общи́на _"community, esp. a farming/gathering one; a village; a commune", so «общинный быт» would mean "traditional village community lifestyle".


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## CrownDweller

Sobakus said:


> From the bottom of my heart, I can't even begin to see your interpretation in this fragment; all it says to me is "they had a common lifestyle" (semi-nomad presumably). I don't think these peoples even belonged to any common permanent political entity (just parts of the various alliances and khaganates that replaced each other), let alone lived together. The only hint at cooperation comes towards the end of the sentence, and it's being *contrasted* with «общность быта, нравов, культуры etc».
> 
> And take those other words in that phrase: «общность культуры/нравов/языка» means just that – "having a common culture/moral values/language". Would you say they mean "having a group or cooperative language" instead?
> 
> The only noun in Russian that can theoretically result in this meaning is _обще́ственность _"the quality of being public, social or communal", from _обще́ственный_ "public, social, communal"_. Общность_ "the quality of being common" is formed from _о́бщий _"common".
> 
> As for its use to refer to the living conditions of a family, as I said earlier living together presupposes having a common way of life – but not vice versa.
> 
> Edit #bignumber: there's also _общи́нный,_ from _общи́на _"community, esp. a farming/gathering one; a village; a commune", so «общинный быт» would mean "traditional village community lifestyle".



You're right, I misinterpreted the author's point. If you read the entire paragraph this sentence comes from (which I didn't), he's actually full of praise for the rather loose alliance, pointing out that it was the very fact that their lifestyles differed so much from each other that induced a degree of mutual religious and cultural tolerance. My wrong.

I do see the neutral "common lifestyle" here, but I still get the impression that общность быта is more of a fixed expression than for example общность языка, that's what lead me to think that it has, or can have, certain connotations.


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## CrownDweller

Here's some background information I (finally) found:

*Переход в новое качество* — та планка, которую необходимо взять движению, чтобы не раствориться или не отвердеть в мемориальной форме дальнейшего существования, отжив 25-летний цикл. Для этого ему необходимо занять социально-экономическую нишу в общественном разделении труда. Если общество признает за движением выполнение соответствующих функций, то оно становится явлением совершенно другого порядка. Л. Гумилёв называет подобную фазу генезиса общества конвиксией и определяет конвиксию, как «*общность быта*». До конвиксий доросли, из последних примеров, первопроходцы-интернетовцы. FIDO-net, неформальное братство программистов (движение за «Open Source» с Линуксом Торвальдсом, Ричардом Столлменом и др.), синтезировали движение энтузиастов Интернета — как пользователей, так и создателей. Первые в России и на Украине фирмы ISP-провайдеры учреждены фидошниками и хакерами, после чего в генезисе движения принимали участие уже и коммерческие структуры. Затем они или их потомки, в прямом и переносном (клубном) смысле, стали веб-мастерами, авторами контента, блоггерами, уверенно заняли нишу в общественной коммуникации, явно перешли от «*общности судьбы*» к «*общности бытия*» и распространили это бытие в общественной ткани.

*Конвиксия* — в Пассионарной теории этногенеза Л.Гумилёва: группа людей с однохарактерным бытом, существующая в течение нескольких поколений [2]. Таким образом, традиции, стиль жизни, мировосприятие некоторой страты утверждается в общественной ткани, становится нормой. Примеры конвиксий — сельские общины, средневековые кварталы ремесленников, мелкие племена. В современной жизни — богема (художники, музыканты, шоу-бизнес), номенклатура, блатная субкультура, и профессиональные страты: военные, спорт, шоу-бизнес.

Source altruism.ru

It's the distinction between «общности судьбы» and «общности бытия» that made me ask the question in the first place. My initial hunch about "communal" sounding too deliberate and heavy was indeed correct, and "common fate" is too light and uncommitted. It's something in between, which makes it a very elusive notion indeed!


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## rusita preciosa

Hi CrownDweller,

Seems like you really badly want to assign some kind of grand meaning to *общность быта, *but it just doesn't work:  *быт *(not to be confused with *бытиe*) just means lifestyle / everyday life / daily routines, no more than that.


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## CrownDweller

Rosett said:


> "Общность быта" is a sort of awkward ideological expression invented apropos by illiterate Soviet ideologists in order to support the Moral Code. It refers to a uniformed lifestyle in families and in closely knit communities, that would normally share common amenities, family and social values. Israeli kibbutz is one of the greatest implementations of "общность быта".



The phrase "общность быта" was apparently coined by Soviet historian/anthropologist Lev Gumilev, who is considered a bit of a pseudo-scientist, if not a complete fraud. It's true, in the USSR the line between science and automatic writing could be rather thin. So I'm going to support you on that one.

Based on its usage in the various examples I've seen, I've come to the conclusion that the most general and correct translation is "common habits". If that sounds a bit vague and non-specific, that's precisely what makes it correct and generally applicable.


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## Q-cumber

As long as we're discussing the question from the Social Studies Practice Test, the Gumilov's theory isn't involved here.

Here below is a quote from a Social Studies textbook:


> *Семья. Виды и функции семьи.*
> 
> * Семья* — это объединение людей, основанное на браке и кровном родстве, связанное общностью быта и взаимной ответственностью.
> _ Виды семьи и её функции:_
> *Виды семьи:*
> 
> Патриархальная
> Нуклеарная (семья состоящая из двух поколений)
> Партнерского (демократического) типа
> *Функции семьи:*
> 
> Репродуктивная (воспроизводство населения)
> Социализация личности ребенка
> Социально - статусная функция
> Защитная функция
> Функция эмоционального удовлетворения
> Экономическая функция


I think the meaning of "общность быта" is pretty clear from the context. Again, this term isn't related to "молодёжь". It was just one of the wrong variants of answers to the test question. The term has nothing to do with ideology, USSR, etc.


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## CrownDweller

Q-cumber said:


> As long as we're discussing the question from the Social Studies Practice Test, the Gumilov's theory isn't involved here.
> 
> Here below is a quote from a Social Studies textbook:
> 
> I think the meaning of "общность быта" is pretty clear from the context. Again, this term isn't related to "молодёжь". It was just one of the wrong variants of answers to the test question. The term has nothing to do with ideology, USSR, etc.



I do see your point, as well as the one made by rosita preciosa I have to add. In this case I would simply translate it as "a life together" or "living under the same roof". Just sharing an everyday existence. I think I got put off balance by the example of the programmers on fidonet. Now that I look at it again I wonder whether it's even a valid point they're making. Apart from the fact that they present  the phrase as a fixed expression apparently invented by Gumilov for his own specific purposes, they seem to be using it wrongly as well. In their case there's no such thing as living under a single roof or even of a common lifestyle (such groups tend to consist of people from many different walks of life). What brought them together were a common activity and a shared interest in technology. It looks like a bit of a forced effort to project Gumilov's theories onto the development of their own role in society.

Thanks for the feedback.


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## CrownDweller

rusita preciosa said:


> Hi CrownDweller,
> 
> Seems like you really badly want to assign some kind of grand meaning to *общность быта, *but it just doesn't work:  *быт *(not to be confused with *бытиe*) just means lifestyle / everyday life / daily routines, no more than that.



OK. I get it.


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