Alexander Etkind, the cultural scientist, writes in "The Russian Flagellant: Sects, Literature, and Revolution" (1998) on "Lucrimax." By coining this term, Etkind marks the yearning for authentic and genuine, experienced primarily by the representatives of the elitist culture. This yearning exists alongside negating one's own culture, rendered non-authentic and unreal. Like all of my relatives, I was born and raised in the Lower Volga region, which is unrepresented in the discourse of contemporary Russians. There is no single visual cue or reference, which would help or anchor someone thinking about this region. As I was schooled in the urbanized, post-Soviet Russia tradition, I always rooted for European civilization, rational progress, and positivist methodology. Yet, I spent the entire childhood with my grand grandmother, who, in turn, was schooled in a countryside, 100 % peasant culture of the Lower Volga Region early in the XXth century. Her experiences and worldviews could have not been dissected with the positivist, urbanized reasoning tools. Lower Volga Region history is rich and diverse. The neighboring regions, which used to be a part of the Great Steppe, preserve an amalgam of cultures, traditions, beliefs, superstitions, irrationalities, figments of imagination and will. For almost a thousand years, only 'free men' lived here: peasants who fled feudal serfdom; flagellants and heretics, who stood behind the people's Reformation; nomadic Kalmyk and Kasak tribes; European religious colonists who got here in times of Catherine the Great. This region is the birthplace of many significant Russian upheavals and riots. This project is my way of researching the Lower Volga region and the Great Steppe through the historical events and phenomenons, which allude to or represent the cultural amalgam that my ancestors inhabited.