There is in the collection of the Pushkin Museum a photograph of 1898, taken in the Bogorodsky District of Moscow Governorate by Dr Alexander Zhivago, entitled "Three Peasant Women. Ryazan Slanting-Bellies"

There is in the collection of the Pushkin Museum a photograph of 1898, taken in the Bogorodsky District of Moscow Governorate by Dr Alexander Zhivago, entitled "Three Peasant Women. Ryazan Slanting-Bellies".

What on earth are these slanting-bellies?

Saltykov-Shchedrin writes of the slanting-bellies in "The History of a Town", listing them alongside other "tribes":

Around the Blockheads there lived a multitude of independent tribes, but only the most remarkable of them have been named by the chronicler, namely: the Walrus-eaters, the Onion-eaters, the Gruel-eaters, the Cranberry-men, the Bedlamites, the Spinning Beans, the Frog-men, the Bast-shoe-men, the Black-palates, the Chisellers, the Broken Heads, the Blind-born, the Blubber-lips, the Flap-ears, the Slanting-bellies, the Vendace-men, the Corner-men, the Hash-men and the Sleeve-wavers.

The mysterious old nicknames of Russian townsfolk are deciphered by the ethnographer Ivan Sakharov, who explains that the "walrus-eaters" were the people of Arkhangelsk, the "gruel-eaters" and "chisellers" the Novgorodians, the "cranberry-men" the people of Vladimir, the "bedlamites" those of Bryansk, the "spinning beans" those of Murom, the "frog-men" those of Dmitrov, the "bast-shoe-men" those of Klin, the "black-palates" those of Kolomna, the "broken heads" those of Oryol, the "blind-born" those of Poshekhonye, the "flap-ears" those of Rostov, the "slanting-bellies" those of Ryazan, the "vendace-men" those of Tver, the "corner-men" those of Kholmogory, and the "sleeve-wavers" those of Chukhloma.

According to Vladimir Dahl and Ivan Sakharov, the Ryazan nickname of slanting-bellies is connected with an ancient Ryazan habit of carrying an axe tucked into the belt, which from a distance made the wearer's belly seem lopsided. Dahl adds that so many peasants in Ryazan carried axes because the region was famed for its carpentry. Sakharov suggests that the reason lay in the dangerous frontier road, ever threatened by brigands, which obliged men always to keep an axe at the belt.