Buza
Combat system tied to G. N. Bazlov's Tver group and the Russian Style movement of the 1990s, which appeals to Russian folk tradition.
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Organisation & Competition
What the style is built from
Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
About Buza
Buza is a combat system tied to G. N. Bazlov's Tver group and to the Russian Style movement of the 1990s, which appeals to folk tradition. Junghanns (2006) places the Buza group in this movement for reviving traditional East Slavic fighting practices, and Lapshin (2014) classes Bazlov's Russky rukopashny boy Buza among the neotraditionalist systems alongside those of Golitsyn and Kadochnikov, in which, in his view, the experience of various traditions is blended and complemented. We have not found independent ethnographic evidence of buza as a folk tradition in the sources.
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According to English Wikipedia, which draws on the school's website, it is a Russian folk unarmed fight in the form of a men's dance combat with spinning kicks and sweeps, similar to the tropak and hopak, linked to the Novgorod Slavs and widespread in the Tver, Novgorod, Vologda and Pskov Oblasts. Chistyakov (2016) cites only Bazlov's web texts and gives lomaniye, otherwise also buza, as a mandatory element of the combat ball with kulachny boy techniques. Junghanns judges the movement's reconstructions of old fighting practices to be speculative and writes that their authors usually do not carry out source criticism. Radio Svoboda (2004) introduced Bazlov, a candidate of historical sciences from Tver, as a master of buza, and English Wikipedia states that he revived buza in the 1990s. We have not found the year of origin in the sources. According to Lapshin, organizations of this type have operated since the early 1990s mainly in Moscow and in the Moscow and Tver Oblasts. We have not found competition rules or a federation for buza.
History
Junghanns (2006) places the Tver group Buza, led by G. N. Bazlov, in the Russian Style movement, which arose in Russia in the nineties as a movement for the revival of traditional East Slavic martial practices. Lapshin (2014) classes Bazlov's Russkiy rukopashny boy Buza, published as a book in Moscow in 2006, among the neotraditionalist systems alongside those of Golitsyn and Kadochnikov, and writes that in them the experience of various traditions is mixed and complemented. According to him, some elements, such as the combat staff, are adapted for the present day in the system. Radio Svoboda (2004) presented Bazlov, a candidate of historical sciences from Tver, as a master of buza who studies hand-to-hand combat as a scholarly subject. The ethnographic study by Aleksandrov (2010) cites him as a source on the artels of fighters in north-western Russia. According to Bazlov in Radio Svoboda, the golden age of Russian hand-to-hand combat was the eighteenth century, and the worst time was the period after 1945, when, in his words, a large part of the men were killed off and could not pass on the tradition.
Today
Borchenko (2009) lists the Tver Buza among traditional martial arts still practised in some regions, without further analysis. According to Lapshin (2014), the military-ethnographic organizations that include Buza have operated since the early 1990s mainly in Moscow, the Moscow Oblast and the Tver Oblast. Radio Svoboda (2004) reports that at the tenth festival of traditional male culture, Dmitriev Day, in Yekaterinburg, most of the fighters seriously practised Buza, and Bazlov supervised compliance with the rules. The UNESCO ICM page (2020), which draws on Crudelli (2008) and is not a UNESCO inscription, describes Buza as a Russian combat system in which spectators stand in a circle and the fight takes place in the middle to traditional music. It names only one organization, The Center of Russian Traditional Martial Art (BUZA). We have not found a federation or union for Buza in the sources.
Did you know
Junghanns (2006) interprets the Russian Style movement through the Hobsbawm and Ranger concept of invented traditions and writes that Russian stylists invented their special mysteries precisely as the movement's martial culture. The bibliography of an article in the journal Gramota (2014) cites Bazlov's text Trostka on the combat staff in the journal Russkaya Provintsiya from 1997, and Lapshin (2014) mentions his online text Boevaya Trost from 2014. According to the music portal NEWSmuz (2015), the clip of the St Petersburg band Otava Yo with chastushki features members of the artel of Russian fist fighting Buza from Cherepovets and was shot over three days in the Leningrad Oblast. Bazlov claims in Radio Svoboda (2004) that Potemkin lost an eye in a kulachny boy duel with Aleksey Orlov.
Frequently asked questions
Who revived buza?
Junghanns (2006) and Lapshin (2014) both link buza to G. N. Bazlov's Tver group, and according to English Wikipedia Bazlov revived it in the 1990s.
Is buza a documented folk tradition?
We have not found independent ethnographic evidence of buza as a folk tradition in the sources. Junghanns (2006) judges reconstructions of old fighting practices in the Russian Style movement to be speculative.
Does buza have a dance character?
According to English Wikipedia, which draws on the school's website, buza appears as a men's dance combat with spinning kicks and sweeps and resembles the tropak and hopak.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.