Dividing My Time

Long Live The Imperials!

As excitement over this month’s Royal Wedding reaches fever pitch, it seems appropriate for Russia to seriously consider a strategic return to monarchy.  There are those who will feel that this is an incredibly complicated and possibly prohibitively expensive move, but it is clear to me that monarchy is not only readily affordable for Russia but, properly constituted, could go a long way to mitigating a number of Russia’s current issues.  Sure, it’s expensive, but surely not as expensive as the Sochi Olympics and in every way imaginable a far superior long-term investment.  I won’t reveal which of the candidates I think should wear the Cap of Monomakh (not in this month’s column anyway), but I will pose this question: what is a Stabilization Fund for if not to create stability, and the best way to do that is to get a crowd I’m calling “The Imperials” back to work as Heads of State in Russia.  

Here’s why:

1.  Russia Already Functions Like a Monarchy:  It’s hard to impose hereditary monarchy on countries that are used to hundreds of years of representational government, but, happily, Russia doesn’t have that problem.    The mindset is in place and dare one say it, primed, for a seamless return to Tsar Alexander III’s trifecta of “Autocracy, Orthodoxy, and Nationalism.”  The Church, traditionally a stalwart prop of monarchy, would be the first to sign up and lend the new monarch their not inconsiderable influence and support to get the populace on board. It’s a no brainer.

2.  Russia Has the Equipment:  Russia has all it needs in terms of regalia: crowns, orbs, scepters, thrones, carriages, palaces, crown jewels, and a coat of arms. No additional expense necessary. None of what the “prschiki” in Russia call, “rebrendinguh.” Everything is sitting tucked up in the Diamond Fund, no doubt more than ready for an airing.   The existing real estate just needs minor renovations such as indoor plumbing and it will be all set for the Imperials to move right in.

3.  Monarchy Is Great Public Relations: It goes without saying that the Imperials would do wonders for Russia’s PR, both at home and abroad.  At home, they could handle things like charitable causes: visit factories, schools, and open sports events.  This would free up the people who run the government to run it, and not phaff about on Channel 1.  Abroad, the Imperials could spearhead things like bids for (more) major global sporting events. Or, better still, they could just have the occasional wedding at home, which would mean Russia wouldn’t need any major sporting events in the first place.  Monarchy, of course, is to tourism what honey is to flies, so more money from that.  And let’s face it while the KGB/FSB is an admirable school of management for many aspects of government, PR isn’t one of them.  Finally, I for one feel that Russia deserves something a little bit more up market in terms of a cultural ambassador than Roman Abramovich or Xenia Sobchak.

4.  More Home Games: The Court/The Season:  An acute problem with Russian society today is that everyone wants to go and have his or her fun elsewhere.  Monarchy could change all that.   The Imperials would foster and encourage fun at home, by creating a social calendar of events in Russia and thereby an axis around which the socially ambitious would revolve.  They could make unlikely backwaters fashionable, just as Prince Albert did for Scotland.  Imagine boating week in Volgograd, winter sports in Krasnodar, and the elk-shooting season in Omsk.   The Imperials would make it chic to stay home, just as HM The Queen does.   All those billions of rubles that normally go to Courchevel and St. Tropez flowing into the domestic coffers to say nothing of the more middle class Middletonski wannabes trawling for Russian Grand Dukes.

5.  Raising the Taste and Quality Bar:  Royalty has an excellent track record at fusing class and brass and the Imperials could be put to very good use disseminating this new mindset in Russia, which today is rather more inclined towards the unfortunate twinning of brash and cash.  The Imperials would lower the heels and get the jewelry off the men: two consummations devoutly to be wished.  Imperial Warrants could motivate production of high quality goods such as Faberge Eggs, which are so much prettier than cloud computing.

6.  A Shot in the Arm To the Military:  Monarchy is always a boon for the military, the only profession considered suitable for the male members of any Imperial dynasty.   Once the Imperials take over, the army will become a competitive profession as smart regiments such as the Semenyovsky and Preobrazhensky are reconstituted.  Families will stop paying money to keep their sons out, and start paying money to get their sons in.  Total rehabilitation. 

7.  Solves the Nagging Belarus Problem:  Belarus would be immediately incorporated into the newly constituted Russian Empire and the Heir to the Russian throne would be titled the Tsarevich and Grand Duke of Minsk.   

If they hurry, the Imperials could get some seats in the Abbey this month.  What better time to say, as the Chuds, the Krivichians, and Slavs did to the people of Varangian Rus in 860 A.D.:  “Our whole land is great and rich, but there is no order in it.  Come to rule and reign over us.”

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A version of this article first appeared in "Russia Beyond the Headlines" on April 20, 2011 and an online version of this can be found here.

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Hey there readers!  What's your take on monarchy in Russia?  Good idea?  Terrible idea?  What are your plans for Friday's nuptials?  Are you a "stay up all night and have Coronation Chicken for breakfast" type or "what wedding?" grinch?  I bet you can guess which your intrepid blogger is!  Enjoy the day!

The Easter Tin Hunt

 

Orthodox Easter cuisine in Russia keeps pace with the liturgy’s potent symbols of resurrection, the triumph of light over darkness, and the return of spring.     During Holy Week, Russians bake a light, dry traditional Easter bread, called kulich, and color and decorate hard-boiled eggs, which sadly fewer people these days seem to do in the traditional manner with the skin of yellow onions boiled in water.  Orthodox Christians bring their eggs and kulich to their parish church for a Pascal blessing.  Together with a sweet, rich, creamy curd cheese mold, spiked with spices, candied fruit, and citrus zest called paskha, these are the fundamentals of the Easter meal, right after the lengthy service, which culminates in the joyful Easter greeting “Xhristos Voskres!” or “The Lord Hath Risen!” to which the faithful respond, “He is Risen Indeed!” In Church Slavonic, this phrase is rendered by the Cyrillic letters “XB,” a motif which appears on eggs, kulich, and the paskha.

I remember my first Russian Easter as a frantic hunt, not for eggs and chocolate, but for bake ware.  Although I have a sizable arsenal of pots, pans, pie and tart dishes, and other baking paraphernalia, none of them is suitable for the Easter confections.  I wanted to do the thing properly: kulich is tall and cylindrical with a slightly puffy mushroom-like cap on top.   Paskha is traditionally prepared in a special trapezoidal mold called a pasochnitsa decorated with elaborate “XBs” and Orthodox Crosses on each panel so that the chilled mold retains the imprint of these seasonal decorations. 

In Russia, sourcing things never comes quite as easily as it does in the rest of the world.  Figuring the pasochnitsa would be the harder of the two to run to ground, I started my search there.   I prowled supermarkets and specialty kitchen stores to no avail.   I checked the farmer’s markets and found nothing but got lucky with some local knowledge.  Since the primary ingredients of paskha are cream, curd cheese, or “tvorog,” eggs, and butter, I threw myself on the mercy of the rosy-cheeked ladies who peddle these items at the market.  

“Try the Churches,” they advised, leaving me wondering why I hadn’t thought of that simple solution.  I’d got the scent, and after a slight detour to the three churches in my neighborhood and the Danilovsky Monastery gift shop, I headed strait towards the source:  the Sofrino Ecclesiastical Store in Central Moscow where you can buy anything and everything having to do with the Russian Orthodox Church from a slim 2 ruble candle to a 13 million ruble marble baptismal font.  There was one pasochnitsa there and I held my breath as four priests cut in line in front of me (apparently they can) to stock up on holy water and wedding crowns, but I was in luck, and, precious pasochnitsa in hand, I literally skipped down the stairs and out into the.

The kulich tin proved even more elusive.  The church store didn’t have them.  I trawled up and down the aisles of department stores and supermarkets.  I found tube pans and charlotte moulds, both of which were too short, and baba cups, which were the right shape, but too small.  Back at home, I burst into tears of frustration.

“What’s wrong?” asked my Russian husband.  Hiccupping slightly, I explained that, thanks to my lack of a kulich tin Easter would be ruined – completely ruined.  To my surprise, he burst out laughing.  He disappeared into the pantry, still chuckling, then emerged with four metal tins of various sizes, which held tomatoes, coffee, beans, and pickled mushrooms.  

“Kulich tins,” he said.    I dried my eyes and let out a chuckle of my own.

“Kulich tins, indeed.”

Paskha:

Paskha is the tangible proof that Lent has ended, combining, as it does, all the forbidden foods in one delicious confection.  The smooth and rich creaminess of paskha is a perfect foil to the drier kulich, and one without the other doesn’t seem to make any sense.

Don’t let the lack of a traditional pasochnitsa deter you from trying this recipe.  An agnostic but serviceable mold of any kind will do the job.

Ingredients:

750 grams of full fat tvorog (curd cheese)

500 gms of caster sugar

5 egg yolks

450 ml of heavy whipping cream

500 grms of sweet butter

2 cups of chopped candied fruit and peel

2 Tbl of vanilla extract  

3 Tbls of a sweet liqueur such as Cointreau or Grand Marnier

Directions:

1. Whip the egg yolks together until slightly thickened.  Add the sugar and beat until smooth.

2. Cream the butter in a separate container and then add to the egg yolks and sugar.

3. Drain the curd cheese through a fine sieve, and then mix it well into the butter, sugar and egg yolk mixture until smooth.

4. Add the cream, vanilla and liqueur and mix until smooth.

5. Fold in one cup of the candied fruit and peel, 

6. Line a mold with plastic wrap or cheesecloth.  Pour the mixture into the mold, and then weight the top with a pot lid or flat plate and a heavy weight such.  

7. Chill at least 12 hours in the refrigerator.

8. Unmold the paskha and decorate with the remainder of the candied fruit and peel.  Keep cool until serving.

Kulich

Ingredients

2 packages of active dry yeast

1,5 liters dry flour + 1 tablespoon

¾ teaspoon of salt

350 ml of caster sugar + 1 tablespoon

5 large egg yolks at room temperature

300 ml of whole milk, scalded and cooled to 50°C

225 grams of butter, melted and cooled to 45°C

2 large egg whites at room temperature, whipped to stiff peaks

6 strands of saffron dissolved in 2 tablespoons of rum

2 cup of candied fruit (I use a mix of raisins, candied ginger, dried cherries, candied orange peel)

1/3 cup of slivered blanched almonds

Extra butter

Glaze made of egg yolk, vegetable oil, and water

2 cups of icing (I used a confectioner sugar glaze)

Directions

1. Butter aluminum tins, then line the bottom and sides with buttered parchment paper.

2. Combine yeast, 6 Table of water, 1 tsp of sugar and flour in a bowl.  Cover and set to rise in a warm place with no breeze.

3. Beat the egg yolks and sugar together until combined, then vigorously for approximately 5 minutes.   When the mixture is thoroughly combined, add the milk, then flour and the salt.  Knead or mix for 2 minutes.

4. Add the proofed yeast, beating for 2 minutes to combine.  

5. Add the melted butter gradually, beating a moderate speed.  Let the dough rest for two minutes, and then test for elasticity.  If needed, add more flour.

6. Add the egg whites and saffron and rum mixture.  Once the dough is thoroughly combined, add one cup of the candied fruit.

7. Cover the dough to rise in a buttered bowl placed in a warm place until it has doubled in size (2-3 hours)

8. Knead the dough lightly a few times, then return it to the bowl and cover for another 2 hours.

9. Divide the dough between the aluminum tins so that the dough covers slightly more than ½ of the tin.  Retain 1 cup of the dough.  Cover and let rise another hour.

10. Preheat the oven to 180°C.  

11. Take the retained dough and form it into strips.  Place two strips across the top of the dough in each tin in the form of a cross.  This will enhance the top of the kulich.  

12. Glaze the tops of each tin and place in the preheated oven.  Cook for 15-20 minutes.  Then raise the temperature to 200°C.  Smaller tins will cook faster than larger ones.  Kulich is finished when a skewer inserted into it comes out clean.

13. The final step is a little local peasant wisdom that seems to work an extra bit of magic:  cover a soft bed pillow with a towel and gently place the kulich tin onto its side on the pillow.  Gently roll the tin back and forth over the pillow to ease the kulich out of the buttered tin.  Cool the kulich on its side on the pillow for at 40 minutes.  Then place it upright and frost with the glaze of your choice.  Use the remaining candied fruit and almonds to decorate the kulich in any way you wish!

Priyatnogo Appetita!

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A version of this article first appeared in Le Figaro in French under the title, "La Chasse au Moule" on April 19, 2011.   An online link to that publication may be found here.

 

Students' Day (Tatiana’s Day)/День студентов (Татьянин день): A Very Russian Toga Party

 “This year they drank out everything but the Moscow River, and only because it was frozen over!”

~Anton Chekhov (writing about Tatiana’s Day in the 19th Century.

Today is Tatiana’s Day!   January 25th (January 12th Old Style) is commemorates the death of the 3rd Century Christian martyr, St. Tatiana of Rome.  St. Tatiana was a pious young woman, who was brought up by her father as a Christian and became a deaconess of the fledgling sect in Rome, when it was still in hiding from the authorities.  She was captured and ordered to make a public renunciation of Christianity by making a sacrifice to the Roman deity, Apollo. Legend says that Tatiana prayed for deliverance, and an earthquake shook the ground, toppling and smashing the marble statue of Apollo.  The Romans then gouged Tatiana’s eyes out with a hook and threw her into a pit with a hungry lion.  The lion curled up at her feet and purred peacefully.  Ignoring all these really quite obvious signs that she knew what she was about, the Romans then beheaded her.

Tatiana and the day commemorating her death might have slipped unnoticed into the Church calendar as yet another saint’s day, but historical events took over.

On January 25 (January 12 Old Style), in 1755, Empress Elizabeth founded Russia’s first University: Moscow University, noting that: “Any good comes from an enlightened mind, and evil is eradicated thereby.”   Credit for founding the University goes to Mikhail Lomonosov, a prominent Academician and Professor of Chemistry, and the well-connected courtier I.I. Shuvalov, who served as the university’s first Curator.  Prominent alumni include writers Anton Chekhov and Ivan Turgenev, Nobel Laureate and Politian Mikhail Gorbachev, and the artist Vassily Kandinsky.

In the early years, the University offered a general course in Philosophy and liberal arts from which students went on to a concentrated course in one of three branches of study: law, medicine, or philosophy.  The University was housed for most of its history directly opposite Red Square, in the yellow and white classical buildings on Mokhovaya Street which today house the faculties of Journalism, Asian and African Studies and Law.   In 1949, construction began on the monumental new building of the University Complex in the Sparrow (Lenin) Hills, the largest of the “seven sisters” or “Stalin Wedding Cakes” high rises which are an integral part of the Moscow skyline. Until 1990, this was the tallest building in Europe, and until 2005, the tallest in Moscow.  In 1953, the doors opened for the first academic year.

Today, Moscow State University, or “MGU” is the largest University in Russia with over 40,000 students who study in 39 departments, under the tutalege of more than 10,000 professors.  Fees begin at € 5 900 per year which has to be the educational deal of the century.

The association with Saint Tatiana and students endures to this day, and all over Russia, January 25th or “Tatianin Deyn’” is considered “students’ day,” and marks the end of exams and beginning of the winter break.   Divine service is held in the Chapel of St. Tatiana, followed by speeches, prize giving, and then unfettered partying in the city streets, beginning with a traditional honey-based mead, and moving on to anything the students can get their hands on!  

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This post is part of The Stunt

Note that traditional celebrations for Tatiana's Day have been cancelled on Janaury 25, 2011 out of respect for the victims of the bomb blast at Domodedovo Airport which took place on Janaury 24, 2011.

Today is also The Day of the Naval Navigators!

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Dear Readers:

As you can see above, the traditional merriment that accompanies Tatiana Day have been cancelled out of respect for the victims of the bomb blast which took place last night at Domodedovo Airport.  Very fitting.   Thanks to all who e mailed and sent messages of concern.  Our friends and family are all fine, but our hearts go out to all those injured or killed in yesterday's tragic attack.

Today is also the “Day of the Naval Navigators,” which you won’t want to miss, especially if you are married to one of those guys who never ever ever asks for directions!  And after you’ve enjoyed that, stick around and enjoy some more posts about the world’s largest country!  Like these:

Day of the Medical Workers/День медицинского работника: Breezes, Bribes, and Bubonic Plague

Day of the Chemists / День химика: Russia’s Unquestioned Contribution to Civilization

Day of the Military Translator /День военного переводчика: Strategic Communication In The Line of Fire

New Year's/Новый год: Is This Christmas??

Happy New Year's, Readers!

No prizes for guessing what today is...apart from being 1/1/11 which is pretty cool: It's New Year's!  Hands down the brightest star in the Russian holiday firmament! It's been going on very steadily since about 1918 and it is for everyone!   

Foreigners get confused about Russian New Year, Russian Christmas and all the things that go with it.  I wrote a piece about it for Russia Beyond The Headlines and it seems appropriate to reprint it here:

So, Is This Christmas?

“Is this a Christmas Tree, or a New Year’s Tree?” asked my five-year old daughter Velvet, as I struggled with a tangle of fairy lights.

“It’s both,” said HRH, my “Handsome Russian Husband,” who was lying contorted on the floor, trying to get the tree to stand up strait in its holder.

“Nastia says,” Velvet informed us, referencing her infallible best friend “that Santa Claus isn’t Santa Claus at all – he’s called Ded Moroz and he comes on New Year’s.”

“Tell Nastia,” I responded through gritted teeth, “that in our very fortunate family, Santa comes on December 24th, and then his cousin, Ded Moroz comes on New Year’s Eve.”

“Nastia says Christmas is on January 7th,” said Velvet, still confused.

“That’s true too,” said HRH, brushing pine needles off his hands.

“Why?” asked Velvet, and they both looked at me expectantly.

Christmas in our American-Russian family is a marathon, not a sprint.  Since Velvet was born, HRH and I have worked hard – he writing checks, me sifting the dry ingredients -- to fuse the varying traditions of Russia and the West into our family celebrations.  The result is a month-long slog, from December 15th, when my friend Gail guilts us all into buying tickets to the Moscow Oratorio’s rendition of Handel’s “Messiah,” through January 13th, or “Old New Year” in Russia, at which point, I am ready to lock Prince Albert, Charles Dickens, and Pyotor Ilyich Tchaikovsky into a small, windowless room and throw away the key.   

Russian Christians adhere to the Eastern Orthodox calendar (see sidebar), which lags 13 days behind the modern day calendar.   This discrepancy was corrected in 1918, by the fledgling Bolshevik regime, but Christmas never reverted to December 25th in Russia, because the Bolsheviks began a systematic campaign to phase out traditional religious holidays and replace them with Soviet ones.  Christmas was shifted to New Year’s Eve.  At the beginning, stringent measures were put in place to see off any holdover of the old days:  Christmas trees, introduced to Russia by Tsar Peter The Great in the 17th Century, were banned in 1916 by the Holy Synod as too German.  The Bolsheviks kept the tree ban in place.   Stalin declared Ded Moroz “an ally of the priest and kulak,” and outlawed him from Russia.

“Like the Burgermeister Meisterburger outlawed Kris Kringle in ‘Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town?’” asked Velvet breathlessly, referring to the seminal 1970 animated American Christmas classic.

I cast a careful look at HRH who was now struggling with the star on the top of the tree, “Exactly like that,” I whispered.

  But you can’t keep the likes of Ded Moroz down for long.   In 1935 Pavel Postyshev, Stalin’s architect of the collectivization program, possibly concerned about his lasting legacy, published a letter in Pravda asking that “New Year’s Trees” be erected in Pioneer Palaces and that Ded Moroz and his granddaughter and helpmate Sneguritchka be allowed to return to the children of the Soviet Union on New Year’s Eve.  Ded Moroz and the trees were rehabilitated in 1937.  Although Christmas and other Orthodox holidays were reinstated on the Russian calendar in 1992, New Year’s Eve remains firmly entrenched as the primary holiday.  

Although Christmas itself was banned, Russians recycled traditional pagan and Christmas traditions as a template for the New Year’s Customs.  In Old Russia, when the first star appeared in the sky, symbolic of the Star of Bethlehem, families gathered to break their 40-day fast with a twelve course “Holy Supper,” featuring “kutya” or grain porridge sweetened with honey and dried fruit.  From pagan times, this dish symbolized life, hope, sweetness, and blessings to the home. You can still find kutya on the tables of today’s Russian New Year’s celebrations, along with lavish zakuski (hors d’oeuvres.) In the Soviet Era, New Year’s always saw the arrival of rare tropical fruits such as tangerines, which for HRH is the smell of his childhood New Year’s.   After the Holy Supper, the faithful in Old Russia returned to church for an All-Night Vigil.  Today, Russians gather around their tables in front of the TV to greet, not the Redeemer of Mankind, but President Dmitry Medvedev, who will hoist a glass of champagne and wish everyone health and happiness for the coming year.  Then fireworks will explode all over Russia and all the bells will peel, as Russians exchange three kisses and good wishes: “New Year, New Happiness, New Luck!”

Sidebar:

Why is Russian Christmas on January 7^th?

Dates and holidays are often confusing in Russia because of the historical split between the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches over the reforms to the Julian Calendar by Pope Gregory XII in 1582.  Most of the world rushed to adopt what became known as “The Gregorian Calendar,” which introduced more effective leap years and more precisely calculated the length of the year not as 365.25 days, but rather 365.2425 days, a difference of 11 minutes.   The Eastern Orthodox countries, however felt that the Julian calendar more accurately plotted the spring equinox and Easter, and refused to buy into the Gregorian reforms.  If you think 11 minutes doesn’t make a difference:  think again:  over three centuries, as the Orthodox Christians doggedly stuck to the older, less accurate calendar introduced by Julius Caesar, a time lag developed.  By 1918, when Lenin decreed that Russia should join the rest of the world, the lag was 13 days long: the most severe jet lag in the history of mankind.   Today, the Eastern Orthodox Church still adheres to the Julian calendar, though it has indicated it is ready to make the shift in 2100.  Orthodox Christmas is 13 days behind what Russians call “Catholic Christmas.”  Russians, who believe that when it comes to holidays “more is more”, also celebrate “Old New Year” on January 13^th as well as “New Year” and Orthodox Christmas on January 7^th.  To ensure the season is indeed jolly, Russians enjoy a ten-day national holiday from January 1 – 10^th!

This piece first appeared in Russia Beyond The Headlines and The Washington Post on December 15, 2010 and a link to the original online version can be found here.

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This post is part of The Stunt.

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Happy New Year Readers!

Hope you are having a good one!  If you aren't, here is a nice tip:  if you make Bloody Marys with Aquavit and Clamato instead of vodka and tomato juice, they are a.) much better and b.) cure the bite a lot better.  Which is about all the wisdom I've gleaned over this holiday season.  

What are your New Year's Resolutions?   Be the first in 2011 to weigh in by hitting the comment button below.    

I mentioned Bees Rees in my last post, that uncrowned queen of Moscow.  She collected over 15,000 Russian Christmas/New Year's Tree ornaments which is outrageous.   She used to send e mails out to get everyone to come and help her unpack them...and THEY DID.   Oy-veh.  I don't have as many as Bees, but I have some nice ones and here they are:

 

Grandfather Frost’s Birthday/День рождения Деда Мороза: Russia’s Santa Claus Is a Year Older!

He sees you when you’re sleeping,  

He knows when you’re awake

He knows when you’ve been bad or good, 

So be good for goodness sake

~J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie 

Today is Grandfather Frost’s birthday!  This is a huge big deal: way more important than any of the naval fleets, or the cryptographers, or even my buddies who jump out of parachutes, because Grandfather Frost is Russia’s Santa Claus!  

I know…I know, trust the Russians to have their own Santa Claus.  But since they have their own calendar, alphabet, and Olympics – why should Santa be any different.

Dyed Moroz lives further south than Santa – in Velikii Ustyug, the heart of Russia’s dairy belt along the Volga River.  In medieval times, Velikii – or Great -- Ustyug was a principality of great importance, and a major trade hub.  Today, it’s on the map as Dyed Moroz’s hometown, which was made official in 1999.   I would love to see the legislation, wouldn’t you?   Presumably, as a Russian citizen, Dyed Moroz votes for United Russia and, like all other Russians, is currently trying to come up with a name for Vladimir Putin’s new dog.  

In appearance, Dyed Moroz is longer and leaner than Santa, more Slavic and more stern, no doubt because he is the elder of the two:  Dyed Moroz is more than 2000 years old, while Santa Claus, who was born the Greek Nikolaos of Myra is only 1740 years old, or, as my friend Judy pointed out, perhaps much much younger – only 187, if you, like Judy, attribute Santa’s emergence as a brand from the publication of “The Night Before Christmas” in 1823.   Not being the patron saint of sailors, thieves, merchants, archers and children, Dyed Moroz lacks the kind of infrastructure Santa has built up:  he has no elves, no workshop, and no Mrs. Claus to help him out.  He does have one helpmate – his granddaughter, Sneguritchka, or Snowflake, a classic Russian beauty, who is traditionally dressed in an ornate blue Russian sarafan.  Together, they make personal appearances in the run up to New Year’s Eve to hand out presents, which means that children all over Russia actually get to meet the great man.  I don’t know why they feel they can drop the veil like this, but it may have something to do with the fact that Dyed Moroz doesn’t have the kind of transport, which Santa does.   There is no sleigh, no reindeer, and certainly no Rudolf to help guide the sleigh when the weather gets bad, as it so often does in Russia.  “America,” Dyed Moroz must sigh, as all Russians do when contemplating the ease and comfort of our life compared to the hardships of life in Russia.   

The lack of transport also accounts for the fact that Dyed Moroz runs 6 days behind Santa, coming, as he does, on December 31st rather than December 24th.   This is a holdover from the Soviet period, when the Russians replaced the Christian Christmas with secular New Year’s.  For a while, Stalin tried to even outlaw Dyed Moroz, declaring him in 1928 “an ally of the priest and kulak.”  Certainly, there have been moments in Russia’s history (and there may well be more ahead) when the concept of “he sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he knows if you’ve been bad or good,” might be less than a desirable state of affairs. But, even Stalin (the Burgermeister and Heatmiser of his day) can’t keep the likes of Dyed Moroz down for long.  Dyed Moroz was rehabilitated in 1937 – though with one important wardrobe change:  during the Soviet period, he and Sneguritchka wore blue fur trimmed outfits, as opposed to red so that Russian children would not confuse them with Santa Claus.

On November 18th, each town in Russia opens a ceremonial mailbox for Dyed Moroz, and he receives official (really – official) delegations from all over Russia.  Instead of writing letters explaining that they’ve been nice, not naughty, and a lengthy list of Christmas wishes, Russian children wish Dyed Moroz a Happy Birthday, and then move on to the lengthy list of New Year’s Wishes!

So, if you are in Russia today, be sure to drop Dyed Moroz a line to wish him a very Happy Birthday!

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This post is part of The Stunt

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Dear Readers!

The holiday season is upon us!   Have you ever met Dyed Moroz and Sneguritchka?  More importantly, how are you going to do your Thanksgiving turkey?  Have you ever brined?   Is Dr. Pepper a good brining agent?  More importantly, do you have a gravy story?  Do you have big fights about the gravy…I’d love to know about those for an upcoming column.

Let me know, won’t you, by hitting the comment button below and leaving me some ideas.

And when you’ve done that, stick around and enjoy a few more forays into Russian history and culture:

The All-Russia Day of Family, Love, and Fidelity/Всероссийский день семьи, любви и верности: Happy Families

St. George’s Day /День святого Георгия Победоносца: Cry God For Vovka, Russia and St. George!

More Blessed to Give, Than to Receive

Day of Holy Baptism by the Apostolic Great Prince Vladimir as Basil /День равноапостольного великого князя Владимира, во святом крещении Василия (1015): Russia Goes Christian

“For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it.  We know only that God dwells there among men.”

~ Ambassadors of Grand Prince Vladimir to Greece as told in The Primary Chronicle,

Today, Russia inaugurated a new public holiday: commemorating the day in the 10th Century when Prince Vladimir of Kiev baptized the Russian people into the Greek Orthodox Church.  

Vladimir’s decision to convert earned him the title “Apostolic” or “Equal to the Apostles,” but in truth, his motives in joining one of the major world religions seem to have been as much political and strategic as spiritual.  In his choice of Eastern Orthodoxy, Vladimir set a cultural course for Russia, with profound political and geographic implications, which resonate today.

Vladimir was a pagan prince, the youngest – by some accounts the bastard -- son of the warrior Prince Sviatoslav: a ruler who spent his early reign consolidating Kiev as the center of power, by exploiting the petty feuds among the minor Varangian (Viking) princes.  He spent the latter half sparring with the Byzantine Greeks in the Crimea, achieving an uneasy peace by his death in 972.  Vladimir, for his part, recognized the need to create better ties with the powerful nations to the west and the south, and shrewdly saw the advantages a common religious culture offered.   His choice was between the four majors:  Judaism, Islam, Western Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy.  Judaism seems to have been rejected immediately (plus ca change…) because it was the religion of the enemy Khazars, and so Vladimir dispatched ambassadors to the capitals of the three remaining religions to see for themselves and not rely on the foreign emissaries.

What happened next depends on who is telling the story.  Anecdotal Russian history says Vladimir was leaning towards Islam, despite the reports that, “there is no happiness among them, but instead only sorrow and a dreadful stench;” but when the Ambassadors revealed the teetotaler clause in the fine print of the Koran, Vladimir gravely shook his head, proclaiming, “Drink is the great joy of the Russian people,” and rejected it outright.

The Ambassadors from the “Germans” (the Holy Roman Empire) reported that they saw  “…them performing many ceremonies in their temples; but we beheld no glory there.”   

It was the Greeks, rolling out the smells and bells as only they could, who really blew the ambassadors away.  They walked into the Cathedral of St. Sofia in Constantinople and were rendered speechless.   “…We knew not,” they reported to Vladimir, “whether we were in heaven or on earth.  For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it.  We know only that God dwells there among men…”  

Vladimir, who was an excellent PR person (today, perhaps not un-coincidently, is also the Day of the PR Specialists) and asked his Ambassadors again and again what they thought he should choose, and they, being good Russian bureaucrats, responded again and again that, really, they couldn’t say, that it was up to him.  Vladimir, already leaning in the direction of Byzantium, decided to shelve the decision, until he could seal the deal with some military action.   He laid siege to the Byzantine stronghold of Kherson in the Crimea, and achieved eventual victory by cutting off their water supply.   

In negotiating with Emperor Basil, Vladimir revealed his hand: like another Vladimir approximately 1,012 later, he wanted a seat at the A-list table of nations. For Prince Vladimir, this was represented, not by the G-8, but by marrying the Emperor’s sister, Princess Anna, who was “born in the purple.” In exchange for this, suggested Vladimir, he might – just might – be willing to consider becoming a Christian.

The Primary Chronicle suggests that Princess Anna thought this was just about the worst idea she’d ever heard, but she dutifully loaded up her bibles, rounded up her clergymen and set out – as a lamb to the slaughter – to baptize Vladimir, and then marry him.   Upon reaching Vladimir, she found him suffering from a disease of the eyes, which had rendered him blind.  She insisted on baptizing him immediately in the Church of St. Basil at Kherson, and immediately his sight was restored.   Vladimir claimed, “I have now perceived the one true God.” And he adopted the name of Basil as a complement to both the church and the Emperor.  He married the Princess, and, it is assumed, they lived pretty much happily ever after.  

Vladimir set the tone for future rulers of Russia by forcing cultural change by means of threats of “risking your prince’s displeasure,” and just as beards came off for Peter The Great, mass baptisms took place at a steady clip back in Kiev.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Congratulations to all Russian Orthodox Christians on the Day of Baptism of Prince Vladimir!  

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This post is part of The Stunt.

Author's Note:  

Direct quotes from "Medieval Russia's Epics, Chronicles, and Tales," edited by Serge A. Zenovsky 

Icon:  Baptism of Russ by Monk Zenon, 1988 reproduced in "Russian Orthdodox Church," edited by B. Karpov and I. Ulyanova, 1990.

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Dear Reader:

In honor of the new holiday, I visited Trinity St. Sergius Monastery, one of the most sacred religious complexes in Russia.  Here are some pictures from that visit:

 Photos By Jennifer Eremeeva, All Rights Reserved

Day of Victory over the Swedes at Poltava / День воинской славы России — Полтавская битва (1709): The Peter (The Great) Principle

'Twas after dread Pultowa's day, 


When fortune left the royal Swede - 


Around a slaughtered army lay, 


No more to combat and to bleed. 

The power and glory of the war, 


Faithless as their vain votaries, men, 


Had passed to the triumphant Czar,

~ George Gordon (Lord Byron) "Mazeppa"

 “If I say, Battle of Poltava to you, what immediately springs to mind?” I asked HRH.  It’s been very hot lately, and I don’t do well in that kind of weather.  I need some inspiration.

“Peter The Great?” he asked, taking another hefty swig of cold beer.

“And?”

“The Swedes?” he ventured.

“Anything else?” I asked.

He scratched his head and thought a bit.

“We won?”

Russian History is neither HRH’s core interest, nor part of his skill set.  He confuses the Nicholases, the Alexanders and the Catherines (though at least he does not make the common mistake that Catherine The Great was married to Peter The Great).  But he got full marks on The Battle of Poltava, and bonus points for a succinct distillation of the salient points about today’s holiday: Peter’s victory over the Swedes at the Battle of Poltava on July 8, 1709, and their ultimate surrender on July 10th.

When last we encountered Peter The Great, he was also engaged in a contretemps with the Swedes, the naval victory in 1703 which secured him the strategic mouth of the Neva River on which he built his dream city, Saint Petersburg.   If that was his first modest victory against his primary adversary, Charles XII of Sweden, Poltava was the zenith of Peter’s emergence as a military might, as he triumphantly hurled the might of his newly re-organized Western style army of 45,000 troops at Charles XII and the Ukrainian Cossack Hetman, Mazeppa.  Ukraine gave up its dreams of independence (what else is new?) and Charles XII and Sweden had to cede their preeminence as the most significant player in the region:  they limped away and spent three centuries crafting a new strategy to invade Russia, which would ultimately prove successful.

Today is one of fifteen “Days of Military Glory,” victories, which were recognized by the State Duma in 1995 in legislation entitled “About the Days of Military Glory of Russia” (so, now you know what the Duma does all day) as “playing a significant role in the history of Russia, and in which Russian troops have earned the honor and respect of contemporaries and grateful memory of posterity.”

I was interested to read, recently (in Bruce Lincoln’s The Romanovs) that Peter was not weaned until he was two years old, which, for me, explains volumes: not only his vigorous health, but also his addiction to instant gratification. “Boats,” you can see him thinking when, as a teenager, he and his Dutch tutor found the rotting remains of a keeled sea vessel in 1688, “Boats…hmmmm…I think I’d like a navy.”  Never mind that Russia was completely landlocked. This could also explain his impatience with anything that stood in his way: a meddlesome older half sister as Regent during his minority?  Overthrow her and stick her in a Convent.  Boring conservative first wife?  Rinse and repeat.   Long traditional kaftans getting in the way?  Adopt Western clothes. Money tight?  Tax people for keeping their beards.   Moscow seeming a little backward? Abandon and create a new capital on a mosquito-infested swamp.  Church getting a little too powerful?  Cut it down to size and make it into a government department, and, for good measure, mock it, holding a mock Synod entitled “The Vastly Extravagant, Supremely Absurd, Omni-Intoxicated Synod,”  (and you have to wish they’d revive that particular Petrine tradition.)

Dictatorial?  Da.  Effective?  Definitely Da.   This is the kind of ruler the Russian people understand, expect, and ultimately admire.  Larger-than-life, clear on what he wants, and slightly crazy. Certainly no one, except perhaps Stalin, has so thoroughly dragged Russia kicking and screaming into the direction of his choice by sheer force of his own personal will power

Peter The Great is the impossible standard against which all other Russian rulers must measure themselves, and I can’t think that, in their heart of hearts, they feel they are in danger of outstripping him in any way.

Peter, for example, would never have tweeted.   Never.

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This post is part of The Stunt

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Greetings Readers!

Had you heard about The Battle of Poltava?  Did you know that Sweden was such a military power in the 17th Century? What’s your take on Peter?  Do you buy into the breast-feeding idea?  Let me know, by leaving a comment below.   If you enjoyed this post, linger a while and read some more just like it:

The Day of Victory /День Победы: "In defeat, unbeatable: in victory, unbearable"

Russia Day /День России: No, It’s Not Independence Day

Day of the Furniture Makers/День мебельщика: Let’s Hear it For The Swedes!

The All-Russia Day of Family, Love, and Fidelity/Всероссийский день семьи, любви и верности: Happy Families

A family is not just husband and wife, but also Granddad and Grandma and, most importantly, kids.

~ President Dmitry Medvedev via his Twitter account, KremlinRussia_E on 3:36 AM Jul 2nd via web

Today is the All-Russia Day of Family, Love, and Fidelity, and not before time, either, after the chaos and naughtiness of yesterday’s St. John’s Eve, or Ivan Kupala.  Today’s holiday affords a timely reminder to any tempted to stray from the bosom of the family, what an awfully big mistake that would be.  Take Anna Karenina, for example, who’s tale of descent into adultery begins with Tolstoy’s immortal observation that:

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Staying faithful to your spouse (whether he or she has to be a member of the opposite sex is not mentioned, nor is any detail gone into as to the nature of the conception of the children) is the watchword of this holiday, which was introduced recently, in 2008, with the support and encouragement of Russia’s First Lady, Svetlana Medvedeva, (who I suspect wears the pants in that particular family.)  Mrs. Medvedeva is known to be a big supporter of the Russian Orthodox Church (none of this childhood obesity nonsense for her) and the choice of date for The All-Russia Day of Family, Love, and Fidelity was not random: today is a 780 year old Orthodox holiday celebrating Saints Peter and Fevronia, the Prince and Princess of the ancient city of Murom, near Vladimir, who were canonized in 1547.  This makes it a nice Public Service Message brought to you by the State-Church joint venture.

The story of Peter and Fevronia is a perfect fusion of simple peasant girl marries handsome prince after over coming adversity in the shape of a dragon/ happily-ever-after / fairy-tales, pagan and chthonian (I know, I had to look it up too) symbolism, and good old- fashioned Russian family values.   I first read the entire story as a university student in Serge A. Zenkovsky’s "Medieval Russia’s Epics, Chronicles, and Tales," which is about the first thing they thrust at you when you embark down the path of Russian Area Studies. It is now on-line, so, if you really want to, you can read the whole thing too, but should you prefer a pithier synopsis, here is one:

Prince Peter, the brave and righteous younger brother and heir of Prince Paul of Murom, does battle with the devil disguised as a serpent, to defend the honor of his sister-in-law.  Smiting the serpent, Peter is splashed by its blood, which covers his body with sores and ulcers.   He searches the land for many years in vain for a cure until he encounters the simple peasant girl, Fevronia, weaving at her loom.  After a symbolically packed exchange of riddles, promises, and Peter’s eventual cure, they cut to the chase, marry, and settle down as the ruling couple.  Happily ever after, however, eludes them, as the wicked boyars (nobles) are not content with Fevronia, a simple peasant girl, taking precedence over their own wives.  So they begin to stir up trouble.  One particularly wicked (and married) boyar tries to take advantage of Fevronia during a sea voyage.   Fevronia reprimands him sharply, asking him to taste the water on either side of the ship, and note the difference.  He does so, and claims that there is no difference at all.

“And so it the nature of all women.”  (Replies Fevronia) Why then do you want to leave you wife and think about another woman?”

Having thoroughly squelched the boyars with this withering remark (?), things calmed down considerably for Fevronia and Peter, who went about the business of ruling in a pious, generous, and just manner.  They loved each other so much that they prayed to die at the same hour, and prepared a joint tomb.  To seal the deal, she became a nun, and he a monk, and they did die at the same moment, only the crowd in charge prepared to bury them in separate graves.  On the next day, however, their bodies were gone, ultimately found in the double tomb, where they remain to this day in the Church of the Holy Virgin in Murom.

I wondered to myself if Mrs. Medvedeva wasn't pushing the envelope a little on this one.   Russia already has a lot of holidays along these lines:  Men’s Day (February 23rd) and International Women’s Day (March 8th) as well as Catholic St. Valentine’s Day (February 14th) which Russians have taken up with the same fervor they have sushi and mojitos.  But, as the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church when he was Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad noted, “February 14th (Valentine’s Day) is the Day of Those in Love, and being in love does not necessarily guarantee love, nor family, nor, for that matter, faithfulness.”

With which sentiment, I am sure, both Fevronia and Mrs. Medvedeva would heartily agree. And, for that matter, Tolstoy too.  Things like this don’t hurt.  They might help.  You never ever know, do you?  Still wondering if this covers same sex families though...

Happy Day of Family, Love, and Faithfulness to everyone who is in to that kind of thing. 

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This Post is part of The Stunt

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Hi There Readers:

Is there a holiday like this where you come from?   Do you think it is over the top, or a good thing?   Or does the idea of family values make you break out in hives.  Let me know, won’t you, by leaving a comment below.  Thank you for stopping by and for your patience as you can see we are playing catch-up again (pressures of family life have kept me occupied).  Stick around, if you like, and enjoy a few more posts just like this one:

Hide and Seek

World Wide Metrology Day/Всемирный день метролога: He’s Metric: I’m Imperial: How Can Love Survive?

Day of the Philologists /День филолога: Language Learners, Lovers, and Luddites

St. John’s Eve/Иван Купала: Ferns, and Fires, and Flesh: Oh My!

Get your kit off!

~ Prefers to remain anonymous

Today is St. John’s Eve, or, in Russian: “Ivan Kupala!”   This is Russian Midsummer, with all the same accompanying mischief, magic, and misdemeanors, as anywhere else in the world, just thirteen days late, because of that Gregorian – Julian calendar thing we’ve discussed before.  So, we’ll be expecting wild sexual midnight revels; naked bathing, bonfires, and all that will all make a refreshing change from Anna Chapman.

It is nice for me, as well, to take a tiny break from the more modern Russian institutions such as the traffic cops and the veterans of the custom's service, and harken back to ancient pre- and early Christian Russia: wallow a little in all the Dan Brown/Bloodline conspiracy/St. John Worship/Freemason stuff.  If you are into that kind of thing (and I am) today’s holiday can be an endless font (pun intended) of fascinating information.

St. John’s Eve in the Christian calendar celebrates the night before the birth of Jesus’s cousin, St. John.  Scripture tells us that John was about six months older than, and “prepared the way” for Jesus, so that fits nicely: if you buy in to the idea that Jesus was born on December 25th (or January 7th according to the Russians).   St. John’s Eve, and its counterpart in the calendar, Christmas, are actually, as Alexander Hislop argues convincingly, replacements for much older pagan rituals surrounding the juxtaposition of light and dark. Jesus’s birth was set by the early Christians to replace the pagan Saturnalia or Winter Solstice, when the days begin to get lighter; John’s birthday replaced the Summer Solstice, when the days begin to grow darker. This neatly captures the "twinned" or juxtaposed relationship between John and Jesus. St. John, a wild and zealous desert preacher, rigid and ascetic in his beliefs, was an annoying thorn in the side of both the Romans and the Jewish King Herod.  John publicly denounced Herod for his marriage to his brother’s widow, Herodias. John condemned this as adulterous and incestuous.  King Herod, famously beheaded John at the request of his step-daughter (so also niece) Salome, after she did a very effective dance of the seven veils (making her the Anna Chapman of the piece) for his guests.  The head, then, is served up on a platter.

St. John remains a shadowy and puzzling figure, associated historically with controversial and secretive organizations such as The Knights Templar and the Freemasons, at the heart of bloodline conspiracy theories, and mysterious symbols and hidden messages in art and literature.  The fact that his birth, and not his death (August 19th in the Catholic calendar) is the key holiday is also significant, since most saints are celebrated on the day of their martyrdom or death, and not the birth. Jesus and John are not.

St. John’s Eve in Russia was, and still is in some parts of the country, celebrated with the traditional focus on fire and water:  elements, like Jesus and John, who stand in direct opposition.  At dusk (which comes very late this time of the year), huge bonfires are lit to guard against the evil spirits, witches, goblins, and other fey creatures who, as the world turns to darkness again, begin to gain in strength and power.   Men compete against one another to see who can jump the highest over the bonfire, ensuring the winner happiness and luck throughout the year.  Young women gather the traditional “Midsummer ferns,” which are woven into garlands and wreaths, worn throughout the evening and then dried, and kept to ward off evil spirits throughout the coming darkness.  In another long-standing tradition, young women float their wreaths of Midsummer ferns with lit candles into the river, and the one, which floats the longest, ensures its maker happiness in love, long life, and good health.

"Night of Ivan Kupala" by Genrikh Semyradski 

As the night lengthens, and a brief darkness hovers over the Northern sky, tradition says that the trees move about and speak to one another in the breeze, and the important water element is incorporated by naked bathing in ponds, rivers and streams to purify both the body and the soul. 

Things can begin to get slightly out of hand, which is wonderfully captured in Nikolai Gogol’s breakthrough short story “St. John’s Eve,” which you can download here, and Mussorgsky’s “Night On Bald Mountain,” which might sound strangely familiar to any of you with small children:

In closing, here are a few other interesting facts associated with St. John’s Eve, which may dictate the way you plan your day today:

1.    Traditionally, in Russia and other countries which celebrate St. John's Eve, there is a not-unsurprising spike in the birthrate during the month of March.

2.    As I wrote in a recent article on Russian superstitions, witches will not come into your house if there is a needle or something sharp in the doorjamb or other portals to the house. This is particularly true on St. John’s Eve, so housewives scatter thistles or roses on their windowsills to keep the witches at bay.

3.    It is very important (Velvet, are you listening?) to lock up your horses on St. John’s Eve, lest the witches or goblins spirit them away...to Bald Mountain!

4.    If a girl collects seven different kinds of flowers and puts them under her pillow, she will dream of her future husband.

5.    If you climb over twelve garden fences during St. John’s Eve, your wish will come true.

Can you find a garden fence you could actually climb over in Russia?

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This post is part of The Stunt.

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Author’s Note:

Lots of research went into this one, and I am grateful to:

Astrology On The Web

“ And dedicated to the Holy Saints John: An inquiry into the designation of the Saints John as Patron Saints of Freemasonry”, by W. Bro Harry L. Ward Jr. PM on Pietre-Stones: Review of Freemasonry

Secret Societies, by David V. Barrett

Cracking The Symbol Code: the Hidden Message Within Church and Renaissance Art, by Tim Wallace-Murphy

The Two Babylons by Alexander Hislop

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Well then, Readers,

What have you got planned for tonight?  Let me know, won’t you…you don’t have to identify yourself in the comments…really.  Make up a name, go on!  Be clever, reference Shakespeare:  Hermia, Helena, Bottom, Titannia, Puck...or be current, and call yourself Anna Chapman.  You get the idea.

I know this one was a little academic for some palates, so here are a few ones in a slightly lighter vein.

Day of the Legal Profession /День российской адвокатуры: Russia’s Pornographic Portia

Day of the Chemists / День химика: Russia’s Unquestioned Contribution to Civilization

International Museum Day/Международный день музеев: Which Museum Would You Run Away To?

Day of Slavic Writing and Culture /День славянской письменности и культуры: The Russian language Is A Rich Language

“With over 340 different verbs of motion, those three sisters couldn’t get up and go to Moscow!”

~A.N. Wilson

Here is an opportunity to raise a glass if you ever stayed up all night to study for a genitive plural or perfective/imperfective test…if you ever had to forgo a frat party to make your plodding way through Lermontov’s "Hero Of Our Time," or Pushkin’s "Captain’s Daughter," today is your day!  If you can speak Russian beyond (Dee Dee this means you!)  “to the left,” or “to the right,” or “a diet coke with ice please,” then get yourself some flowers and a bottle of wine. You’ve earned it!

Today is Slavic Writing and Culture Day!  This holiday was established in 1863 as an Orthodox Christian saint’s day, celebrating brothers Cyril and Methodius, 9th Century Christian missionaries from Greece, who were sent to convert the Slavs.  As part of their efforts, they invented first the Glagolitic alphabet and later, the alphabet that bears Cyril’s name:  Cyrillic.  I think the naming thing was politeness on Methodius’s part, as Cyril died much earlier, but they may have flipped a coin.   With these letters, they were able to translate the Greek New Testament into a vernacular the Slavs could understand.  Then presumably, they taught the Slavs to read and write.  And that worked out pretty well. This language can still be heard today by the clergy in the Russian Orthodox Church, and is known as Old Church Slavonic.

Learning Russian is not as hard as Mandarin Chinese or ancient Persian, but it has some challenges to it.   The letters brought to you by Cyril and Methodius can be tricky.  English “P” is a Russian “R” and, as fan’s of Murder on the Orient Express know, English “H” is a Russian “N.”  Sometimes reading Russian makes one feel slightly dyslexic and mildly nauseous but you get used to it.

Russian verbs are complicated.  They have two “aspects:” the imperfective, which refers to the action of doing something, such as “I am reading "War & Peace,” as opposed to the “perfective,” doing the action with the intention of getting it done.  Very confusing, and something I still haven’t really mastered, although I find the distinction curiously germane to the national character somehow. 

Verbs of motion, which take up most of the second year of any course in Russian, have the perfective/imperfective thing going on, as well as the distinct difference between moving on your own steam, or in a vehicle, which does cut down on the drunk driving, like a little bit.

Russian is full of diminutives, both for people and things.  These are achieved in a staggeringly extensive range of endings, but some common ones are “-chick,” or “-sulia” and “-ichka.” My mother-in-law manages to combine all of these when referring to Velvet as her "vnutchichkuliaetchka," taking the simple word "vnutchka" meaning granddaughter and turning it into "darling little tiny granddaughter."  In this case, a diminutive conveys affection.    When a Russian is trying to get something out of you, they automatically make what ever they are asking for a diminutive and insert the adjective “nimnogo” or “not much” so you get a request for…”a teeny weeny advancechick on the salariula,” for example, or, “just pour me a miniscule not a lot amount more voditchka.”  This gets old really fast, particularly up in St. Petersburg, where they have turned this into a fine art.

On the more formal end of the spectrum, you have the names.  Names are confusing, and a lot of people just throw up their hands on the first page of War & Peace, since everyone has three names.   Russians have first names and there are only roughly 10 of each sex: Alexander, Dmitry, Mikhail, Nikolai, Andrei, Vladimir, Ivan, Igor, Sergei, and Boris for boys.  Anastasia, Svetlana, Olga, Tatianna, Ekaterina, Valentina, Elena, Irina, Natalia, and Nadezda for girls.  These basic names have endless diminutives.

Tatianna, for example, can be Tata, Tanik, Tanya, Tanyuissia, Tanechka etc.

Alexander can be Sanya, Shura, Sasha, Sashenka, Sashulia, Sashka

You can tell this is a society that likes to remain largely anonymous.

Russians also carry an obligatory middle name, called a patronymic, which is the name of their father (of course) and an ending, which is       –evna for a girl and –ich or -evich for a boy.

So, for example, the youngest and most famous daughter of the last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II was called Anastasia Nikolaevna.

In my cross-culture marriage group you get a lot of funny combos of names and patronymics, mostly from the well-populated ranks of foreign men who married Russian women.  I know a Cyril Brucevich, a Ashley Christopherevna, and a Tom Eduardovich.

[Here is your intrepid blogger, marching with the Williamstown Public Library on July 4, 1990.  The assignment was to march as your favorite book, so I chose "War & Peace."]

Russians use the patronymic as formal address and very intimate address.  To address a Russian formally, an equivalent to “Mrs. Smith,” you refer to them by their full first name and patronymic together:  Alexander Dmitrievich or Olga Vladimirovna.  For someone with whom you are very intimate, say a child, a spouse, or a childhood friend, you can address him or her with his or her patronymic only.  I don’t have a patronymic, but my father’s name is Peter, and the patronymic for girls is “Petrovna,” which is how HRH addresses me.   It’s important not to confuse these two very different forms of address, as I did, by referring to the 60-something veteran head of the National Tourism Committee’s English section as “Vassilievna,” which was incredibly rude.  Everyone was so embarrassed that no one told me for about six months, at which point, thank goodness, she retired.

Finally, a Russian has a last name, which normally ends in –EV or OV like Medvedev, but sometimes doesn’t, such as Putin.  Mrs. Medvedev is Svetlana Medvedeva and Mrs. Putin is Lydmilla Putina.  This is a problem for us, as a family, since Velvet and I have an “A” on the end of our name, and HRH doesn’t, as we saw earlier this year with the TSA crowd.  He always gets an “A” on his nametag at Velvet’s school, which I have to white out before we can throw ourselves into non-stop fun and games of parents’ weekend.

 Learning Russian has gone somewhat out of fashion lately, which may be because we now need more Arabic and Chinese speakers to help run the windowless buildings just over the river from Our Nation’s Capitol, but that seems a shame.  There is nothing like curling up with my favorite book, which is actually not "War & Peace," but  “500 Russian Verbs” (they are ALL fully conjugated...perfective AND imperfective!!!) and a teeny weeny glassulia of chardonnaychick.

Happy Day of Slavic Writing And Culture to all Russian speakers, those with patronymics, and those who wish they had one!

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This post is part of The Stunt.

Today is also Day of the Human Resources Managers and the excitement is almost uncontrollable – there’s Team Building, and Formula 1 Racing, and Leprosy, and…well don’t miss it!

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Dear Reader:

Cпасибо!  Thanks for checking in with me here at Dividing My Time on Day of Slavic Writing and Culture.  Did you learn something new?  Does this make you want to race out and get a copy of "War & Peace?"  Give it a try…you can skip the battle scenes:  I always do.   Let me know how you are getting on learning your foreign language by clicking the comment button below!  

St. George’s Day /День святого Георгия Победоносца: Cry God For Vovka, Russia and St. George!

The only difference between a saint and a sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

~ Oscar Wilde

 Today’s is St. George’s Day and before you Brits go ballistic, remember that, despite all that “religion is the opium of the masses” stuff, Russia still goes by the Orthodox calendar, and thus is always about 13 days behind the rest of the world.  We’ve talked about this before.

Having conceived this stunt, I was determined to steer clear of all but the most important religious holidays…once you get into things like  Day of Saint Simeon the Stylites, you kiss any hope of seeing Grey’s Anatomy on a regular basis good-bye.   But St. George is actively celebrated in Russia, possibly due to its proximity The Major Event (stay tuned) happening later this week, and therefore is something of a warm up.   It’s also a very good example of how post-perestroika Russia has returned to Tsarist traditions. Catherine The Great established the Military Order of St. George in 1769, and this was revived in 1994 by President Boris Yeltsin, with an obvious hiatus from 1917 – 1994.  The Order of St. George, said she in a know-it-all voice, is the highest military order in Russia, and before you HRHs out there start mouthing off about The Hero of The Russian Federation, which used to be called The Hero of the Soviet Union, that is the highest military honor associated with a medal.  So there.

When HRH does something truly astonishing such as carrying his empty coffee cup upstairs to the kitchen (our kitchen is upstairs) and is obviously looking for the gold star, I will often say to him:

“What to do you want, The Order of Lenin?” to which he will instantly and rather cheekily rejoin

“First class.”

I think I will start asking him if he wants the Order of St. George the Triumphant.  If I can figure out how to say “Triumphant” in Russian, which could be uphill work.

If you were in Russia this week, you’ll have seen a lot of these ribbons, the “George Ribbon” which is a fad that got going five years ago when Russia celebrated the 60^th anniversary of World War II:  motorists tie this on their antennae or on the dashboard to show their patriotism.   The colors of the ribbon are said to represent fire and gunpowder and are possibly derived from the original Tsarist Coat of Arms, which also features George and the dragon.

 St. George appears on a lot of coats of arms in Russia, as well as on the Presidential flag.  You can see him in the middle slaying the dragon, which interestingly in Russian/Orthodox tradition never dies (classic) but is locked in eternal struggle with the noble George, who embodies all the virtues of bravery, faith, Christian morals and compassion.  No wonder he’s the patron saint of the Boy Scouts.  

 We don’t know much about George himself, except that he was a noble Roman soldier who was beheaded by Emperor Diocletian (who was often known as “the dragon” which perhaps gave birth to the legend) for protesting the Roman persecution of the early Christians.  

Whoever he was, today, St. George is a busy guy:  he is the patron saint of soldiers, cavalry, chivalry, farmers, field workers, Boy Scouts, butchers, horses & riders, saddlers, archers (hence the Henry V speech), and those who can’t get their visa to Russia because they have leprosy, plague or syphilis.   Saint George is supposedly buried outside Tel Aviv, but that doesn’t stop Moscow from making him its patron saint, along with many countries and cities.

Happy St. George’s Day to all who claim him!  And who is the patron saint of Pony Moms…huh?  Huh?

Author's Note:

I'm indebted to Michael Collin's excellent article on St. George in Britannia for details on the life and worship of St. George.

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 Dear Reader:

Happy St. George's Day!   Are you a Boy Scout or a Butcher?   Did you have to get a leprosy test to get to Russia, or do you think that's just the straw that might break the camel's back?  Thank you very much for stopping by Dividing My Time.  That means a lot to me, as does your feedback.  Tell me, how do you celebrate St. George's Day, if indeed you celebrate it at all?   Does your husband think he deserves a medal of honor for picking up his dirty socks?   Whatever you're thinking, leave me a comment by clicking on the comment button below and let me know about it!

National Cholesterol Week

     Winter in Russia is a marathon, not a sprint, and it is vital to have intermittent water stations along the way, particularly coming into the home stretch.  At this point, in marathon terms, we are roughly at mile 18, and the end is nowhere in sight.   But there are a few bright spots on the horizon, and we do best to train our focus on them: Men’s Day (February 23rd), about which more next week in my column in Russia Now!   Men’s Day, a sort of one-way Valentine’s Day, is just a warm up for the main event coming later in the Spring: International Women’s’ Day on March 8th, and I’ll be writing about that too.  

    These are secular and Soviet holidays, which, when I look at them from the point of view of a historian, I see were invented to wean Russians off the massive rush served up by Orthodox Christian Lent, which began last week.  Lent, of course, is no one’s idea of fun, but in agrarian pre-revolutionary Russia served as a handy spiritual excuse for a Spartan diet, excluding meat, dairy, oil, eggs, fish, meat, or anything else that might make life slightly more bearable, like alcohol, which taste great accompanied by only turnips and oatmeal.   The forty days that Lent covers is just that time when the staple of Russian winter stores dwindled down to the bare minimum.  Nowadays, you can get mangos and quail in aspic at any supermarket year round, but many Russians proudly go through “The Great Fast,” as a way of clawing onto some moral high ground and dropping twenty pounds in less than two months: both goals easy to achieve if you are subsisting on buckwheat porridge and cabbage soup.

    Russian culture is all about extremes, so the feast/famine cycle is inbred into the rolling cycle of the year.   Fun-filled Maslenitsa otherwise known as “National Cholesterol Week,” precedes Lent.  Maslenitsa – or “butter week” is the same thing as Mardis Gras, Shrovetide or Carnivale: a traditional gorge before the austerity of Lent begins.  Maslenitsa, which lasts a week, is a time for feasting and drinking, eating traditional pancakes or bliniy, which not only use up all of the forbidden foods, but also represent the spherical sun, central to Maslenitsa’s ancient forerunner: an early spring pagan festival heralding the end of winter and the return of the sun.

    The anti-religious campaign that characterized much of the previous century did not seem to make much of a dent in Maslenitsa – though the celebrations were less public, confined to mothers making pancakes for their children, as their mothers had made for them.  Now that religion is the new red in Russia, Maslenitsa has been reinstated with terrifying enthusiasm by the authorities, in large-scale public celebrations: open-air festivals, concerts, pancake stands on every corner – you get the idea.  My friend and colleague Evy Hua wrote a great piece on it – it was her first Maslenitsa and she got into it.  

    I’m not a fan.  I’m not pining Lent or anything (I’m not a masochist), but Maslenitsa is associated in my memory with a truly scary afternoon, getting separated from HRH and Velvet as we strolled through Moscow to try and get down to Red Square to see the public Maslenitsa celebrations, and what on earth were we thinking?  I had my large camera and telephoto lens with which I hoped to catch some of the national merriment, and I foolishly did not transfer my wallet, keys, or mobile phone into the large camera bag – not a mistake I will ever make again.  As we got down towards Red Square, we encountered the usual public holiday scene: a plethora of policemen, 

 

 backed up by raw army recruits looking baffled and angry,

  and glowering hostile senior citizens with retro-Soviet red armbands proclaiming them “Friendly volunteer.” 

 

 The temperature was hovering around freezing, it was sleeting steadily, and, as we progressed, we joined swelling crowds who were pushing, shoving, and breathing stale beer fumes on one another.   The police had blocked off the usual traffic and pedestrian routes, sending the crush of people about one and a half miles out of their way.

    “Comrades!”  One woman shouted above the din, “Turn back!  There are no bliniy on Red Square…we’ve been hoodwinked!” 

    The scene reminded me of Khodynka Field – the tragic event which tainted Nicholas II’s coronation, when hundreds of poor peasants were killed in a stampede for the traditional free beer, woefully mismanaged by the authorities.  It was also reminiscent of "Bloody Sunday," in 1905, when peaceful demonstrators marched on the Winter Palace to ask the Tsar for bread and were fired upon by the palace guards. It was like every public holiday in Russia: a dangerous place to be with menacing law enforcers everywhere, too many people and no system.  In the push and shove, I got separated from the family and couldn’t find them anywhere.   

    With no money, and no phone, I tried to find police station where I could borrow a phone.  There was no meeting point, no first aid station…nothing except thousands of policemen brusquely directing human traffic through metal detectors, flanking Red Square, where cheerful sponsorship banners from the Campbell Soup company fluttering in the breeze.

    I approached a policeman. 

 

 I had always told Velvet to do this if, God Forbid, she’d ever got lost in Moscow.  HRH had agreed, but qualified the advice by saying it was much much much better never to get lost.  This turned out to be excellent advice.

    “Can you help me?” I asked the policeman.

    He looked at me, confused, as if he’d not heard that request before.

    “Help you?” he grunted. 

    “Yes, I need some help.”

    He furrowed his eyebrows, lifted a cigarette in gloved hands, dragged deeply, blew smoke at me, and then gestured with the cigarette to another, slightly older man.

    “You must address the ‘starshiy’ (meaning literally – the elder, which also indicates a higher military rank).  I shuffled over.

    “Can you help me?” I asked him.

    “Help you?” he barked, “what do you think I can do?” asked the starshiy defensively.

    “I’m lost – separated from my family.  I don’t have a phone, and I don’t have any money.  Can I go to your precinct and phone my husband so he can come and find me.”

    “Nyet…nyet…” he said, making a shooing gesture with his sawn off Kalashnikov rifle.

    There was nothing for it.  I wasn’t, of course, lost at all, just slightly overwhelmed by the situation.   So, I walked back home, all the way around the inconveniently re-routed pedestrian traffic, trudging up Tverskaya Street, slipping and sliding on the ice, swerving to avoid groups of drunken Tadzhik migrant workers in bright orange coats, 

 

lugging my heavy camera case.  I kept my eyes down, as I walked the three miles to my apartment building.  The 300-year-old lady concierge, who provides the critical line of defense against criminal elements at our building, informed me that HRH and Velvet had not yet returned.  The phone rang, and she disappeared into her glass hut, picked up the receiver, turned her back to me and began to exchange lengthy holiday greetings with a relative.  I crossed one leg over the other, suddenly aware in the relative warmth of the entresol, that I needed the bathroom rather urgently.   She finished her conversation and turned to me in an annoyed manner.  I explained my predicament, and asked her if she could phone the Commandant (which is how you refer to the Super in Russia, can you imagine) to let me inside the apartment, she looked horrified, threw her arms out wide, wailed that the Commandant wasn’t at work 

    “Eto zhe praznik!” she stated.  “It’s a public holiday, you know!” 

    And then she told me the thing that really, in the end of the day, sums up the attitude that keeps Russia out of the WTO – that it was way outside the ‘framework of her competency’ to do a single, solitary, thing.

    This story has a happy ending.  Velvet wasn’t lost, and I turned my back on Ninel (Lenin spelt backwards – truly) Alexandrovna, and sought help from a more trusted source.  I trudged back down the stairs.  I left our courtyard and shuffled my way down a well-worn path.   I pushed open the door of our neighboring Starbucks.  Katya, the barista gave me a big smile.

    “Katya,” I gasped, crossing my legs in desperation to hold in my bladder,  

    “Could I please use your phone – I got separated from the family and I don’t have any money or my keys.”

    “Of course!” she said, proffering the store’s landline and pouring me a cup of coffee.  “On the house,” she said with her charming smile.  “For the holiday!”

    Later, I learned that the last day of Maslenitsa is called “Forgiveness Sunday,” during which everyone bows down low in front of one another and asks forgiveness of one another, so as to start Great Lent out with a clean heart and in the spirit of reconciliation and Christian love.

    So, forgive me, reader. Next week we'll find a much funnier side...

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