From Russia with Love

The Derevnia

Our Choir in the Western Russian village of Luzhnaia, Smolensk province.

Although a trip to Siberia gave me a more fully-formed understanding of the Russian psychological and geographical landscape, Irkutsk was still a city, albeit a small one. I knew the untouched Russian soul lay somewhere farther afield in that curious wilderness Russians call ‘the derevnia’. When buying my ticket out of the country, I calculate a trip to such a place into the itinerary.
Sometime in late-October I made the aquaintance of Yelena Minyok thanks to a friend of my program’s director (Chris). He arranged a chance for us to meet after a conversation in which I explained my interest in Russian folk music. Yelena is a folklorist and has spent the greater part of her life researching the folklore, music and traditions of Russia’s dying village populations. In true Russian fashion, she invited Chris and me (two complete strangers) over for dinner where we met her family (husband and documentary filmmaker, Sergei, and children Valeria and Fedia). For me it was a chance to make a valuable contact for a possible senior thesis on Russian folk traditions, but Chris, knowing that Yelena lead expeditions to Russian villages, had other plans in mind, namely to get me onto one of these trips. After a pleasant dinner filled with informative tidbits on Russia’s folk life, Chris began explaining my background with Middlebury’s Russian Choir, telling Yelena what a great voice I had (in all honesty, he had only heard me sing once. It was a short version of ‘Pchyolechka Zlataya’ performed during a group trip to the banya).
Yelena described her trips to the village, done with the help of an American NGO called Earthwatch, and said it was completely possible for me to come on the next trip in late January. Aside from trans-continental plane tickets and visa fees (expenses I had already taken care of) Earthwatch charged all its ‘volunteers’ the modest fee of $2,500(!). Sensing that Yelena noticed the look of shock and dispare at my budding dreams crushed, I explained that, as a student, I wasn’t in a position to be able to afford such a fee. Without thinking twice, she said that the Earthwatch budget allowed her to take a small number (one or two at her descression) of staff members who, in addition to helping with the volunteers’ work of recording and interviewing, helped with translation for the volunteers who didn’t speak Russian. She was confident that with her recommendation and an immediate email sent to Earthwatch headquarters, I would be able to join the expedition for a greatly reduced price, which would only include transportation to/from the village, food, room and board.
She sent me home with an expedition briefing and the next day, I wrote an email to Earthwatch, in which I beggedt o be accepted onto the project, assuring them that it would be with Yelena’s blessings (the woman knew me for less than 24 hours and was already prepared to write me a recommendation! Russians are just amazing like that sometimes). A few weeks later, I received confirmation from both Earthwatch and Yelena and spent the remainder of my semester looking forward to an adventure most tourists and exchange students alike don’t often experience.
Only a few, hectic days after returning from Irkutsk, I boarded the bus with the other team members that would take us (almost the entire way) to the village of Luzhnaya, situated in Western Russia three kilometers from Belarus and 30km from Ukraine. Arriving late at night, members of the village’s choir greated us for introductions, tea and cakes.
Already approaching midnight, sleeping arrangements were agreed upon. The team’s four members (two volunteers, another staff member/translator and myself) were given three beds at Valentina Ilinichna’s house while Yelena would stay at another choir member’s house. Those of you who mastered arithmatic at an early age may have noted that this all adds up to four beds and five people. Being the only man in the group, I was offered the stove to sleep on. Russian stoves are typically 8x8 meters in area and reach nearly all the way up to the ceiling with about a meter of clearance. The stove is the heart of the house, providing heat, a place to cook and, as some believe, a home for the ‘domovoi’ (house spirit; more on this later). It is also a ‘saintly place’ (svetoe mesto) in Russia and is typically reserved only for the very young, the very old and those who are sick. Although I didn’t fit into any of these catagories, I was the only man and therefore entitled to the best sleeping arrangements (later during the trip, I would learn that in the old Russian view of the world, there existed animals and men with the members of the female sex lying somehwere between the two. This explained where I slept, why all the old village ladies loved me right off the back and why I was always served first and at least three times more than the other team members).


Valentina Ilinichna, our hostess, with her great-granddaughter

The next morning, Lena (as Yelena insisted we called her) returned and prepared some breakfast kashia (oatmeal/purage) for everyone before going over the first day’s plans, which included getting groceries at the village’s ‘magazin’ (store – it was more like a pioneers’ outpost, really) and making a visit to the mayor’s office. Word on the street was that the mayor had gotten some heat from the regional authorities because of our visit. All of our documents, papers and permissions where in order, and Lena described this visit as a mere formality. She took me with her (since everyone in the village, made up almost entirely of women, absolutely loved young, unmarried men. Everyone seemed to have a daughter or granddaughter who would be just perfect for me). Armed with passports, documents from the Russian Center for Scientific Research and chocolate, the two of us went and introduced ourselves to the mayor and her staff of entirely female aids who all did their best to completely downplay the need for us to come in the first place (despite the fact that it was their phone calls to choir members who brought us to the office in the first place). They were all very friendly and invited us to joing their New Year’s celebration, which, judging by the half-empty bottle of vodka standing among countless ‘salad’ dishes, had started well before our arrival. Although it was already January 13th, it was still New Years Eve in Russia, or rather Old New Years Eve. Before the Revolution, Russia operated on a calender fourteen days behind Europe’s; as a result, they have two New Years celebrations on either side of Orthodox Christmas (January 7th) – Old New Year’s and new New Year’s. All I have to say about this is only in Russia could something that sounds so rediculous happen.
We called the other three team members down to the village office and told them to bring a bottle of vodka. Between eating the delicious mushroom, tomato and zuchini salads (all homemade and from personal gardens) and making toasts, the mayor told us about the area she was responsible for, which included 7 villages. Like most of rural Russia and the American Midwest, villages are simply dying out. In her electorate alone, each year fifteen people die while only one is born. This statistic was easy to see in the village, where the amount of children/young people could be counted on ten fingers. Most students and young adults move out in favor of universities and better job opportunities in the larger cities.
During our celebrations, the mayor repeatedly asked us not to tell the regional authorities that we had been drinking together (since our visit to the mayor’s office would have to be followed up by a trip to the regional office in Yershchiche). Lena wagered that the regional authorities would say the same thing since for the most part, Russian introductions practically require at least one vodka shot. We were unfortunately unable to proved this hypothesis right or wrong since a few days later, while we were waiting for the bus to Yershchiche, we ran into the mayor. She told us we didn’t have to go after all. She’d made a call on our behalf and taken care of everything. We were all grateful to have more time for our research but realized that this act of kindness was probably also a measure taken to make sure we wouldn’t share too many details of our Old New Year’s Eve at the mayor’s office with the regional bosses. All in all, that day I checked off ‘drinking with an elected official’ from my list of things to do before I die.
Similar spontaneous gatherings took place throughout our stay. On (Old) New Year’s day, we went to church services in the neighboring village of Kuzmichi where we met the region’s batushka (father) and inquired about his plans for the upcoming Epiphany holidays. Upon hearing about our visit, Lina Sergeevna, one of the village’s many sweet old ladies, came to the chapel to meet us. Lena had met Lina the previous summer on a similar trip with another Earthwatch team and apparently made a lasting impression, so much so that Lina simply had to come out and meet us. After the service, Batushka Nikolai showed us around the church and told us a little about its history. This had to do mostly with its recent history of theft. All over the cold building were empty frame and holes in walls and gates where one would expect to see icons. Nikolai explained that althought people had stolen from the church’s treasures before, the worst theft was made shortly after the police paid a visit to make an inventory of the most valuable icons. Within days, the church was robbed of over thirty icons, most of which were on the inventory. The theives were only middle-men who made small money (that goes a long way in the village) for their crime while those they stole for would sell the works for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
After this sad history, it was a releif to be invited for tea by Lina Sergeevna. It was a short walk to her beautiful house (with two stoves) where she made a huge table for us (‘to make a table’ in Russian means to set a table with massive amounts of food and drink and is common practice when guests come). We realized that when she invited us for ‘tea’, she really meant a New Years lunch.
“It’s New Years,” she said, “I figured I’d be having some guests,” and proceeded to open jar after jar of salads and preserves while taking out meat dishes and sweet dishes from her kitchen stove. After finding enough chairs for everyone and pouring a glass of home-made wine for all, we began another delicious meal in the country.
Lina Sergeevna told us about the last team, her husband and family and generally about her whole life, which despite having its fair share of sadness, has been for the most part blessed. Before our goodbyes, I was sent to get water from the river. Wherever we went, this was essentially my only responsibility as the man, which was fine with me (personally, I’d rather spend five minutes fetching water than twenty minutes doing dishes any day). When we left, Lina had certainlay left her mark on our hearts. Although I’d experienced Russian generosity before (both from Lena and in Irkutsk), this experience went far beyond any previous one. Not only had Lina shared her house and food with us but also her life. It was especially overwhelming and hard for our volunteers to leave; such generosity towards strangers was unthinkable for them, especially coming from a Russian (Russians don’t really have that kind of a reputation in the States, do they?).
This generosity often expresses itself in Russian eating practices. Ever house we went to felt obligated to give us their best food and hospitality. As a man (and a young, growing one at that), my plate was never empty and I did my best to finish the massive amounts of various salads, potatoes, meats and saalo (pig fat) that were piled on my plate. Although this was a big job, I managed, only running into problems when there was another man at the table. Along with recievingt a ‘man’s plate’ of food, I also received a ‘man’s cup’ of vodka, many of them, in fact. I say a cup because that how they drank it. Someimes there were large shot glasses reserved for the women, but for the most part, my glass could hold 100 grams and indeed did if there a a Russian pouring it (the realm of alcohol is also considered men’s work and the opening and pouring of any alcoholic beverage is always done by men). ‘Peer pressure’ doesn’t quite describe how they got me to drink so much. In Russia, refusing to drink with someone, especially another man, is considered a sign of disrespect (indeed, Russians will always ask, “A chto? Ty ne ovizhaesh’ menia?!” – ‘What? Don’t you respect me?’), so I tried to do what was culturally expected of me, often to the detriment of my responsibilities to the team. One or two cups tended to improve my fluency exponentially; it was cups three to six/seven/I lost count that really brought the difficulties. Nonetheless, I still had less troubles navigating the iced-over road than our sober(er) volunteers going back to our house every night.


One night we did a recording session with the ladies in costumes. These clothes are all hand made from scratch and have been passed down from generation to generation.

Despite what my account thus far may suggest, our trip was research-oriented. In the evenings we would record hours of folk songs from Luzhnaya’s choir while the days were generally spent interviewing individuals from the choir and their family members. The topics of our questionaires were Witches and the Domovoi (house spirit, from the Russian ‘dom’ - house). My friends in Irkutsk studied the Domovoi in their culture class as a vestige of the past, but this belief in a spirit that protects your house, farm and family is by no means dead. During the beginnings of the interviews, most of our informants were skeptical or outright rejected the Domovoi’s existence, but usually with time and question designed to open them up (“But has anyhone ever talked about him? Your mother/grandmother, maybe?”), they would recount some amazing stories. Because the Domovoi foloklore in that area of Russia was somewhat less elaborate (for example, house spirits wouldn’t fight with neighboring house spirits, they didn’t have a specific appearance, and they were always benevolent, never punishing the household for buying the wrong cattle or not leaving it kasha under the kitchen table), I was personally more fascinated by the village’s stories of witchcraft.
Many members of the community warned us that our hostess, Valentina Ilinichna, was a ver powerful witch who even had horns on her head. She, of course, would never tell us if she was a witch, but rather revealed that she was a healer. In Russian folklore, there’s no real difference between these two terms except one has negative conotations: witches will say they’re healers and healers will accuse others of being witches. Further, there is no white or black magic associated with these two titles; in Russia, magic is magic no matter by whom or how it is used.


Oftentimes, the clothes would have messages written to the girls suitors: this one reads, "Fenya, I sing to you about my love for you." Interesting for those Russian-speakers out there, it's not written correctly but phonetically ('a's instead of 'o's).

Russia’s folk culture of magic is very much alive, even in the cities (Moscow late-night commercials sometimes featured witches, promising to return husbands and cure drunkenness, among other things). This fact can be attributed to Russia’s late adoption of Christianity in 988 A.D. Pagan traditions were already very established by then, and the Orthodox Church simply grafted its religion over that of the pagan Slavs (that is, solstices, equinoxes and festival of the harvest became important saint days or otherwise Christian holidays). For that reason, Russian culture may seem very religious on the surface, but its deep roots are extremely pagan. In the village we heard stories of witches taking animal form, cursing people (literally ‘ruin’ or ‘spoil’ them, like fruit or meat) and dying long, painful deaths while crying in agony in inhuman, animal voices.
A witches death is particularly difficult since she must transfer her/his energy to someone else. Basically someone becomes a witch (or socerer for that matter. Some typical gendered differences differentiate witches from warlocks. Unlike women, men are thought to be capable enough to learn magic from books and are seen as typically more powerful than women). After dabbling innocently enough in magic. At some point, demons (before Christianity, simply spirits) begin calling up her/him to do magic. You see, witches are believed to have more energy or life force than normal people and therefore must use it some how. Demons are said to ‘strangle’ a witch until she uses her energy, for any purpose really, sometime against her own children and family just to stop the spirits. Similarly, a witch can’t die until she releases this energy into someone/something else. Sometimes the witch’s children take this energy, becoming witches themselves with the same obligation to demons; if they are very young, the demons then wait until the 18-20th birthday to beginning demanding work from the witchin question. If no one in the family wants this responsibility (resulting in no one wanting to touch the dying witch and small children being kept far away), then sometimes an animal is brought in order for the witch to die. One story from the village told of a farm animal being brought to a withc’s deathbed. Upon touching the animal, it exploded all over the room and the witch instantly died after days of suffering. As a side note, one of the only sure ways of knowing if someone is a witch or not is by how they died.
In the realm of folklore, there actually exists two worlds: our’s, that of the living, and the other world where we go on living after death, also the world of spirits, nymphs and domovoi. Certain people, places and stages in life link these two worlds in a sort of transgressional space (like “Crime and Punishment” that can also be translated as “Transgressions and Punishmen”). Doorways and other areas between two distinct places are seen as places between these two worlds, which is why Russians will never shake hands across a threshold. Witches link these worlds since they can see and sometimes talk with spirits and the dead. Lastly, transitional stages in life can represent a similar threshold in which the barriers separating our world from the other are thinner. These transitional stages of life are common to almost all cultures and include birth, marriage, childbirth (which is really just birth from another point of view) and death; you can generalize them as any ritual event whose product makes you something different than your original state (i.e. – nothing, a person, a husband, a father, and dead).
In Russian folklore these life stages, like other transitional places and people, make one vulnerable to the other world and its energy (magic). For this reason special precautions are taken to keep small children, fiances/newlyweds and the very old safe from magic, most of which involved metal objects, thought to deter magical energy. Pieces of clothing can be littered by diaper pins and keys are often kept under tables and above doorways (thresholds) to trap either the witch, or at the very least, her energy. These practices are very much alive. All of the (three) children we saw in the village under the age of five had diaper pins on their sweaters and such, protecting them from bad magic and the evil eye.
Like in our domovoi interviews, our informants (for the most part, educated teachers) at first denied the old beliefs in magic but often opened up with a little encouragement. In these interviews, daughters of alleged witches generally kept quiet in an ashamed manner, letting the others speak for them. The most interesting interviews came from the witches themselves who would begin by claiming, “Oh, I’m just a healer and I only know three or four spells for different ailments”. Once we started recording the spells, often with the other staff member, Moriah, playing the part of the sick person, the witches would go on, saying, “Oh, and then there’s this spell for such-and-such and ailment, and this one for so-and-so”. For the most part, the women were very flattered that someone, especially a Ph.D. (Yelena) was taking an interest in their old folk traditions and were eager to share with us, showing that the village’s generousity was not limited to food and drink.


One of our informents with her great-granddaughter. if you close-up under the woman's right hand, you'll see a diaper pins on the girl's sweater.

The village had no warm, running water or indoor plumbing. All ‘facilities’ (udobstva – ‘comforts’) were outside and the villagers’ language was colored with funny euphemisms for the necessary bodily functions (for example, ‘I’m going to count the stars/look and the moon/see the courtyard’ or my personal favorite from my banya partner, Kolya, “Nature just called me”). There were no showers or bathtubs and all bathing was done in the banya, a special house built somewhere on the property that housed a Russian sauna. Because our hostess was elderly and without young children, her banya was out of repair, and we were forced to rely on the kindness of the community to take care of our bathing needs. We were invited to a banya about every three days to ‘par’ (steam) ourselves. Men and women always bath separately (even husband and wife) with the men always giving perference and first dibbs on the steam. This presented some problems since my banya experience is limited and I didn’t know how to ‘par’ correctly (that is, I didn’t know the art of beating oneself with birch leaves as is Russian custom). Luckily, on my first trip to the banya, I was accompanied by Kolya, the son-in-law of the village Kolkhoz (collective farm) director, who was in town with this wife and daughter for the New Years holidays. Despite his near-indecipherable Belarussian accent, he taught me how to correctly beat myself with the branches and introduced the typical process of par-ing to me. Aside from the educational aspects of this first trip, I was honored to par with Kolya, who beared a remarkable resemblance to Vladimir Putin. Kolya was shorter and bald with quintessentially Slavic features (much like Russia’s current president). Although I relied greatly on the ‘smile and nod’ of the foreigner not comprehending much, Kolya told me all about the current state of Belarussian politics, his youth in a neighboring Belarussian village and his hopes for the future. After the women bathed, our hosting family made a huge table for us (of course) despite the fact that we had already eaten two dinners. Kolya even sang us some Belarussian folk songs in his booming voice. Walking us back to our house on the dark road that night, Kolya began singing the praises of the art and miracle of fishing in Russia, promising to show me exactly what that meant if I ever came back.
In our sessions with the choir, we recorded tons of songs along with the ways the members learned these songs (mostly from their mothers), culural contexts and occasions in which they were sung. The choir memebers were 47 or (often) older. The oldest members, who were automatically the choir’s leaders, had very good memories for the lyrics, melodies and origins of their songs, which often represented some of the oldest traditions of western-Russian folklore. Singing isn’t a form of entertainment in folk culture. It was always sung during the long, hard hours of agricultural labor in the fields to keeps everyone’s mind off the heat and difficulties. The music is never written down and is trasmitted orally from one generation to the next. Unlike much of western music, it is never sung solo; the choir members act as a support system for each other. The lyrics are very poetic and often without a concrete story; imagery is used to represent the emotions of the stories’ characters and often draw on archetypical imagery (for example, young men always have curley hair, the quintessence of male beauty; conversely, young women always have dark eyebrows as this was considered desirable. Fields and rivers always have a set color and different birds and animals represent different emotions and events like freedom or death. All in all, it’s much like a formula). I’m looking forward to sharing the hours of songs with Middlebury’s Russian Choir once I get back.
Our last night, we invited all those whom we met or had helped us in some way over for dinner. That night, our volunteers took their revenge for two weeks of over feeding by returning the favor and piling our guests’ plates full of the schmorgesborg of food and drinks we had prepared. No less than two bottles of wine and three bottles of vodka were finished before Valentina Ilinichna broke out the ‘samogon’ (homemade vodka). Middlebury always warns its students against any experimentation with this strong drink, as thousands of Russians die and go blind every year as a result of the spirits (which are often 80% alcohol or more). Based on the amount of alcohol I had had those two weeks and the security the two humongeous Russian men I was squished between provided me, I decided to try it. It was the most delicious samogon I had ever tried (although it was only my third time drinking the stuff) and I impressed myself by keeping up with my companions (all together, we drank three cups of it each that I can remember. By that point, I don’t really think I could count higher than three anyway). Inibriated to the point of zero-communication ability, I went to bed at one o’clock. The next morning, we started our thirteen-hour journey back to Moscow at 7 a.m., which was complicated by the frost that overtook Russian in mid-January 2006 (it was the coldest temperatures since the forties when Hitler was forced to retreat because of the cold). My hangover lasted until at least one in the afternoon and by the time I was back in Moscow, my mind was clear enough to meet Liza, Sara (two friends from Irkutsk who were visiting during the winter break), and Lindsey and pack/wrap up my last five months in Russia. Two days later, I was on a plane for Europe, filled with fond memories of snow, Stalin and samogon.


Going-away dinner.

posted by Misha Molodoi @ 10:04 PM