The 33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make About Russia
The Secrets Only Insiders Know
WRITE IT RIGHT
Irene W. Galaktionova, Neil P. Woodhead
Copyright
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Copyright 2011 by Irene W. Galaktionova, Neil P. Woodhead
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-936507-14-6
Published by ACOA - http://aconspiracyofauthors.com/
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Text and Cover design: Holly Lisle
First printing 2011
Second Printing 2012
Irene W. Galaktionova is a Leningrad-born bilingual Russian/English writer and translator. Her articles on Russian history, culture and religion appeared in Russian Life, Gilbert’s Royal Digest, Home Cooking, Chicken Soup for the Christian Woman’s Soul and other publications. She is behind the book’s facts providing an insider’s know-how of what life in Russia really is, and was, like.
Neil P. Woodhead is a Cambridge-born writer and translator. Having spent much time in Russia and specializing in the country’s history and language, he is the critical and fact-checking power in the tandem. Neil made sure Irene wasn’t carried away with nostalgia and the book remained objective as well as informative.
You can contact them at:
* http://galaktio-nova.blogspot.com/
* My email:irene_woodhead@yahoo.com
Table of Contents
The 33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make About Russia
Mistake One - Russian Calendars
Mistake Two - Russian Festivals And Celebrations
Mistake Three - Going Out. Entertainment
Mistake Four - Russian Drinking Traditions
Mistake Five - Russian Food and Meals
Mistake Nine - Russian and Soviet Clothes
Mistake Ten - Architecture, Streets, Towns
Mistake Eleven - Russian Houses
Mistake Twelve - Interiors And Housekeeping
Mistake Thirteen - Steam Baths and Personal Hygiene
Mistake Fourteen - Family Life
Mistake Fifteen - Animals And Pets
Mistake Sixteen - Russian Traditional Culture And Music
Mistake Seventeen - Russian Dancing
Mistake Eighteen - Russian Swear Words
Mistake Nineteen - Travel And Transportation
Mistake Twenty-One - The Comrade Word (Aka “Tovarishch”)
Mistake Twenty-Two - Russian Name System
Mistake Twenty-Three - Russian Christian Names by Period
Mistake Twenty-Four - Russian Surnames
Mistake Twenty-Five - A Patronymic
Mistake Twenty-Six - Russian Diminutive Names
Mistake Twenty-Seven - Russian Addresses, Correspondence And Postal System
Mistake Twenty-Eight - Technical Bits (electricity, telephones, radios, TVs, etc)
Mistake Twenty-Nine - Stalinist Times And Mentality
Mistake Thirty - Straightforward Dialogue
Mistake Thirty-One - Russian Accent
Mistake Thirty-Two - Ethnic Stereotypes
Mistake Thirty-Three - Inadequate Research And Wrong Advisors
Welcome to A Conspiracy of Authors
We dedicate this book to all the authors who have written about Russia, with our appreciation of their work and love for the country.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Our biggest thanks to HOLLY LISLE who’s made this project possible.
Special thanks to RACHEL FLEET for all the great advice and suggestions that have enriched this book immensely.
All our COLLEAGUES at AbsoluteWrite.com’s Water Cooler for the wealth of advice and ideas on the Russian things they needed to know as writers.
Russia is a funny country, really. Everybody knows something about it. We’ve all met the staple Russian character: called Comrade Ivan, six foot eight, he drinks vodka, wears a fur hat with ear flaps and sings Kalinka to his British-accented adversary.
The question is, are you prepared to take a risk by busting a few myths? Are you sure that true-to-life Russian characters, settings and motivations will go down well with a reader who expects a knee-jerk set of clichés that haven’t changed since the Cold War?
If you are, you’ll find this book packed with original details to add depth and insight to your Russian setting. From traditions to calendar changes, from advice on choosing a period-correct name to the intricacies of Stalinist mentality, we’ve tried hard to show you what Russia is really like – so you could show it to your reader.
We’ve made sure that the bulk of the information in this book isn’t available in other English-language Internet sources. Of course, you probably know a lot about Russia already, but in literature, the Devil’s in the details, and we’ve taken care to list useful little-known details about familiar facts.
For this reason, we haven’t included many things that writers can easily research themselves on the Internet. All the information here is first-hand insider knowledge supported by purely Russian-language sources. We used English-language books and web sites only to double-check terminology, but never as a primary source.
We’ll be happy to provide further support in your Russia-related research. If, after reading this book, you still have questions or are in need of more information on Russian settings, etc, please write to us at irene_woodhead@yahoo.com and we’ll help you.
THE MISTAKES
Mistake One - Russian Calendars
It's all too easy to get obvious things wrong. When the subject is complicated, we do our research, we contact experts, and we make sure our information is indisputable.
But what can be complicated about a calendar? A Friday is a Friday, isn't it? All right, it may not have been a Friday five hundred years ago because everybody knows we used to have the Julian calendar then, so one might have to do a bit of calculation. But surely that should be enough?
No wonder even native Russian writers make numerous mistakes in their books whenever they come across something as simple as a Friday five hundred years ago.
Until the year 988, the Russians were officially pagans. Their calendar was a simple but quite accurate affair, based on the moon cycle.
They divided the year into moon months with cute descriptive names like Tráven (the Month of Grass, for May) or Lúty (Fierce, for February). Also, because the moon month has only 29 days so 12 moon months don't add up to the 365-day solar year, every three years or so (7 times in every 19 years, to be precise) the ancient Russians had an extra 13th month added after February. They broke months further down into five-day weeks and two-week periods.
As the ancient Slavs had a habit of counting things in bundles of forty, they also had forty-day periods, along with moon months. If they indeed had five days in a week (Saturday and Sunday being later borrowings from Christianity), such a rounded count made perfect sense.
The festive, sacred day of the week was Friday. And the four biggest festivals of the year were the nights of solstice and equinox. The spring equinox was the biggest event, celebrating the beginning of the new agricultural year.
Once Christianity became the official religion in 988 A.D., it brought along the old-fashioned Roman calendar, known to us as Julian. The years in it, though, in accordance with the Byzantian Christian tradition were counted not from Christ (Anno Domini, or A.D.), but from the Biblical creation of the world! Below, I'll show you how to calculate it. But at least the names of the months and week days became the same as we use now: Monday to Sunday and January to December.
Until 1492, the New Year in Russia started on March 1st. In 1492, though, the church moved the beginning of the New Year to September 1st (and there it still remains in the modern Russian Orthodox church calendar). In 1700, a young and enthusiastic Peter the Great moved the timing of the civil New Year again -- to January 1st, so that Russians could celebrate it in the same manner as Europeans, complete with tree and other trimmings. He also ordered to count years from Christ (A.D.) and not from Creation.
The Russians didn't really mind, especially because the new New Year fell on the twelve days of Christmas, so festivities abounded anyway. But the problem was, their January 1st wasn’t the same day as in Europe!
Europe had already been using the Gregorian calendar for centuries by then, while Russia was still stuck with the old and inaccurate Julian system, falling behind at a rate of one day in a century. So in Peter’s time, January 1st in Russia was January 12th in Europe!
Peter, however, didn't dare go the whole hog and switch to Gregorian. That would have meant adding 11 days which would have crashed the centuries-old agrarian calendar. Giving people a new celebration was okay; disrupting the schedule of all agricultural works in a predominantly illiterate country was something entirely different. So for another 200 years Russia had to live with being almost two weeks behind the rest of the world.
Finally, in 1918, the new Soviet government switched the country to the Gregorian calendar, adding the missing 13 days in the process. After going to bed on February 1st, 1918, the Russians woke up on February 14th. The Russian Orthodox church rejected the reform and is still maintaining the old Julian calendar, currently 13 days behind us all (very soon it'll be 14). That's why these days the Russian Orthodox Christmas falls on January 7th, which is December 25th according to the Julian calendar.
To finish it off, two details that you might want to keep in mind:
* Starting 988 A.D. until 1700 Christian Russia counted years not from Christ but from Creation. According to the Bible, the universe was created 5508 years before the birth of Jesus Christ. Regardless of how it ties up with humanity's 300,000-year history, it means you need to do a bit of maths if your story features any medieval Russian settings. For example, your Italian merchant or Danish adventurer may travel to Russia in 1457 A.D., but once he arrives in Moscow or Novgorod, it's the year 6965 from Creation local time!
So in all medieval Russian documents, in all chronicles and written charts (granted, illiterate common folk didn't give a damn about what year it was) the dates are given "from Creation". In 7208 (from Creation), Peter the Great stopped this practice and ordered to count years "from Christ" -- which turned that particular year into 1700 A.D.
Example (from an original medieval Russian chronicle):
"In the year of our Lord 6621, there was a solar eclipse in the sky one hour after noon."
Do a bit of calculation by deducting 5508 from this date, and you'll see that the said eclipse took place in 1113 A.D.
* The second detail to get right is the period of 1929 to 1940. In 1929, the Soviet government dropped the traditional seven-day week in favor of a five-day week. The economic gains were obvious: although workers could now have a day off every four days, the factories still worked non-stop!
Starting autumn 1929 until springtime 1930 the Soviet Union was gradually switching from the traditional seven-day week to the new five-day one. It was still the old calendar system where every month had its usual name and number of days. The names of week days remained the same, too, only now the new five-day week was overlapping the old seven-day version. It resulted in a truly complex grid as each person had to remember which particular day of the old seven-day week was his day off: one every five days, it had to be a different day every week. It was a very awkward system, so no wonder it didn't last.
By 1931, the five-day week proved a total failure. People didn't like to take turns resting; they wanted to have a proper week end. So in 1931 a six-day week was introduced, with the sixth day off for everyone.
On November 21, 1931 the Soviet Union officially switched to the six-day week. Now the old seven-day week was eliminated completely. The names of week days (Sunday, Monday, etc) went out of use, replaced by the ridiculous "the first day of the six-day week, the second day of the six-day week..." Yes, that's exactly how people called them, cross my heart!
So using a word like Friday for the years 1931-1940 in the USSR would be anachronystic. I've studied many original documents from that period and noticed that they didn't mention the names of week days at all, as if a week as a unit of time had ceased to exist.
The names of the months remained the same -- from January to December -- only now all people had a fixed day off every 6th, 12th, 18th, 24th and 30th day of the month. In the months that contained 31 days, the last day was considered overtime and was paid double. February with its 28 or 29 days was an exception: its last day could be a day off, too, in order not to break the system.
This innovation lasted until June 26 1940, after which Russia returned to the Gregorian calendar and now lives in unison with the rest of the world.
Mistake Two - Russian Festivals And Celebrations
The history of Russian festivals can be broken down into two parts: pre- and post-1917 (the year of the Socialist Revolution). For almost a thousand years, from 988 until 1917, Russia was a Christian country so all the major holidays were the same as in other Christian countries, especially Catholic countries.
(Although Christian Orthodoxy differs from Catholicism quite a bit, they’re also similar in many ways, so if you’re familiar with Catholicism, it can give you a general idea of what Russian Orthodoxy is all about. In fact, until the 14th century the Russian church had been influenced by Rome not Byzantine, and the sibling monks Cyril and Methodius who created the Cyrillic alphabet were sent to enlighten Russia by the Pope, not by the Greeks.)
For a thousand years, Russia remained a religious state where the church played the main role in governmental activities, and governments acted in the interests of the church. Even the Tartars during the centuries of their occupation didn’t challenge the position of the church (most likely realizing its importance in keeping the population of the occupied areas happy and under control).
Which festivals and celebrations does it leave us with? Christmas and Easter come first, of course. Nicholmas (December 6) and St John’s Day (June 24) were two other major celebrations. Plus a plethora of other major and minor holidays and saints’ days. You can find a complete list of them here: http://www.holytrinityorthodox.com/calendar
All religious holidays were celebrated in the same way and started with a morning trip to the church for a festive service (BTW, do you know that there’re no pews in a Russian Orthodox church? Everybody should stand to show their respect to God, an exception being made only for the sick, old, and pregnant). The service was then followed by a feast and some quality merry-making that usually showed no respect for the holy day whatsoever.
Many countries celebrate Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) – a major festival preceding the lean fast weeks of Lent. So they do in Russia, only there it lasts not just one Tuesday, but the whole week! Máslenitsa (Fat Week) is the last week before Lent when the church already forbids one to eat meat, but dairy products (and alcohol!) are still allowed. So the week of Maslenitsa turns into a major binge when the whole Russian population happily overdoes it on vodka and pancakes.
Now is a good moment to say that ancient pagan traditions were extremely strong in Russia. Christian holidays, like Christmas, Mardi Gras or St John’s day, coincided with the pagan festivals of respectively Winter Solstice, the end of the winter and Summer Solstice. So in Russian people’s heads the old traditions got mixed with the new ones, and many a pagan ritual wriggled its way into new Christian celebrations.
During the Fat Week, they would burn an ugly straw figure of Maslenitsa, the symbol of winter. Pancakes, round as the sun, welcomed its return and the beginning of a new solar year. Sending a burning cart wheel rolling down a hill slope was another symbol of welcoming the Sun back.
On St. John’s Day, young Russians would jump over campfires (a pagan cleansing ritual) and go out into the woods at night in search of a fern blossom, rumored to show its owner the way to hidden underground treasures. Church officials went completely berserk trying to eliminate those remains of pagan influence, but with zero success.
Christmas was celebrated in more or less the same way as in the West (don’t forget that the Christmas tree and the father figure of Santa were 19th-century additions to Christianity, unknown to earlier generations). At Christmas time, village children and adults would go "starring": walk with a decorated star on a pole singing carols at their neighbors’ doors and expecting a treat in return.
Rich children’s parties staged around the Christmas tree became increasingly popular starting mid-19th century Russia, often involving musicians and entertainers, and of course gifts for all the guests. Such a celebration was called a yólka (a tree party).
Like elsewhere, Christmas in Russia was followed by the Twelve Days of Christmas (Svyátki) which were considered unholy and open to the Devil’s charms. They were also believed relatively safe for all encounters with the Devil’s force, especially through fortune telling. Unmarried Russian girls used Svyatki to find out more about their future through countless fortune-telling rituals.
But the biggest religious holiday of the year in Russia was – and is – Easter. It is part of the Orthodox philosophy that on Christmas, we celebrate the arrival of Christ on Earth while on Easter, we celebrate his victory over death and salvation of all humanity. The Russians celebrate Easter the whole week feasting on rich foods which were forbidden during the seven weeks of Lent.
Personal and family celebrations were numerous in the old days, too. Common Russian people never remembered their birthdays (like most medieval people, many had problems remembering how old they actually were). Instead, they celebrated their Saint’s day, or naming day.
As I explain later in the chapter about Russian first names, until 1917, every Russian person was named after the saint on whose day his birth or christening took place. This celebration substituted birthdays for all Russians. Other major family celebrations included engagements, weddings, christenings, funerals and housewarming parties. All of them were long-winded affairs that could last for weeks, planned well in advance according to a complex detailed etiquette. You can find out more about various Russian customs and traditions here: http://www.russia-ic.com/culture_art/traditions/
The Revolution of 1917 put an end to the predictable old routine. Church was separated from the state, and all religious celebrations, although not banned outright, were viewed as hilarious superstitions only forgivable to ignorant old women. The new socialist festivals included, in the early 1920s:
January 22 (Bloody Sunday when in 1905 a peaceful demonstration was gunned down by the Imperial Guard)
March 12 (Fall Of Tsarism),
March 18 (Paris Commune Day)
May 1 (Labor Day, celebrated until today),
November 7 (October Revolution Day)
The above celebrations were public holidays for all Russians. In 1928, a few changes were introduced: two consequent days off were granted for all working population, on May 1 and 2 and November 7 and 8.
In 1929, holidays were sharply cut down. Only five public holidays remained in a year:
January 22 – Bloody Sunday and also Lenin’s memory day (he died on January 22 1924);
May 1 and 2;
November 7 and 8.
In 1945, V-Day was added: May 9. The Russians celebrate V-Day on May 9 for two reasons: firstly, because of time difference as the capitulation of Germany was signed on May 8 very late at night which was already May 9 in Russia. And secondly, because Russian troops kept fighting on May 9 to defeat remaining German troops in Prague who refused to accept their country's capitulation.
In 1945 and 1946, September 3 also was a public holiday as VJ-Day. In 1947, though, V-Day and VJ-Day became work days again. In 1947, January 1 became a public holiday for the first time.
In 1965, more public holidays were added:
March 8 – International Women’s Day
May 9 – V-Day
December 5 – Constitution Day
In 1992, after Russia became independent from the USSR (the irony of which is lost on me), the list suffered a total overhaul:
January 1 – New Year’s Day
January 7 – Christmas
March 8 – Women’s Day
May 1 and 2 – Labor Day
May 9 – V-Day
June 12 – Independence Day (yeah yeah)
November 7 – October Revolution Day (yes, it was still celebrated)
December 12 – Constitution Day
In 2002 February 23, The Defender Of The Fatherland Day, was added as a public holiday.
Finally, in 2005 the last changes were introduced:
January 1-5 – New Year’s holidays for all!
January 7 – Christmas
February 23 – Defender of the Fatherland
March 8 – Women’s Day
May 1 – Labor Day
May 9 – V-Day
June 12 – Russia Day (finally they cut out this independence nonsense)
November 4 – National Unity Day
Also, the Orthodox religion using the old Julian calendar resulted in a surreal situation where we have two versions of the two main winter holidays. The Western Christmas of December 25 is not a Russian holiday any way you look at it, but still a valid excuse for a few drinks and Santa TV shows. It’s followed by the New Year which is the biggest Russian holiday washed down with liters of bubbly and lit up with tons of fireworks.
Then, on January 7, it’s Orthodox Christmas! This is a strictly religious holiday though, that involves church going and pious thinking. All the cheerful extras like the tree and Father Frost belong to New Year’s Day.
Finally, simply because Russians would never miss an excuse for a party, January 13 is January 1 according to the old Julian church calendar. Nobody forces Russians to celebrate it, especially because, if you remember, the Orthodox church year starts on September 1st. But they party, anyway. By January 13 (called Old New Year), you’re supposed to have test-driven your New Year resolutions so now you can actually start living them!
Probably, the most respected holiday of the year is V-day. Instead of Mother’s Day, we have March 8, or Women’s Day. On this occasion, all girls and women receive signs of affection, greeting cards, flowers and gifts. Schoolboys write cards to their chosen classmates, fathers honor their mothers, wives, daughters – every female in the family, and all men at workplaces throw parties for their female colleagues.
Similarly, the Defender of the Fatherland is the day to honor all men, whether they’re two or ninety-two years old. This festival started as the anniversary of the Soviet military forces, hence the name, but the military leaning quickly became obsolete, and today it’s just an official excuse to show our affection to the men in our lives.
In the last few years, although not officially recognized, St Valentine’s day has become overwhelmingly popular in Russia.
There’re also a few official holidays that remain just that—official. Nobody in their right mind celebrates Independence Day on June 12. Ditto for November 4 and Constitution Day – nobody cares about their meaning, but people are always grateful for an extra bank holiday they can spend around their families.
Here's a link to an excellent site that lists official Russian celebrations of today, including professional holidays: http://russiatrek.org/about-russian-holidays
Two things to get right:
* The introduction of Santa Claus in the late 19th century didn’t quite work in Russia, for two reasons. Firstly, at that time the Russians already had their own cult of St Nicholas who was, and still is, the most revered saint in the Russian Orthodox tradition, and the cute image of a bearded chimney-climber just didn’t fit in. Secondly, the Russians had their own folklore character of a bearded and clamorous winter spirit, the giver of gifts and commander of snowstorms: Father Frost. So the Western figure of Santa simply merged with that of Father Frost.
Only approx. 15% of the Russian population before 1917 – nobility and educated classes – celebrated Christmas or New Year in the Western style, with the tree, gifts, Father Frost and trimmings. For common people, these were unwanted Western innovations. Common Russian people of Tsarist times never celebrated the New Year in any shape or form, and as for Christmas, it was all about church-going, feasting and fortune-telling. Children didn’t get any special treatment: no gifts from Father Frost, only the joys of starring, playing in the snow and eating their fill.
When Christmas became obsolete after 1917, its traditions naturally transferred to New Year’s Day, but not all at once. Until 1947, New Year’s day was a working day like any other, marked sometimes by a meal or a low-key get-together. No fireworks or bubbly-opening, no gifts and definitely no tree parties for the kids!
Children’s tree parties were branded bourgeois and ridiculed. Still, as years went by, the new regime felt obliged to introduce a few celebrations to cheer its subjects up a bit. Tree parties were reintroduced in 1936 as part of New Year’s celebrations, but only for kids. Instead of the eight-pointed star of Bethlehem, the tree was crowned with a red five-pointed one. Tree decorations of Stalin’s times were made of cotton wool and paper mache and depicted modern themes like airplanes and pilots, polar explorers, balloons and zeppelins, vehicles, drivers, and wild animals. No fantasy subjects were allowed as socialist ideologists believed fantasy and fairy tales ruinous for a child’s psyche. Progressive Russian educators of the time fought passionately against that misconception, but with little success.
In Russian folk tales, Father Frost sometimes has a granddaughter, Snegúrochka (Snow Girl). When children’s tree parties were reintroduced in 1936, she made her first public appearance next to her grandfather. No chimney-climbing though: the two mysteriously leave gifts under the tree and move on in their airborne troika (no reindeer, either: horse power!). Snegurochka is a kind-hearted and pretty but extremely fragile creature: made of snow, she will melt with the first rays of the sun or touch of human love.
For adults, January 1st was a work day and celebrations were minimal. In 1947, it finally became a day off and quickly turned into the biggest yearly celebration complete with the tree, gifts, champagne and resolutions.
* During the first years immediately after the revolution, religion wasn’t banned, and neither were religious holidays. Until 1929, many Russian calendars included the big Christian festivals: Christmas, Easter, Assumption, Ascension, Transfiguration and Pentecost, but they weren’t public holidays any more. Although the new revolutionary generation ridiculed and insulted church goers as “walking anachronisms”, most people kept celebrating them out of habit and inbred religious feeling.
After 1929 – the year when the Soviet state started a fierce centralized attack on all religions and religious people – most still kept the good old Christian traditions. Many (but not all) Communist Party members shied away from such politically incorrect activities, but their mothers and wives inevitably found out, through hearsay, the dates for Easter and other festivals, and made sure to hand-paint a few eggs and bake an Easter cake.
Of course, such activities were a rather dangerous secret as the state could take children away from a religious mother and place them in an orphanage. But the results of the 1937 census showed that one third of all town populations and two thirds of villagers considered themselves religious. The Easter night of 1941 in Leningrad, just months before the Russian war on Hitler started, turned into a thousand-strong demonstration when even the mounted police couldn’t disperse crowds of believers who surrounded the city’s churches because there was no place left for them inside.
The war radically changed the Russian state’s attitude to religion. Stalin remembered his seminary training: in the autumn of 1941, he had several private meetings with high church officials and stopped some of the more aggressive antireligious publications. Clergy members were no longer subject to NKVD arrests, and local authorities even encouraged their preaching. Needless to say, during the war years churches were packed with people praying about saving Russia from Hitler’s hordes.
Here are a few lines from the soldier M. Cherkasov’s letter from the front, typical of those days:
“Mama, I’ve joined the Party. Mama, please pray for me.”
After the war, religion, although separated from the Soviet state, existed sort of parallel to it: believers were still the object of scorn and ridicule, and young people who went to church could pay dearly: they could be expelled from the obligatory Young Communist League which automatically implied expulsion from college or university with negative references that made it next to impossible to enter another one. Religion had a very unfavorable image in the press, but despite all that, religious holidays were still celebrated in almost every Russian family.
Mistake Three - Going Out. Entertainment
In this area, Western writers tend to be totally confused. Are there bars in Russia? Where would my Russian character meet my secret agent? Do Russians go out at all?
A brief bit of history for those who like to set their books in times of yesteryear. Medieval Russians didn’t boast much as far as fun was concerned. Until Ivan the Terrible (that’s 1546), there was only one place for people to meet and have fun: a local inn, or, in Russian, a korchmá. There men would come and discuss their business over a cup of mead or beer. Patrons weren’t obliged to buy anything and could bring along their own food and drink. Inns were especially popular on market days when they filled with peasants on their way to the fair, traveling artists, monks, highwaymen and an inevitable informer eager to report a careless word and get his reward.
The Russian Orthodox Church despised entertainment and did everything possible to ban it. They proclaimed dancing a grave sin, and theater, a diabolical inspiration. Medieval Russians were extremely pious and many of them looked at actors and musicians as shameless time-wasters.
Traveling musicians and jesters, or, in Russian, skomorókhs, led a very miserable lifestyle. Prosecuted by the church, they never felt safe unless they got a gig performing at some local prince’s court. Disguised as animals and fantasy creatures, they played flutes, violas, bagpipes and tambourines (but never the triangular balalaikas as they were only invented in the 19th century) and their shows, like everywhere else in the Medieval world, could be quite obscene.
The only kind of entertainment the church approved of were blind traveling singers who sang pious ballads about the lives of saints and such like. They were popular especially with married women who were cloistered inside their houses and couldn’t go out to have fun.
Russians weren’t heavy drinkers at the time. It was Ivan the Terrible who forever changed the Russians’ attitude to drink. He realized the amount of money the treasury lost on every cup of alcohol sold tax-free all over the country. So he forbade to sell liquor everywhere and introduced a new institution to do just that: a bar, or kabák.
Unlike in a korchmá, where a drink was just a pleasant addition to a nice conversation and good company, the sole goal of kabáks was to extract as much money out of every customer as possible. They didn’t sell food to go with drinks, but would accept anything as a pay, down to the shirt off a drunkard’s back. Kabak owners encouraged heavy drinking and quickly became the ruin of every community.
When Peter the Great introduced Western lifestyle in 1700, it included “proper” European music and theater, especially Italian opera. But it didn’t change the Russians’ attitude to performers as useless sinners. They considered artists a lower caste, all drunkards and prostitutes.
In the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, serfs’ performances became very popular with nobility. The most talented of their slaves were trained to become professional singers, ballet dancers, poets, painters, etc. Some rich serf owners sent their slaves as far as Paris and Italy to master their art. Landowners’ theaters boasted the latest operas and dramas performed by artists of outstanding talent. It didn’t change their lives, though: a diva on stage became a slave the moment she left it, and would often be whipped to near death for an insufficiently brilliant performance.
In Tsarist times, low-class Russian people never went to theaters or even circuses. The only way of entertainment left to them was the wretched kabák. Women stayed at home doing housework while their sons and husbands drunk themselves into oblivion.
That’s why in the 19th and early 20th century most Russians considered drama theater a loathsome, shameful entertainment unfit for decent people. The country’s leading playwrights and stage directors like Ostrovski, Chekhov or Stanislavski fought hard against this image and revolutionized the very art of drama in the process.
So please keep in mind that in Tsarist times most Russians, apart from some artsy intellectuals, traditionally despised stage performers. This attitude still persists even today! A low-class Russian doesn’t see much difference between an actress and a prostitute and believes that all artists lead an inferior lifestyle of booze and easy money.
The first movie theaters were met with great interest and the first Russian silent movies had good scripts and some excellent artists. Circus was considered entirely third-rate, good only for little children and chambermaids.
Historically, going out to eat wasn’t a common thing for a Russian to do at all. Restaurants and taverns, or in Russian, traktírs (truck-TEER), catered to single men or travelers. Very often well-to-do bachelors who didn’t want to hire a chef ordered their meals from a traktir, but even then they wouldn’t go there themselves but sent a valet to fetch it. Only by the turn of the 20th century going out became more popular among men, especially merchants, and many a multi-million deal was closed over a dish of rasstegái (a Russian layer meat pie). Decent women wouldn’t be seen in a restaurant at all: they weren’t even expected to know such disgusting places existed.
After the revolution, kabaks were finally destroyed. The first years of the revolution did a lot for the arts, especially theater. Some of Russia’s best theaters were created in the early 1920s, and the old existing ones got a new life and stable funding.
In the 1920s and 1930s, drama and movie theaters were extremely popular, while circus was still considered a low form of entertainment. Going out for a meal was considered decadent and bourgeois, so only higher-standing Russians ventured out to restaurants. Common people preferred to entertain at home, with a meal and the unavoidable Gramophone afterwards: for them, every outing was a memorable event.
They loved going to the movies, so I attach a list of most popular Russian films below, in the end of this chapter.
During the Second World War, you can forget restaurants entirely, but theater and musical shows became very common and popular, to boost the population’s morale. Concert teams performed at the front and in military hospitals, and many new war-themed plays and songs were written overnight to be performed the next day.
As the Cold War came into being, the Soviet state had to come up with a popular alternative to forbidden Western music. Opera was called in to fill in the gap, and throughout the late 1940s until the end of the 1950s it remained a much loved form of entertainment in Russia. With radio broadcasting Rossini and Mozart in every home, many common Russian people (especially girls) of that time knew the scores by heart and could sing along with them, too! Neurotic fans of prominent tenors like Ivan Kozlovski and Sergei Lémeshev never missed their favorite’s performance and indulged in fan wars with the opposite claque.
At that time, going out became an exceptional but acceptable (not immoral) event. It took Khrushchev’s thawing era to gradually reintroduce Soviet people to the idea of a café: a relatively new form of outing in Soviet times, especially popular with students who couldn’t afford a meal but could scrape enough small change together for a cup of coffee, a glass of Georgian wine, a shot of Armenian brandy or an ice-cream.
At the same time (from the early 1960s onwards) theater and movies dominate as entertainment, and in the early 1970s, television adds to them and quickly becomes their serious competition. Classical music slowly lags behind as the Soviet musical authorities, intent to make rock music serve socialist purposes, create the so-called VIA (vocal and instrumental ensemble).
VIAs performed a very tame version of rock music with politically correct lyrics; they usually consisted of really good, talented musicians who chose to be part of the system with a guaranteed wage and stable gigs in inevitably full houses. The most famous (and admittedly good) were Pesnyary (The Singers in Byelorussian), Poyúshchie Serdtsá (The Singing Hearts), Poyúshchie Gitáry (The Singing Guitars) and others.
They were no competition though to the real 1960s-1970s underground rock music in Russia, with names like the still-with-us Time Machine or the long gone Voskresénie (Resurrection). The early 1980s gave start to the first generation of Russian rock music per se: Time Machine, DDT, Kinó and a multitude of others shattered stadiums forcing the state to change the official attitude to rock music. The first discos appeared in the late 1970s playing the latest hits of officially allowed safe acts like Boney M, ABBA, Baccara and Bee Gees.
In the 1970s, restaurants and cafés become an acceptable even if slightly pricey form of entertainment. They were viewed as an exception, a deviation from home cooking, but weren’t prohibitively expensive. Special occasions, weddings and anniversaries were almost exclusively held at restaurants. They served standard Soviet dishes: Beuf Stroganoff, pelmeni, beef tongues, meat stews, various salads and starters like caviar and hard-smoked sausage. Drinks included Georgian and Moldavian wines, Russian bubbly, Armenian brandy and vodka (the latter two served in a decanter, not in the original bottles).
By the way, an important detail to remember is that a Russian restaurant of any period always has live music in the evenings and a dance floor. It’s impossible to describe it without a group of tipsy dancers and a local band bashing away at popular radio tunes on a small stage.
Finally, two details to keep in mind:
* Here’s a list of some of Russia’s most popular movies. Why? – I just think it’s a nice detail to drop an occasional period-related movie title in a book: shows the author has done his or her homework! So here’re a few that people really loved and went back to the movies again and again to watch the same cult film for the umpteenth time.
For more information on each movie (story, actors, etc), go to http://www.imdb.com/.
1924 Aelita (sci fi drama set on Mars)
1930 St Jorgen’s Day (an admittedly funny antireligious comedy – churchgoers beware!),
1934 Chapáev (a cult film about the legendary Civil war commander)
1934 Jolly Fellows (a cult comedy, Russia’s favorite of all times)
1936 Seven Brave Men (a drama about an Arctic expedition)
1938 Volga Volga (another cult comedy)
1943 Two Soldiers (war drama)
1947 Cinderella (an absolute classic)
1948 The Young Guard (real-life drama of a Resistance movement in a German-occupied Russian town)
1949 The Kuban Cossacks (a light-hearted musical comedy, No 1 at the time, later accused of pro-Stalinist “reality polishing”)
1955 Tiger Girl (a comedy of circus life backstage)
1956 Carnival Night (a New Year comedy, the name speaks for itself)
1959 Ballad of a Soldier (an award-winning war drama)
1961 Nine Days Of One Year (a drama about atomic scientists)
1962 The Amphibian Man (sentimental scifi-ish love story)
1967 Kidnapping Caucasian Style (a side-splitting comedy)
1968 The Diamond Arm (another side-splitting comedy from the same director)
1969 White Sun Of The Desert (a cult movie based on Civil war events in one of Russia’s Muslim republics)
Please note! White Sun Of The Desert is the film that all Russian astronauts traditionally watch the night before the flight. Not doing so is believed to bring bad luck to the crew.
From that point on, TV took over and next cult movies were made specifically for television:
1973 Seventeen Moments Of Spring (a mini-series about a Russian secret agent in wartime Berlin with its hero Sturmbahnführer Stirlitz aka Colonel Maxim Isaev)
1975 The Irony Of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath! (a sentimental comedy set on New Year’s night, it’s become a traditional New Year’s Eve watch)
Of foreign films, the most popular were The Great Waltz, Sun Valley Serenade, The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, The Sound Of Music, Oliver!, West Side Story, The Magnificent Seven, Spartacus, Cleopatra, Tootsie, Romancing The Stone, Crocodile Dundee, to name just a few, plus countless Bollywood flicks and French costume dramas.
* The second thing to get right: Romance. In Tsarist Russia, there was no such thing as asking a girl out. A suitor was supposed to court her in the safety of her home, with all her family present. Usually, the girl’s family would invite the young man to tea or dinner. An occasional ball or a trip to the park or a skating-rink, too, were prim-and-proper events, and the girl had to be accompanied by a chaperone.
Common Russians didn’t have even that because marriages were for the most part arranged. A walk with a suitor in her father’s garden was the only acceptable thing for a merchant’s or craftsman’s daughter to do.
In the early Soviet times, the ideas of free love hit the country hard as more and more young people moved in together within days and sometimes hours of meeting each other. More revolutionary-minded ones considered dating a ridiculous bourgeois ritual to be ashamed of.
Still, by the early 1930s family values were back with a vengeance. It was okay for an independent girl to go to a dance, drama or movie theater or a restaurant with a young man. Naturally, both dressed as best they could. The girl’s family would invite a potential suitor for a meal, but she wasn’t supposed to visit his place if he lived alone. She could only visit him in order to be introduced to his parents.
Things remained this way until the early 1960s, but Russians have never been back to the unconditional free-love craze that hit them in the late 1910s – fifty years earlier than the rest of the world. Today, they still remain a rather ceremonious lot and adore dating rituals like going out to a dance or a quiet walk in the moonlight.
Mistake Four - Russian Drinking Traditions
We all know that the Russians enjoy their drink. This fact was even historically recorded when in 986 Prince Vladimir of Kiev rejected the suggestion of Islam becoming a Russian state religion with the following words: "Drinking is the joy of the Rus, we cannot live without it."
By the way, vodka and other distilled spirits weren't known in Russia until 1517. Before that, Russians used to drink beers, meads, and strong bread wine. The word "vodka" itself was first mentioned in writing only in 1751!
The tradition of throwing one's empty glass on the floor, so popular with Hollywood movie makers, has a very symbolic background. It's an extremely rare thing to do (thank God for that!) and symbolizes the end of the old life: from this party onwards, a new life starts, where everything will be new including wine glasses. As such, glass-throwing is limited mainly to weddings.
Indeed, if you happened to live amongst Russians for any considerable period of time, you might have noticed that drinking habits vary dramatically between people there. It's absolutely true that every Russian family has its alcoholic: a son, an uncle, or a cousin twice removed. On the other hand, I've met many more complete teetotallers in Russia than in European countries.
It's not that the Russians abstain a lot, it's just that their drinking habits are entirely different from those of Westerners'. And below are the two main differences to keep in mind:
* Firstly, it's not part of the Soviet or modern Russian culture to drink on a daily basis. For example, it's perfectly acceptable for a French person to wash their lunch down with a half-bottle of wine. A Briton would often end his or her work day with a pint of beer or a glass of wine in the local pub. Nobody would ever dream of calling these people alcoholics: a drink or two a day is part of many Westerners' lifestyle.
In Tsarist times, Russians used to have similar traditions when a shotglass or two of vodka at lunchtime or dinner were perfectly acceptable. In the Soviet days though, it changed: partly due to the fact that liquour had become more expensive and harder to obtain, and partly due to numerous anti-alcohol campaigns.
For the Soviet-era Russians, having a long "social" drink every night was a foreign concept. From the Russian point of view, only alcoholics drink on a daily basis (and true, every Russian dreads of becoming one).
The philosophy behind it is that a Russian person always needs something to drink to: a good reason, an occasion, a celebration. They won't just sit around nursing their drinks for no particular purpose. For Russians, alcohol is something to celebrate other things with, a happy and convenient deviation from the drab daily routine.
All they need is a good reason. A wedding, a housewarming party, a university graduation -- everything goes as long as you can toast it. It's another firm belief in Russian minds that only alcoholics drink without a toast. Even a company of homeless drunks sharing a swig of the cheapest cologne will rummage through a binned last-year political calendar and drink to the 35th anniversary of the independence of Mozambique because they can't just drink, they need something to drink to!
That's why social drinking Western-style is alien to the Russian way of life. Now it changes, though; as new Russians once again look to the West for lifestyle ideas, just as they did in Peter the Great’s times.
A Russian man's goal and pride is in drinking as much as he can while staying in control for as long as he can, and sipping at his glass all evening just won't cut it.
By the way, whatever the Russians toast, they never say Na Zdorovie! This phrase is a myth with a capital M. It's Russian all right, but all it means is "you're welcome", so naturally it can't be used as a toast.
What they do say quite often though is "Za Zdorovie..." It means "To the health of..." so it has to be followed by the name of a person whose health the company's drinking. On it's own, it's just as meaningless as Na Zdorovie.
A Russian man knows that in order to stay on his feet all night, he needs to choose one particular type of alcohol and stick with it. Drinking first wine, then vodka, then port will result in getting intoxicated really quickly, and that's not the idea. Russians highly disapprove of mixing drinks in their stomachs.
For that reason, cocktails aren't popular in Russia because that's exactly what they are: different types of alcohol mixed together in one glass. Cocktails, in the Russian view, are part of the exotic Western lifestyle, good only for curious ladies and effeminate decadents.
Drinking alcohol on an empty stomach will knock you off your feet in no time, too, and repeat, that's not the idea! That's why Russians always take alcohol in combination with some serious protein-based starters, preferably hot ones, like fish, meat, or sausages. Meat salads are especially popular, as are pickled vegetables: these foods slow down the intoxication process, which is vital if there's an unspoken drinking competition going on.
So the party goes as follows: you toast an event -- you gobble your whole drink down (it helps if you exhale first and hold your breath while drinking) and tuck into your plate. The conversation goes on until another toast calls for another drink and probably another helping of food. It's considered very bad manners to sip at your drink on your own: nobody touches their glasses between toasts.
An average company of normal educated people would stop after a few toasts and happily go home (and the person who drives will never, repeat never as much as sniff the bottle), but serious party animals will go on until there's nobody left firm enough on their feet to fetch more alcohol.
Drink driving is a big problem in Russia, but average middle-class people make a very serious point of totally abstaining from drinking at parties if they have to drive. Russian men do take it personally if a fellow reveller fails to support a toast, but "Sorry, I'm driving" is a watertight and respected excuse to refuse a drink.
You might have noticed I've been speaking mainly about men here. I've done that for a reason, and this is the second thing to keep in mind as far as Russian drinking traditions are concerned:
* Russian women have an entirely different drinking pattern from that of their men's.
Historically, Russian women of all classes were not supposed to drink at all. A little wine or beer at a celebration was okay, but asking for some vodka was considered a huge faux pas. That was something only loose women did.
It's still not very different today. Drinking vodka isn't considered an awfully proper thing to do for a lady unless she's a war veteran on V-day. All mixed parties usually have two categories of drinks: vodka and other strong spirits for men and "sweet wines" like port and bubbly "for the ladies".
If the said ladies do agree to try some vodka, they usually do it in their own peculiar way. They would have another glass filled with lemonade or other soft drink. They would then have a few quick tiny swigs of vodka (clearing the whole glass not being a proper thing for a lady to do) and wash it down with sweet lemonade.
Overall, women are not expected to finish their glasses: a drink may last two or three toasts. Repeat, it's not good manners to touch your drink between toasts: you need to wait for the next one and then continue drinking with everybody else. This way, you only drink as part of a company: a community ritual rather than a mealtime habit.