Village Notes: Ivan Kupala

In July it is almost unbearable to be outside at midday, due to the heat and the great gadflies. Our only relief is the rain, which occasionally pours on our village of Chukhrai from thundering black clouds, accompanied by flashes of lightning. The villagers gladly take a break from their gardens and the heat or rain to mark the Orthodox holiday of Ivan Kupala (John the Baptist Day) on July 7, commemorating the day the prophet is believed to have been born. It is considered a sin to work on religious holidays and Sundays. No laundry or cleaning for the women. No hitting anything with a hammer or chopping wood for the men. Most of the men in our village find these holidays, which come several times a month, a good excuse to get drunk.

Within a week, the villagers celebrate Petrov Den (St. Peter and Paul Day), although not like they used to. Before the war, the entire village reveled on this day, dancing and singing. The men rigged up a revolving wooden wheel, called a “reili” from the Old Russian verb meaning “to soar.” It had four wooden seats, each holding two people, hung at opposite ends of long beams affixed at right angles. The whole contraption rotated around a cross bar resting on high wooden posts. Two men stood below and pushed the seats up and over the cross bar with long poles. For a fare of only two eggs (to compensate the men for their troubles), one could ride on Chukhrai’s own Ferris wheel.

Having lived in Chukhrai with my husband Igor for seven years, I have learned that the villagers are devoted to the Russian Orthodox faith and associated holidays while at the same time adhere to many pagan beliefs. Igor says they have kasha (porridge) in their heads. They mark church holidays while revering shamans and good and evil spirits in the forest. They believe that wood nymphs live in the forest and mermaids dwell in the river. Over time, pagan rites have even worked their way into celebrations of Orthodox holidays.

On the eve of Ivan Kupala, for example, it is local tradition for the brave to venture into the woods after midnight in search of the flowering fern. This special kind of fern supposedly blooms once a year and very briefly – only for a few seconds. The person who finds the tiny flower immediately becomes omniscient by virtue of a divine imparting of knowledge. My 83-year-old friend, Olga Ivanovna, who lives down the way, says that a man from Chukhrai once found a fern flower and sliced open his skin to put the bloom under it, to prolong the moment of truth.

Another man reportedly went into the nearby woods on his horse the day before Ivan Kupala. He lost his way and even his horse in the forest. He fell asleep and that night a fern flower bloomed and fell into his shoe. When he woke up, he knew where his horse was and the way back to the village. He could hear what his family was talking about at home. Upon his return, he took off his shoe and the tiny flower fell out. Suddenly his afflatus vanished and he turned into the simpleton he had been before.

The villagers also attempt to collect the elusive oil of ants on the same night the fern flowers. Before the sun rises on Ivan Kupala, ants are said to roll a ball of oil to the top of their anthill. Once the sun is up, the oil melts and is impossible to gather. The villagers believe whoever succeeds in gathering the ant oil will be blessed with eternal health.

Despite the Soviets’ efforts to stamp out religious and pagan beliefs in the countryside, centuries-old traditions have held fast in Chukhrai. Considering religion a tool of the exploiting class, the Soviets tore down churches and persecuted worshippers. Religious repression was particularly great during the purges of the 1930s. Yet many villagers feared God’s retribution more than the Soviets’, believing that those who helped destroy churches suffered terrible fates as God’s punishment.

The nearest church to Chukhrai used to be an eight-mile walk down the rutted forest road to the village of Krasnaya Sloboda. The villagers went to that church to mark important religious holidays. In the early 1930s, Party officials ordered the church destroyed. The building was taken down, icons smashed, and bibles burned. Soon after, the man from Krasnaya Sloboda who toppled the bell from the bell tower started barking involuntarily like a dog. He could not say more than three or four words without barking. The townsfolk nicknamed him Gafkula (Barker). One day Gafkula slit his own throat. Sixty-five years later, his family is still suffering. His daughter died last year at the age of 50, of alcohol poisoning. Her husband drowned drunk, with his head in the river and the rest of him in a boat. Their son died this summer in a car accident and his brother was nearly killed along with him. The local people believe it is God’s Will.

The Soviets destroyed century-old churches in the nearby district center of Trubchevsk as well, though for reasons I do not understand, two were left standing. The villagers of Chukhrai used to hear the bells of the Church of Yegor ringing all the way from Trubchevsk – about 12 miles as the crow flies – before it was taken down and a public banya (bathhouse) was built in its place. People had to stop christening their children, although in larger towns, families with money took their babies to priests to be christened surreptitiously. In Chukhrai, the villagers continued to clandestinely celebrate religious holidays. On Easter they gathered in the house of the woman who used to live next door to where our barn now stands. They prayed and sang. But if the head of the village council caught them, he sent them home, threatening to report them to the Communist Party Office in Suzemka.

Communist repression of both religious and pagan traditions unfortunately took its toll over the years. I am sad to see that both religious and pagan traditions have nearly vanished in Chukhrai. Most of my 18 neighbors are elderly and, when they die, so do their beliefs. Their children dismissed their tales of wood nymphs and flowering ferns long ago, and refused to learn religious prayers or observe Lent. Perhaps when my friend Olga Ivanovna shares her traditions and stories with me, it is with the hope that I will strive to carry some of them on. Who knows? Next year on Ivan Kupala, maybe I will venture into the woods at midnight to seek omniscience from the elusive blossom of a flowering fern.  RL