MOSCOW — In the snowy silence of a Moscow park, a 26-year-old businessman named Aleksandr Pushkov stood naked except for his Speedo, a column of steam rising from his body. His clothes were piled under a tree, and he had just climbed out of a hole in the ice.
Sergey Ponomarev/Associated Press
A woman in icy waters in Rostov.
Sergei Ilnitsky/European Pressphoto Agency
An Orthodox priest in Moscow also followed the tradition.
It was his seventh year taking part in the Epiphany ritual: the trance-like preparation, the electric shock of the water and the 20- or 30-second wait for a feeling he described as “nirvana.” As cross-country skiers picked their way through the woods, Mr. Pushkov stood by himself, barefoot and steaming. The midday sun was just visible above the horizon, as white and remote as a full moon.
Monday was Russian Orthodox Epiphany, and roughly 30,000 Muscovites lined up to dunk themselves in icy rivers and ponds, city officials said. The annual ritual baptism, which is believed to wash away sins, is enjoying a boisterous revival after being banished to villages during the Soviet era.
These days, it is a ritual with high production values. Several sites in Moscow were furnished with no-slip carpeting, heated tents and supervisors with megaphones. Politicians have seized on it as a photo opportunity; the theatrical ultranationalist Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky took his plunge this year at Bottomless Lake, a Moscow River tributary, flanked by 15-foot tubes of fluorescent light.
“It has become a show — not only that, but a patriotic show,” said Boris F. Dubin, a sociologist with Moscow’s Levada Center. The immersion ritual satisfies a public hunger, he said, for “something that is truly Russian, ancient, real. For what distinguishes us from other people.”
Whatever the reason, the crowds have been growing exponentially. A group of celebrants in Tver, on the Volga River, was so large on Monday that the ice collapsed and 30 people plunged into the water. Twenty-four of them required medical attention, and 11 were still hospitalized on Tuesday, said a spokeswoman for the Ministry for Emergency Situations.
“Each country has something which is intrinsic to it,” said Aleksandr Gorlopan, 43, who was warming himself with a combination of hot tea and Captain Morgan rum. Mr. Gorlopan, who gave his profession as “traveler,” said the tradition dated back to the tiny Slavic tribes that scattered south from Scandinavia — nomads, he said, with “wild souls.”
“We are made of water,” he said. “Without water we cannot survive.”
Others were more earthbound in their explanations. Galina Burasvetova, a 50-year-old hairdresser in a red bikini, said she had first taken part in the ritual during an agonizing period in her life, when she was raising three children on a vanishing income. Afterward, she felt she had the moral strength to go on.
“It is a way to overmaster yourself,” she said, as three young men wearing crosses whooped behind her — “It’s warm! It’s hot! It’s like steamed milk!” — and two construction workers, on their lunch break, laid down their tools and stripped naked. Vladislav Komarov, his heart-patterned boxers still sopping wet, gazed out at them all with the smile of a saint. Asked how he felt, he answered “hot.”
“We are pagans in our souls,” said Mr. Komarov, 45, an advertising manager. “I have a fire burning inside me. I could say it is a pure fire. But who knows?”
Mr. Dubin, the sociologist, said the practice’s popularity had less to do with religious revival than with enthusiastic coverage by Russian television. But others said it proved that 74 years of Communist rule were unable to stamp out the tradition, which holds that a priest’s blessing temporarily transforms water into the River Jordan, where Jesus Christ was baptized. Even at the height of state atheism, said Father Vsevolod Chaplin, a spokesman for the Moscow Patriarchate, “the lines for holy water were longer than the lines at Lenin’s mausoleum.”
Recently, Father Chaplin said, he had come across a 1949 memorandum by an exasperated Soviet official, who reported that widespread deployment of militiamen was unable to prevent “tens of thousands of people” from taking part in the Epiphany baptism. The Soviet official, he said, “reported indignantly that in one place the militiamen also immersed themselves.”
More Articles in World » A version of this article appeared in print on January 21, 2009, on page A10 of the New York edition.
Sergey Ponomarev/Associated Press
A woman in icy waters in Rostov.
Sergei Ilnitsky/European Pressphoto Agency
An Orthodox priest in Moscow also followed the tradition.
It was his seventh year taking part in the Epiphany ritual: the trance-like preparation, the electric shock of the water and the 20- or 30-second wait for a feeling he described as “nirvana.” As cross-country skiers picked their way through the woods, Mr. Pushkov stood by himself, barefoot and steaming. The midday sun was just visible above the horizon, as white and remote as a full moon.
Monday was Russian Orthodox Epiphany, and roughly 30,000 Muscovites lined up to dunk themselves in icy rivers and ponds, city officials said. The annual ritual baptism, which is believed to wash away sins, is enjoying a boisterous revival after being banished to villages during the Soviet era.
These days, it is a ritual with high production values. Several sites in Moscow were furnished with no-slip carpeting, heated tents and supervisors with megaphones. Politicians have seized on it as a photo opportunity; the theatrical ultranationalist Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky took his plunge this year at Bottomless Lake, a Moscow River tributary, flanked by 15-foot tubes of fluorescent light.“It has become a show — not only that, but a patriotic show,” said Boris F. Dubin, a sociologist with Moscow’s Levada Center. The immersion ritual satisfies a public hunger, he said, for “something that is truly Russian, ancient, real. For what distinguishes us from other people.”
Whatever the reason, the crowds have been growing exponentially. A group of celebrants in Tver, on the Volga River, was so large on Monday that the ice collapsed and 30 people plunged into the water. Twenty-four of them required medical attention, and 11 were still hospitalized on Tuesday, said a spokeswoman for the Ministry for Emergency Situations.
“Each country has something which is intrinsic to it,” said Aleksandr Gorlopan, 43, who was warming himself with a combination of hot tea and Captain Morgan rum. Mr. Gorlopan, who gave his profession as “traveler,” said the tradition dated back to the tiny Slavic tribes that scattered south from Scandinavia — nomads, he said, with “wild souls.”
“We are made of water,” he said. “Without water we cannot survive.”
Others were more earthbound in their explanations. Galina Burasvetova, a 50-year-old hairdresser in a red bikini, said she had first taken part in the ritual during an agonizing period in her life, when she was raising three children on a vanishing income. Afterward, she felt she had the moral strength to go on.
“It is a way to overmaster yourself,” she said, as three young men wearing crosses whooped behind her — “It’s warm! It’s hot! It’s like steamed milk!” — and two construction workers, on their lunch break, laid down their tools and stripped naked. Vladislav Komarov, his heart-patterned boxers still sopping wet, gazed out at them all with the smile of a saint. Asked how he felt, he answered “hot.”
“We are pagans in our souls,” said Mr. Komarov, 45, an advertising manager. “I have a fire burning inside me. I could say it is a pure fire. But who knows?”
Mr. Dubin, the sociologist, said the practice’s popularity had less to do with religious revival than with enthusiastic coverage by Russian television. But others said it proved that 74 years of Communist rule were unable to stamp out the tradition, which holds that a priest’s blessing temporarily transforms water into the River Jordan, where Jesus Christ was baptized. Even at the height of state atheism, said Father Vsevolod Chaplin, a spokesman for the Moscow Patriarchate, “the lines for holy water were longer than the lines at Lenin’s mausoleum.”
Recently, Father Chaplin said, he had come across a 1949 memorandum by an exasperated Soviet official, who reported that widespread deployment of militiamen was unable to prevent “tens of thousands of people” from taking part in the Epiphany baptism. The Soviet official, he said, “reported indignantly that in one place the militiamen also immersed themselves.”
More Articles in World » A version of this article appeared in print on January 21, 2009, on page A10 of the New York edition.
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