Forgiveness, with Bunin and Butter

Several years ago I was teaching an honors Russian literature course in the winter quarter. When I assigned a short analytical essay, my students seemed confused, so I offered to sit down and write a sample for them. The resulting 4 page paper explored the 1944 Ivan Bunin story "Cleansing Monday" in light of what I was working on at the time -- my book on war and the Russian literary hero.

Ivan Bunin in 1937

Bunin fled Russia after the Revolution, and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1933. But during the war he was trapped in occupied Grasse in southern France, and he kept thinking about the German army advancing further and further. As much as he hated the Bolsheviks for what they had done to his country, he began to root for Stalin and the Red Army to save Russia from further devastation at the hands of the Nazis.

I revised that paper and continued to work on it, and it was published last week in the Slavic Review.

How fitting that my analysis of "Cleansing Monday" showed up in my inbox during "Butter Week" -- or Maslenitsa -- according to the Russian Orthodox calendar.

In the article, I argue that Bunin used his story to explore questions of forgiveness and starting anew, but also to walk through what I call his "Moscow Memory Palace," revisiting the places he had once known in pre-revolutionary Moscow and fixing them in memory for himself and for the rest of emigre Russia.

Today, as it happens, is Forgiveness Sunday. For several weeks my students and I have been exploring stories and recipes related to the Russian cultural tradition of Butter Week or Maslenitsa. We even watched the "Pancake Market" clip from Sergei Mikhalkov's 1989 film Barber of Siberia, where the general drinks vodka and then eats the glass. "An old Russian tradition" is a running joke in this scene: fistfights, ice slides, street theater, and getting a bear drunk... according to Mikhalkov, all "old Russian traditions."

Cultural traditions do play an important role in Russian identity, and now that Orthodoxy is back in a big way, there's plenty of evidence of that. We watched a news story from Sevastopol's 2013 Maslenitsa celebration; sponsored by something called Moscow House, the festival was enjoyed by Russians and Russian-speakers from all over the Crimea peninsula. An "old Russian tradition," or serious Russian cultural intervention in Ukraine? Watch the clip yourself and decide.

Cover page of
Book of Delicious and Healthy Food

I had hoped to be able to bake bliny, or Russian pancakes, with my students, but it was a busy week, so we only talked about them. The recipe we explored was the yeast pancake recipe from the Stalinist Book of Delicious and Healthy Food. I haven't managed to try the recipe for a couple of reasons. First, we read in Chekhov that you never make pancakes on the 13th of the month or on the eve of the 13th, or on Monday or on the eve of Monday, i.e. Sunday. That Russian superstition prevented me from making pancakes for class Sunday or Monday last week (or at least that's what I told myself -- I was in fact merely busy with other things, including preparing my inaugural lecture, which I gave Wednesday night).  Secondly, the yeast pancake recipe (Bliny na opare) requires many risings -- "at least two or three" -- and again, I couldn't manage it. According to Chekhov, Russian women begin their bliny-making long before Maslenitsa so as to have them done in time. Given that I found the yeast pancakes I made from Anya von Bremzen's recipe a bit "yeasty" (see blog post about them here), I guess I wasn't in a big hurry to put everything else aside and experiment.

Potato-fork-oil process -- better than pouring!

But this morning -- Forgiveness Sunday -- I thought I'd better do something about it, at least for my family, and I made both versions of what Kniga calls "quick-rising pancakes," one with cream of tartar and the other with sour milk. Traditionally Russians cook their pancakes in vegetable oil rather than butter, using the time-honored technique of dipping a small potato half into oil and greasing the pan that way so as to get just a light coating. I can't say I liked it. My Russian friend taught me years ago to make bliny in butter, and that's how I prefer them.

Bliny skorospelye -- "quick rising pancakes"

So here on Forgiveness Sunday I'm thinking about religion and the role its revival is playing in contemporary Russia and Ukraine ... but also because Julia Sweeney was in my part of Ohio again last night. Her brilliant monologue Letting Go of God tells of her journey from Catholic school girl to atheist -- I guess the opposite to the path many post-Soviet citizens are taking.

To an atheist Forgiveness Sunday seems like a pretty bizarre cultural ritual, but for Russian Orthodox Christians it is the culmination of an entire week of preparing for Lent. Last Saturday would have been a fasting day, followed by a week of pancake-eating. On Forgiveness Sunday everyone asks each other's forgiveness for the ways in which they have offended each other over the course of the year. The idea is to become pure in advance of the Lenten season, when Christians of all stripes strive to be more Christ-like. Of course, the burning of the "maslenitsa" doll at the end of the festival to help bid farewell to winter and greet the spring reminds us that these Christian rituals are really pagan at their base. The round bliny evoke the sun, and the next day is "Cleansing Monday," a day for spring cleaning.

Here in Ohio on Saturday it was almost springlike, and I cleaned house, did laundry, took walks. And this morning, with a light snow falling outside the window, we ate our bliny and performed a religious ritual: asking for forgiveness and starting anew with a clean slate.

Those are two cultural traditions I can embrace: renewed relationships and bliny with butter and jam. And Bunin.