In Russia, the other Egypt, July 9, 2006
I needed a walk today. I had been cooped up in my apartment for too long following a far too friendly first encounter with Russian vodka—the kind Stas recommended—on Friday night.
Everyday, I look out my balcony window and see a church with a gold dome and what appears to be a small village in the distance. It was time to investigate these. With my trusty Canon in my pocket, I set off past the Catholic (non-orthodox) church and recreation facility, westward.
I passed many a Sunday walker, enjoying and/or enduring the bright sun. After a about 10 or 15 minutes of walking, I encountered the first “village hut.” It turned out to be, in fact, a dacha, or Russian summer house. This was the village I had espied from afar—a collection of small summer houses/sheds broken up into small fenced-in garden plots. Cabbage, tomatoes, and fruits covered the ground, supplementing the diets of the Novgorodian gardeners.
It was refreshing to see how a society once forced off their farmlands and into the big city factories still held on to their connection with the land. Dachas are the lovely little remnants of Russia’s historical peasant class—the same class of people who Karl Marx said was too simple and unorganized to trust with a communist revolution in Russia.
I continued my walk further west and saw smaller fences and bright colors straight ahead of me. It turned out to be a Russian cemetery. The camera came out quickly to capture the brilliant Orthodox crosses and elaborate tombstones.
Like the village of dachas, the cemetery was carved into little fenced-in plots. Each plot had a gate, a small garden of flowers, a bench for reflection, and of course the grave marker. These grave markers ranged from wrought-iron Orthodox crosses to seven-foot tall tombstones. The largest I saw featured the engraved picture of the dead man in khakis and a button-up shirt, hand in pocket, and smiling. Many of the tombstones had pictures of the dead person either etched right into the stone or a photograph printed on a plaque and affixed to the headstone.
Looking through the hundreds of rows of dead Russians depicted in lifelike detail made me think of the idol-like burials in ancient Egypt. While mummies and pyramids defy Russian practicality, it seems that a bit of “double faith” lives on in Russian cemeteries. Like Shinto ancestor worship, I couldn’t help feeling that each of these passed relatives lived on as memorialized idols in their little plots, where descendents continued to tend to them like gardeners of the deceased.
As I walked away from the cemetery and passed the gold-domed church erected next to its entrance, my thoughts moved to the very alive Russians I pass everyday. Studying the faces of the folks on their bikes and men with their plastic bags (the Russian equivalent of a man-purse), I realized that I rarely see any Russians with eyeglasses.
When I visited the Orphanage on Thursday, I was struck by the one director’s thick glasses. I now knew why—because I never see anyone with glasses on here. How can this be? The statistics of vision, in America at least, point to more people needing glasses than not.
A few possibilities came to mind:
1. Impeccable eyesight is rampant in Post-Soviet Russia;
2. Eyeglasses aren’t fashionable and are either avoided entirely or people only wear contact lenses;
3. Optometrists, or perhaps the (over/mis)diagnoses of poor vision, are absent here.
Whichever the reason, it is very interesting to notice—especially coming from a family and culture ready to do whatever it takes to correct a bad set of eyes.
And now that I think about it, not a single dead Russian I saw today wore glasses either.
Everyday, I look out my balcony window and see a church with a gold dome and what appears to be a small village in the distance. It was time to investigate these. With my trusty Canon in my pocket, I set off past the Catholic (non-orthodox) church and recreation facility, westward.
I passed many a Sunday walker, enjoying and/or enduring the bright sun. After a about 10 or 15 minutes of walking, I encountered the first “village hut.” It turned out to be, in fact, a dacha, or Russian summer house. This was the village I had espied from afar—a collection of small summer houses/sheds broken up into small fenced-in garden plots. Cabbage, tomatoes, and fruits covered the ground, supplementing the diets of the Novgorodian gardeners.
It was refreshing to see how a society once forced off their farmlands and into the big city factories still held on to their connection with the land. Dachas are the lovely little remnants of Russia’s historical peasant class—the same class of people who Karl Marx said was too simple and unorganized to trust with a communist revolution in Russia.
I continued my walk further west and saw smaller fences and bright colors straight ahead of me. It turned out to be a Russian cemetery. The camera came out quickly to capture the brilliant Orthodox crosses and elaborate tombstones.
Like the village of dachas, the cemetery was carved into little fenced-in plots. Each plot had a gate, a small garden of flowers, a bench for reflection, and of course the grave marker. These grave markers ranged from wrought-iron Orthodox crosses to seven-foot tall tombstones. The largest I saw featured the engraved picture of the dead man in khakis and a button-up shirt, hand in pocket, and smiling. Many of the tombstones had pictures of the dead person either etched right into the stone or a photograph printed on a plaque and affixed to the headstone.
Looking through the hundreds of rows of dead Russians depicted in lifelike detail made me think of the idol-like burials in ancient Egypt. While mummies and pyramids defy Russian practicality, it seems that a bit of “double faith” lives on in Russian cemeteries. Like Shinto ancestor worship, I couldn’t help feeling that each of these passed relatives lived on as memorialized idols in their little plots, where descendents continued to tend to them like gardeners of the deceased.
As I walked away from the cemetery and passed the gold-domed church erected next to its entrance, my thoughts moved to the very alive Russians I pass everyday. Studying the faces of the folks on their bikes and men with their plastic bags (the Russian equivalent of a man-purse), I realized that I rarely see any Russians with eyeglasses.
When I visited the Orphanage on Thursday, I was struck by the one director’s thick glasses. I now knew why—because I never see anyone with glasses on here. How can this be? The statistics of vision, in America at least, point to more people needing glasses than not.
A few possibilities came to mind:
1. Impeccable eyesight is rampant in Post-Soviet Russia;
2. Eyeglasses aren’t fashionable and are either avoided entirely or people only wear contact lenses;
3. Optometrists, or perhaps the (over/mis)diagnoses of poor vision, are absent here.
Whichever the reason, it is very interesting to notice—especially coming from a family and culture ready to do whatever it takes to correct a bad set of eyes.
And now that I think about it, not a single dead Russian I saw today wore glasses either.
posted by Erhardt at 3:03 PM
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