Here Comes the Nevesta

Marx was scornful. Engels was scathing. In his headier days, Lenin considered
it a deplorably
bourgeois means of oppressing women. But even in Soviet times, Russians got married. Now the way people go about tying the conjugal knot is changing, too. Christina Ling takes a look at
marriage in Russia, past and present.

‘A Heroic Deed of the Soul’

“If you want to go to war, think once;
if you want to go to sea, think twice;
if you want to get married, think three times.”

– Old Russian folk saying

Marriage in tsarist Russia was a serious matter: reputations, fortunes and the continuation of the family name depended on it. The interested parties — the parents — spared no effort in finding the right match for their offspring. The great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin gives a masterful description of a young woman, her head turned by a dashing young army officer, who is married off against her will:

“Back then she had another suitor, He was her spouse, but not by choice, Her heart pined for someone else... Yet her opinion was not sought. And she was led to the altar...”

– Alexander Pushkin, Yevgeny Onegin

Parents were the ultimate arbitrators of their children’s fate, of course, but the delicate process of finding a bride was almost invariably entrusted to a svakha, a professional matchmaker.

“Don’t choose the bride, choose the svakha,” goes another old Russian folk proverb, sage advice which families with a lot at stake did well to follow. Indeed, there was hardly a pre-revolutionary family that did not begin with a business-like visit from the local svakha.

Paid handsomely for her services (stinginess in such a matter could have dire consequences), the svakha made it her business to know all the suitable young ladies for miles around. After buttering up the target and her family, the svakha would then start praising the looks, charms, talents and assets of her clients’ son, and convey their offer of marriage along with the accompanying terms, i.e. the amount of dowry the aspiring groom was expecting.

If the offer was accepted, preparations for the wedding, the responsibility of the groom’s family, would start. Three weeks before the wedding was due to take place, much as in the Western tradition, the wedding and period of engagement would be announced in church.

Shortly before the day of the marriage, the groom (zhenikh) would have a malchishnik (stag night), and the bride (nevesta) would have a devishnik (hen party). While the groom’s farewell to his bachelorhood followed the bawdy and raucous pattern of such events the world over, the bride’s farewell to her maidenhood was a more sedate, even gloomy affair, marked by goodbyes to friends whom she was unlikely to see again and examination of the wedding gifts and dowry.

Fortune-telling, or gadaniye, with candles, mirrors, coffee grounds, hairs and cards, also played a prominent part in the devishnik. Most of the fortune-telling concerned the fates of the friends. However, the most frightening form of gadaniye — that of placing a lighted candle in front of the mirror in a darkened room and watching the shadowy reflections for clues to the future — was one in which the bride could participate, too.

The wedding itself was a lofty affair, centering around the regal venchaniye, or ‘crowning’ of the bride and groom — a sign that their union was a microcosm of the Church as a whole. After the priest had slipped the rings on the couple’s fingers (the ring finger of the right hand), the crowns were lifted above the bride’s and groom’s heads, the priest’s robes were wrapped around their hands, they were led three times around the lectern and given blessed wine to drink three times.

Unique to the Orthodox Church, the crowns have a second significance, according to Father Dmitry Smirnov, pastor of the Moscow parish church of St. Mitrofan of Voronezh.

“The crowns signify that the married couple are entering upon a certain martyrdom,” he observed. “Marriage is not an easy path to take through life, and the Orthodox Church considers that those who choose it are carrying out a podvig [an untranslatable Russian word signifying a heroic deed of the soul].”

Heroic or not, a marriage in the family provided an incomparable opportunity to show off riches and status to society and the bridal banquet was therefore the highlight of the festivities. Everyone from every branch of the family was invited — non-family, too. True to the spirit of the Potyomkin village, Russians, especially nouveau riche families of peasant origin, had no qualms about hiring pochtyonniye gosti (‘honored guests’) if the family had no high-ranking members of its own to parade before the neighbors. These hirelings, usually peasants themselves who made a profession of their usefulness, were so widespread, in fact, that they even found their way into the national consciousness, and the term svadebniye generaly (wedding generals — originally they were usually military, but the term now means any celebrity) remains a catchphrase even today.

The Zig-ZAGs of Socialism

Under the Communists, of course, social jockeying was frowned upon, as were religious ceremonies. Indeed, church weddings, unsurprisingly, went out of fashion, and marriage itself suffered a decline for a few heady years of ‘nationalized women’ and communal weddings. But with the aging of the Soviet Union and social reaction under Stalin came a recognition of the usefulness of marriage as a traditional form of societal organisation. However, it came with the usual disclaimer:

“Only in Socialist society, with the transfer of the means of production to public property, the liquidation of the capitalist classes, the exploitation of man by man, unemployment and poverty of the masses, and interests between the sexes, has marriage for the first time in history been built on the foundations of real love and affection between men and women and bona fide monogamy.”

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1951.

Marx and Engels and their denunciation of the evils of bourgeois marriage, 19th century double standards, prostitution and the like make up the bulk of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia’s multi-page entry on brak (marriage). What the entry neglects to mention, however, is that the ‘great leader and nation builder,’ Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, was no paragon of monogamy. His long-time friend, confidante and sometime lover, the French-born revolutionary Inessa Armand, took part in a kind of platonic menage a trois with him and his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, for several significant years of his life. Furthermore, although Comrade Lenin had lots of things to say about many subjects, as the 55 or so volumes of his collected writings testify, he is strangely silent on the subject of Soviet, socialist or even communist marriage.

Nevertheless, with or without direct instructions from Lenin, marriage in newly Soviet Russia underwent a cataclysmic change with the introduction of the ZAGS (registry office) shortly after the revolution. Set up some time during the Civil War of 1918, the ZAGS was the great communist contribution to the institution of marriage in Russia. Thenceforth, young couples could take or leave a church wedding, but registry in the local ZAGS was a must.

The ZAGS first appeared in literature in the early 1920s, in one of the most popular pieces of fiction from the early Soviet era, Ilf and Petrov’s famous comic novel Twelve Chairs. In fact the novel opens on the scene of the hero Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobyaninov performing his daily task as a clerk in his local ZAGS:

“With the dexterity of a magician, Ippolit Matveyevich took the matter in hand. In his old-womanish scrawl, he wrote down the names of the couple in some thick books, sternly cross-examined the witnesses whom the bride had dragged in hastily from the street, lovingly and at length breathed on the square stamps, and, standing once more, stuck them into their battered passports. ...

“‘Young people,’ announced Ippolit Matveyevich, ‘allow me to congratulate you, as they used to say, on your legal marriage. It’s very, ve-ry nice to see such young people as you are who, having taken themselves in hand, are setting out to attain such eternal goals...”

As the state tightened its stranglehold on religion, and as religious weddings virtually died out, a uniquely Soviet type of wedding, centering around a specialized sort of ZAGS, the dvorets brakosochetaniya (wedding palace), came into being. Complete with white and gold fountains, pseudo-religious ceremonies (with an official pronouncing the blessing of the State over the couple) and Mendelssohn’s Wedding March piped over the intercom, the ZAGS wedding remains a Russian institution today.

If religion was weeded out of the Russian wedding ceremony, banqueting and other traditions clung. The cry “Gorko! Gorko!” (Bitter!) — a cue from the assembled guests to make the newlywed couple exchange a kiss so as to sweeten the wine — still went up after the first toast and wedding rings were still slipped onto the right-hand ring fingers.

The Soviet era bred absurdities in the field of marriage as it did in every other aspect of life. Starting after World War II, ZAGS issued special coupons to brides- and grooms-to-be when they went to book the ceremony. These coupons were redeemable at special ‘newlywed salons’ for everything from underwear to the wedding gown and suit. By the 1980s, when the command economy was at its last gasp, newlywed salons were the only places where good imported boots and shirts could be bought.

The Second World War, in which every family lost at least a brother, a husband or a father, bred another tradition. To this day, newlyweds all over the country head off right after the ZAGS ceremony to the local war memorials, to lay a wreath at the flame of the Unknown Soldier and honor those who died to make their marriage possible.

As the direct memory of the punishing war has faded, this tradition has extended to include visiting other city landmarks. On weekends in Moscow, for example, Red Square and Sparrow Hills (formerly Lenin Hills) above the Moscow River are full of brides in white dresses and grooms in black suits with their entourages drinking champagne and taking photographs.

Such innovations have stuck. But there were fatalities along the way, one of the most ignominious of which was Mikhail Gorbachev’s ‘non-alcoholic’ weddings during the equally short-lived era of his anti-alcohol campaign.

“The guests would sit there soberly at the table,” recounted one man unfortunate enough to be married during the alcoholic drought, “but one by one they’d slip out, down a quick one in the toilet, and come back to the table significantly jollier than they’d left it.”

The more things change...

The short period of time since the passing of the Soviet era has not given much space for new wedding traditions to sprout. The wedding palace ceremony proceeds exactly as it always has, as do the celebration rituals both before and after the wedding.

On the fateful morning, the groom and his svidetel (witness — i.e. best man), drive over to his fianc≈ee’s apartment, where the bride is already dressed and ready to go. But before he is allowed to whisk her off to the ZAGS, he is subjected to a range of tortures, some of them specially invented by the bride’s family and friends, known as the vykup nevesty (redeeming the bride). Some of the more common forms of inflicted pain and embarrassment include drinking a three-liter jar of water so as to reach the key to the apartment at the bottom, or guessing which of an assortment of lip-sticked kisses on a card is that of the wife-to-be.

Free at last, the pair whisk off to the ZAGS in separate, decorated cars, with their entourage of close friends, parents and ‘witnesses’ squeezed in alongside. After the ceremony, the party takes off on a tour of the sights of the town, popping champagne bottles and snapping camera shutters at every stop along the way.

The last stop is either home or a restaurant, where a lavish sit-down banquet and dancing is laid on with either the best man or a specially hired tamada (master of ceremonies) proposing endless toasts and frolicks.

Russians have always been known for their love of merrymaking, and while the fun is usually more than enough to last the average merrymaker for months to come, the day after the wedding is traditionally reserved for a second day of feasting by the couple with their extended circle of friends.

Registering at the ZAGS remains the only legally recognized form of marriage in Russia, and such rituals will doubtless remain part of the marriage scene for centuries to come. With the passing of the Soviet era, however, many couples are subtly introducing a whole new style to their celebrations.

The Church renascent

In a true sign of the times, the Orthodox Church has started to figure once again in Russian weddings. It is not uncommon now for a young couple to arrive at the ZAGS dressed in normal everyday clothes simply to legally register their marriage. A day or two later they will hold a grand, religious ceremony in church.

Church leaders maintain that the number of couples (not all of them young newlyweds) married in church has skyrocketed over the last couple of years.

“About five years ago the number of adults getting baptized outnumbered the number of babies being baptized,” remarked Father Dmitry. “Then there was a wave of established couples getting church weddings after many years of marriage, and they outnumbered the newlyweds. Now it’s back to normal. There’s more young people getting married than the other way round.”

The Orthodox Church observes a strict set of fasting periods during the year, during which no marriages take place. And while the number of believers in Russia remains small, ZAGS officials and consultants in the wedding industry agree that the number of couples seeking their services drops off sharply during the fasting periods of Advent, Lent, the feast of Saints Peter and Paul and the Assumption. May is also a slow month for weddings, due to a folk superstition which plays on the similarities between the Russian words for May and to pine or languish (mayitsya).

The faddish aspect to the run on church weddings does not faze Father Dmitry. “The church doesn’t refuse to marry people unless they refuse to do central things, like go to confession or take communion,” he said. “If they want it and they’re ready to do all the things that a religious ceremony requires, then that must mean that somewhere inside they’re taking it seriously.”

Leaning West

As religious ceremony becomes an increasingly important part of the wedding day, so, too, is a heightened richness of style in everything from attire to food. Newlywed coupons slipped quietly away in the capitalist chaos of the early 1990s, unnoticed and unmourned by anyone, as goods gradually started appearing in ordinary shops. For Margarita Bulychova, the owner of a thriving, three-year-old bridal salon in central Moscow, that era remains vividly etched in her mind; it was, in fact, what led to the opening of her business.

“We drove round the whole city looking for a dress for my son’s fianc≈ee,” she remembered. “There was just nothing there that you’d want to wear.”

Although the fianc≈ee eventually found a good-quality imported dress through a fluke at one of the city’s many clothing markets, Bulychova started flipping through bridal magazines in the lobbies of the hotels where she and her husband stayed on his business trips to the USA. Now, the dress rental business she opened up with the couple of dresses and suits she bought from American dealers on one of those trips has turned into the upscale Fleur bridal salon. It offers dresses and tuxedos from America and Switzerland and was recently featured in the Russian version of Cosmopolitan magazine.

“Our clients are young women who really know exactly what they want,” said Bulychyova, adding that in the main they are models, students with some source of extra money, or up-and-coming young businesswomen.

Even the former newlywed salons have gone upscale — Gimenei, the main newlywed salon in the Soviet era, now offers only imported dresses for several million roubles, along with a range of expensive coats, furs, clothing and jewelry.

The new sense of style among the younger generation and the New Russians extends beyond attire to the details of the celebration. Prazdnik, one of Moscow’s growing number of wedding service agencies, claims to be unique among such companies in that it not only caters to, but also shapes the tastes of the new generation.

“Russians just aren’t very good at having fun,” confided Advertising Manager Gleb Vilensky. “Take this tradition of going round the war memorials on your wedding day, for example — it’s all rather gloomy. Your wedding should be one of the happiest days of your life, so we try to suggest rather more romantic sorts of rituals.”

Prazdnik claims to be the only wedding organizer in town to have revived the old tradition of releasing two white doves after the wedding ceremony, and prides itself on its alternative to the war memorial milkround: an al fresco champagne buffet on a romantic little bridge in the picturesque centre of the city.

In general, according to Prazdnik Consultant Elza Talibova, whose clients include the moderately well-off to extremely wealthy ‘New Russians,’ the trend in weddings is less toward the past than toward the West.

“We’ve already lost most of the pre-revolutionary traditions because of the communists,” said Talibova, “and now it’s very difficult to revive them. But in the West the aesthetic side of weddings is more important and developed than in Russia.”

Talibova noted that traditions were changing from month to month, pointing to photographs of cars decorated not with the puppets and giant wedding rings popular in Soviet days but ribbons and flower arrangements.

But not all is billing and cooing in the former land of the tsars. Russia continues to have one of the highest divorce rates in Europe, while the average age of the divorced couples is one of the lowest on the continent.

Perhaps suspecting that the hard-drinking, under-achieving ethos of many Russian males lies at the heart of the problem, many young Russian women set their hearts on marrying a foreigner, a ready-made market exploited to the full by Russia’s business-like and efficient marriage agencies. These modern ‘svakhi’ do a roaring trade in pairing up young women from all over Russia with eligible bachelors hailing from Western Europe, North America and Japan. Offering catalogues of husband-seeking women, organized mass visits of lonely foreign men to Russia and endless social occasions, the marriage agencies have become a fixture of the country’s marriage market.

Whatever their national make-up, though, marriage rates continue to be stable and this makes ZAGS No.1 director Valentina Bursynkova very happy.

“This is a very difficult time for Russia,” she said, smiling as her eyes followed a laughing bridal party as they disappeared into the ceremonial room to the strains of the Wedding March. “But the main thing is that young people are getting married. It means there’ll be children, a future — life will go on.”