Crisis-hit Russians look to the stars
By Irina Glushchenko
MOSCOW — Suddenly, the Russian capital has been overrun by rabbits. You can find them in the markets, on the newsstands and in the toyshops. The reason? In Chinese astrology, 1999 is the year of the rabbit.
Twenty years ago in Russia, such information was almost a secret. When I was at school, someone gave me a few type-written sheets with the signs of the zodiac and the characteristics of the people born under them. I was staggered; everything was so unfamiliar, so unlike anything I had ever read. With its typos and spelling errors, the fuzzy letters showing that it was a third carbon copy, the text was like samizdat.
Those times are long past. The signs of the zodiac gradually crept into Soviet newspapers. I even managed to buy a set of postcards with drawings of the star signs and the corresponding dates. From then on, my friends and I would know which sign we had been born under.
Then I started meeting people who asked insistently, "What are you? A Libra?", and who, once in command of this information, proceeded to map out my character in close detail.
Things were harder with the eastern calendar; there was no systematic information. Each December, the popular television program International Panorama reported briefly: "The Chinese consider the coming year to be the year of the monkey (or whichever animal it was)", and added a few words about how one was supposed to mark such a year. Rumours grew: "Have you heard? This is the year of the monkey!" Later, we also discovered that the monkeys and other animals were of various colours and had to be greeted in red (or blue, or green).
We also learned what you had to do when celebrating the New Year. You were required to crawl under the table, or moo, or crow, depending on the animal whose year you were seeing in. Perfectly educated people carried out all these demands conscientiously.
The veil of secrecy was lifting. Slender booklets were appearing, containing horoscopes, the signs of the zodiac and the Chinese calendar. Now anyone could find out which year followed which, and what this meant.
Toys and figurines symbolising the year went on sale as well. If the coming year was the year of the pig, souvenir pigs appeared everywhere. To buy such a pig became a matter of honour.
Mass-production astrology
With the dawn of liberal reform, astrology went onto a mass- production basis. From being amusing pseudo-information, the occult sciences joined the category of serious, indispensable knowledge.
Television appearances by astrologists took up even more time than the speechifying of politicians. We were regaled with such information as: "In the late 21st century, social cataclysms will occur in Britain, and as a result the British Isles may sink".
Television news programs ended with an astrological forecast for the following day or week. Every self-respecting newspaper acquired a staff astrologer, the thrust of whose predictions depended on the newspaper's profile.
Business astrology, political astrology, erotic astrology and so forth all made their appearance. State figures consulted with specialists in the fields that particularly concerned them.
Where did all these experts on heavenly influences suddenly spring from? The astrologers, like the other sorcerers on our television screens, maintained that their knowledge or gift had been inherited from the past. Decades of repression by the Soviet authorities, they declared, had not managed to destroy it.
Meanwhile, academies were being established with lectures on magic, love potions, flying saucers and so forth. Publications appeared describing "barabashka", a mysterious being said to have invaded a women's hostel and manifested its presence through strange nocturnal knocking.
The fascination with the occult gripped people of the most diverse views: I came across a book on the prophecies of Nostradamus by an author who did not hide his communist convictions.
All this was understandable in a society that had abruptly lost its confidence in the future. People who had earlier believed explanations presented to them as "the only true science" found themselves handed over to the whims of fate.
In the space of a few months, all their conceptual landmarks were obliterated. Soviet Marxism had taught them that science was good and superstition was bad. Then the propaganda began arguing that Marxism was absolutely incorrect, a lie. It was easy enough to conclude that superstition was better than science.
The ideological vacuum that followed the downfall of "Soviet communism" was not filled by convincing new ideas. The obvious degradation of rational knowledge, the decay of education and the general confusion encouraged people to turn to the wisdom of the Middle Ages.
The people who now believe in absurdities also have the excuse that the events occurring around them are no less improbable than sorcerers' fairytales.
Matthias Rust's plane, landing on Red Square in broad daylight, was just as fantastic as a witch flying in on a broomstick. If we were supposed to believe that the recipes of the International Monetary Fund would save us by transforming the economy from the "very bad" planned model to the "very good" market one, why not believe in wizards and witches too?
'Extrasenses'
The most widespread development in the field of the supernatural was the mass appearance of "extrasenses". We were told that our society contained people gifted with the power to heal sickness without medicines or surgery.
These people saw a person's "aura", and through some mysterious intuition, also recognised internal illnesses. The healing occurred when the extrasense, who was charged with the necessary energy, made a series of complicated hand movements above the patient. The extrasense flushed out kidneys, cleaned blood vessels and sucked out tumours.
I once encountered an extrasense, a handsome engineer with kindly eyes who lived in a little two-room flat that was always full of people. I went there with a woman friend who suffered from back pain. The extrasense spent a long time passing his hands over her, to no obvious effect. Then he began massaging her back, just as an ordinary masseur would, and the pain became less. I think we were lucky — he was not greedy, and believed sincerely in his powers.
Even the Russian police are resorting to extrasenses in the search for criminals, and for people and objects that have vanished without trace. Rumours have circulated about a top-secret security unit staffed entirely by psychics and black-magic practitioners.
Meanwhile, there is no need for your firm to go bankrupt because it has been hexed by a competitor; an advertisement offers to "protect your business from the evil eye". Various other magical services, from the healing of impotence to the "correction of karma", enjoy great popularity. Attempts are also made to cure alcoholics through exorcism (the success rate here is said to be unimpressive).
At a certain point, Russia witnessed a rash of mass cures. Some of the best-known extrasenses filled halls with people, worked them up to near hysteria and finally had them fall into a trance.
Next to appear was television hypnosis. Well-educated people came to believe that if they put water in a glass in front of their television sets, an extrasense could "charge" it for them via the screen. If this water were then sprinkled on flowers, the story went, the flowers would grow better.
We have grown used to being surrounded by witch doctors, soothsayers and astrological symbols. To a disturbing degree, we have become a society trying to give reality the slip. The charts on the economic pages point to destitution and national break-up; give us a star chart instead.
So far, the most effective antidote has been cynicism. The more clear-headed Russians can no longer be convinced that anything very good is going to happen to them. As a result, they joke about astrology just as they joke about ideologies, the economy and the country's leaders.
In the year of the bull, cartoons appeared depicting the bull in the guise of a "new Russian" playing the stock market. When the year of the pig was followed by the year of the rat, throughout Moscow you could buy wall calendars depicting a fat rat in a dressing-gown, smashing open a piggy bank beneath a New Year's fir tree.
Meanwhile, as I have been writing this article, I have learned that the coming year is not the year of the rabbit at all, but the year of the cat, and that it is yellow. However, I have been told, in Chinese astrology the rabbit and the cat are one and the same.