Guest Author - Marianne Gibson

Russian Orthodox Great Lent

The Orthodox Church assigns a number of days throughout the year as fast days of some sort. These can range from a simple avoidance of meat to a completely altered diet. Christmas Day, for example, is a meatless day for the faithful. The longest and most prominent period of fasting however is Velikiy Post, often translated as Great Lent, although ‘post’ in fact just means ‘fast’.

When is it?
As in the Western Christian church, Orthodox Lent covers the 40 days before Easter, coming to an end on Good Friday. . Russian Easter anyway doesn’t always tie in with the Western reckoning of Lent. Numerous political wranglings have left the Russian State following the Gregorian Calendar as most countries do, while the Church chose to remain with the Julian Calendar, which starts the year 2 weeks later. Seems clear, but Easter is calculated according to the position of the moon, and so can fall on different dates of our usual, solar calendar. This means that the 2 Easters are not simply 2 weeks apart.

Why Fast?
The Christian explanation of Lent is to mark the forty days that Christ wandered in the wilderness. As with many religious festivals, the timing chimes in with something very ancient. In this case it echoes the lean time in a seasonal climate, where winter supplies had been used up, but the ground was yet to yield much in the way of sustenance.

What do people do for Lent?
The most obvious restrictions here are culinary. All meat, poultry, fish and derivatives thereof are considered off-limits. At this time of year, winter vegetables take centre stage in soups and stews, are made into cutlets, and used in salads. As dairy products are also under the Lenten prohibition, vegetable oils are used in the making of breads, and for frying. The fact that eggs are not allowed either has led to an ingenious array of vegan recipes for cakes, fritters etc, using various flours or potato starch for their binding properties. Other items which cannot be enjoyed during Great Lent include alcohol, dancing, and, apparently, sex, as a frustrated friend once confided in me!

Does everyone follow Lent?
By no means all Russians follow Lent. For a start, Russia is a huge country containing many minority faiths. Add to this a hefty dose of atheism left over from communist times, and a large dollop of westernization and you start to see the picture. That said, the Orthodox Church has been resurgent since the early nineties, with a rush among adults to be baptized at that time, and almost a fashion for rediscovering religious roots. Russia claims a higher proportion of regular churchgoers than the UK, for example, drawn particularly from the elderly and young adults.