Cenotaph memorial and chapel feast (rural commemorative rituals of Victory Day in Russia)

Abstract

The paper dwells upon contemporary Russian Victory Day as one of the integrative symbolic systems that supports unity in a complicated heterogeneous society. The paper is mostly focused on the unofficial part of the national holiday, such as family practices and narratives. The two cases that this paper primarily unfolds upon were recorded in Komi-Permyak region in 2016. The first is Victory Day celebration in the village of Pelym. The second is the celebration of the 9th of May in Arkhangelskoye village. Both versions demonstrate that there are various ways of adapting an official holiday to the content of ethnolocal traditions. The specificity of the holiday in Pelym relates to the necessity of resolving the conflict between the tradition’s demand to commemorate the relatives killed in the war at the places of their burial - and the physical impossibility of doing so. Therefore, the space of a rural war memorial becomes a venue for a family memorial rite, and plates with names written on them play the role of cenotaph graves. The nature of the celebration of Victory Day in Arkhangelskoye is determined by its coincidence with an old local chapel feast, which also had a commemorative focus. The commemoration of veteran relatives is performed according to the model of traditional calendar commemorations while using modern thematic paraphernalia (St. George’s ribbon). In both cases, the rural Victory Day provides the integration of the local community: it compensates for the insufficient number of common forms of work and leisure and ensures the joint symbolic activities of the participants.