{"title":"Here Nobody Is Naked, There Is No Need for Shame","authors":"E. Pollock","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780195395488.003.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780195395488.003.0009","url":null,"abstract":"During and after the Second World War, the older idea of the banya as a center of communal identity and a place to restore vitality re-emerged in parallel to the state’s continued emphasis on the utilitarian purpose of banyas. The state still built and maintained banyas to clean people and keep people healthy. And it still fell far short of its goals. But soldiers in battle and citizens in war-torn communities spoke of the banya, especially the rural banya, as a special place, conducive to close personal contact and Russian communal identities. Older notions of the banya as a place of transgressions and defilement re-emerged in the middle of the twentieth century as well, particularly in depictions of the Gulag banya.","PeriodicalId":176351,"journal":{"name":"Without the Banya We Would Perish","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125809734","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Onslaught of Civilization","authors":"E. Pollock","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780195395488.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780195395488.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"Despite the concerns of doctors about the horrendous conditions in them, banyas remained popular with a broad spectrum of the population. The banya became a battleground on which the process of the modernization and urbanization of the fin-de-siècle empire played out. Literary and artistic figures such as Bely, Chekhov, Kuzmin, Rozanov, and Serebriakova explored anonymity, community, belief, belonging, and sex. Grigory Rasputin, the monk and advisor to the tsar, saw the banya as curative not of physical ailments but of the spiritual void at the center of elite society. He also saw it as a place to take prostitutes.","PeriodicalId":176351,"journal":{"name":"Without the Banya We Would Perish","volume":"87 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122496801","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Great Healer","authors":"E. Pollock","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780195395488.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780195395488.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"As elites in Russia became more integrated into Western culture, going to the banya became more associated with the unreformed peasantry and lower classes. Most outsiders, like the astronomer Chappe D’Auteroche, who was in Russia to observe the transit of Venus, saw the banya as further indication of Russia’s backwardness and barbarity. Catherine the Great wrote a pamphlet, her famous “antidote,” to rebut his views in general and on the banya specifically. Meanwhile, the prominent medical doctor, Antonio Sanches, used his connections with Catherine and members of her court to systematically defend the banya not as a popular custom, but as a valuable tool of modern medicine. He used his connections with Western European intellectuals to promote the use of the banya there as well.","PeriodicalId":176351,"journal":{"name":"Without the Banya We Would Perish","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131713783","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Soot, Dirt, and Human Flesh Packed Together","authors":"E. Pollock","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780195395488.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780195395488.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"For the first half of the nineteenth century, the banya remained popular with the people, but was generally ignored by medical professionals in Russia. Ironically, in Western Europe, doctors began to explore the potential of steam bathing for treating ailments and improving health. In the West, public bathhouses were new and could be considered modern. In Russia they had always existed and were considered traditional. In 1812 a popular broadside depicted Napoleon suffering in the Russian banya. In his fiction, the author Fyodor Dostoevsky used the banya as a place of ambiguity: it was clean and dirty, pure and corrupt, a potential gateway to hell and salvation.","PeriodicalId":176351,"journal":{"name":"Without the Banya We Would Perish","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128544381","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Our People Love the Banya But Nothing Good Comes of It","authors":"E. Pollock","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780195395488.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780195395488.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"By the second half of the nineteenth century Russia doctors had caught up with their Western peers and began to see bathing in general and the banya in particular as crucial for health and hygiene. But when they inspected the banyas of the empire—in villages, factories, small towns, and capital cities—they found horrendously filthy conditions. Common practices and habits did not conform to medical prescriptions, even in the ornate and luxurious banyas of St. Petersburg. Efforts to confront the issue failed, but the idea that the banya was an important feature of a modern society grew stronger.","PeriodicalId":176351,"journal":{"name":"Without the Banya We Would Perish","volume":"2015 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125642843","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Things Are Bad on the Banya Front","authors":"E. Pollock","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780195395488.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780195395488.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"Stalin’s “revolution from above” in the Soviet Union directly affected banyas. Forced industrialization suggested that enough banyas could finally be built to meet the demands of the people, and yet they suffered because they were lower priorities than other, more pressing, goals. Collectivization radically transformed the countryside, spreading disease and hunger across the country, increasing the pressure on towns to fight epidemics by using hot banyas to eradicate lice. And campaigns for more cultured living suggested socialist bodies were supposed to be clean bodies. Over the course of the 1930s, however, the Soviet state failed to fulfill its promises of building enough banyas for the population. The problems on the banya front were both laughable (as seen in cartoons in the journal Krokodil) and deadly serious (as the terror suggested.)","PeriodicalId":176351,"journal":{"name":"Without the Banya We Would Perish","volume":"74 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125311998","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Older Even Than the Tsar","authors":"E. Pollock","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780195395488.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780195395488.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"Banyas have been in the Russian region since before there were Russians. They appear in the first written records of Russian history and continued to remain relevant to belief and behavior though the Muscovite period and into the reign of Peter the Great. As bathing fell out of favor in Western Europe, the persistency of the banya struck outsiders as barbaric, titillating, and licentious. This chapter discusses the origins of the bania in Kievan Rus’, with an emphasis on everyday life, the law, and belief. The bania’s ambiguity as a place of healing and danger, rebirth and illicit behavior was evident from the beginning.","PeriodicalId":176351,"journal":{"name":"Without the Banya We Would Perish","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123946533","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"In the Banya I Changed My World View","authors":"E. Pollock","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780195395488.003.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780195395488.003.0011","url":null,"abstract":"The Soviet Union collapsed, but banyas remained. After 1991, various threads of the banya’s history were taken up by different parts of the Russian population. Some saw them as places for contemplation and camaraderie; others went for sex, to conduct business deals, to connect with tradition, or to feed their souls. Still others saw them as primarily about health. But it was also a place of corruption, suspicion, danger, and transgression. In the West, they went from being an odd habit restricted to immigrants from the former Soviet Union to a mainstay of American cities catering to people seeking an authentic spa experience. Banyas showed up in films, novels, and journalistic accounts of Russia as a key to understanding Russian culture.","PeriodicalId":176351,"journal":{"name":"Without the Banya We Would Perish","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116114591","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Banya . . . Is It Still Necessary?","authors":"E. Pollock","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780195395488.003.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780195395488.003.0010","url":null,"abstract":"By the late 1960s, the growth of apartments with indoor plumbing and bathing facilities took the pressure off the state to build banyas. Yet that growth was not universal enough to alleviate the need for banyas altogether. As the utilitarian need for banyas ebbed, the sense of the banya as a crucial meeting place only grew. Stories, films, and memoirs pointed to the banya as a place to escape from the pressures of public life and to reconnect with spiritual and communal identities. By the time the USSR collapsed, the banya was clearly more than just a institution of Soviet hygiene; it was also a symbol of Russian resiliency.","PeriodicalId":176351,"journal":{"name":"Without the Banya We Would Perish","volume":"47 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115137475","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Either Socialism Will Defeat the Louse or the Louse Will Defeat Socialism","authors":"E. Pollock","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780195395488.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780195395488.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"In as much as the banya was associated with the Russian peasantry and urban decadence, Bolsheviks disdained it. But as a tool of modern hygiene, the banya was unassailable. Workers demanded accessible, affordable, and well-maintained bathhouses. After the revolution of 1917, the Soviet state committed to providing them. During the Russian Civil War, the prevalence of epidemics (typhus, relapsing fever) only increased the pressure on the new state to provide people with the means to clean themselves in banyas. During War Communism banyas came under municipal control and were expected to provide access to the lower classes; under the New Economic Policy of the 1920s, they re-emerged as commercial enterprises. But as satires by Zoshchenko and the commentary of others made plain, the conditions in Soviet banyas remained abysmal, a far cry from the idealized banyas of popular imagination.","PeriodicalId":176351,"journal":{"name":"Without the Banya We Would Perish","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130798906","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}