Just as Her Divine Son did, She [the Mother of God] carried Her cross Her entire life. This cross consisted of the scandalous discrepancy between the greatness befitting Her as the Mother of God, and the condition of humiliation in which She lived right up until Her death.59
At the foot of the cross on Mount Golgotha this woman suffered intensely with her son. After three days he rose from the dead. Similarly, according to tradition, she herself rose up into heaven three days after she died. This event, the Assumption (“Uspenie”) is the greatest church holiday associated with Mary,60 just as Easter (celebrating Christ’s “voskresenie”) is the greatest festival for Christ in Russia.
The similarity between the Mother of God and God the Son can give rise to situations where one might be confused with the other. In his 1898 essay on the idea of humanity in Auguste Comte, philosopher Vladimir Solov’ev describes the remarkable icon of Sophia, or the divine Wisdom, in Novgorod. She sits on a throne at the center of the icon, with a Mother of God in the Byzantine style on her right, John the Baptist on her left, and Christ rising above her with uplifted arms. According to Solov’ev, this central, feminine figure cannot be the Mother of God, nor can she be Christ: “If this were Christ, then it could not be the Mother of God, but if it were the Mother of God, then it could not be Christ.”61 This very jumping back and forth between alternatives, however, suggests some higher semantic equivalence between the two, as if the Sophia represented some principle of unity between the divine Mother and her Child.
Christ is so similar to his mother that he sometimes “mothers” her. Andrei Siniavskii refers to an icon of the Assumption in which Christ, standing before his mother’s body, takes her soul into his hands in the form of a swaddled child.62 There may be a revenge fantasy lurking here.
Another aspect of Russian religiosity that will not be familiar to Western Christians is a tendency toward blending the pagan mother earth with the Christian Mother of God. Both of these maternal images suffer because of the sinfulness of Russian people. Boris Uspenskii quotes a spiritual song from the mid-nineteenth century:
According to the religious lore, both mother earth and the Mother of God suffer terribly whenever people swear using mother-oaths (so-called “mat”).64
The suffering Mother of God is supposed to come to the aid of those in need, that is, those who, like her, are suffering. She has great power as an “intercessor and protector,” according to Joanna Hubbs. But just how “powerful” is she in fact? She is powerless to protect her son from being crucified, and the perpetual sorrow of her expression encourages the worshiper to accept the trials and tribulations of life. Hubbs says: “Mary is the Tree of Life upon which her son hangs.”65 This is a protector?
Closely related to the Christian cult of the Mother of God in Russia is the old Slavic cult of Paraskeva-Piatnitsa. This cult appealed even more directly to masochistic impulses. Worshipers (women), among their other activities, would beat themselves violently.66
Russian proverbs attest to the abundant suffering of mothers (and women generally). In Vladimir Dahl’s classic collection one can find such items as the following:
A young wife cries till the morning dew comes, a sister cries till she gets a golden ring, but a mother cries till the end of her life (Moloda zhena plachet do rosy utrennei, sestritsa do zolota kol’tsa, mat’ do veku).
A mother’s crying is like a flowing river, a wife’s crying is like a running brook, a bride’s crying is like falling dew—as soon as the sun comes up, it dries the dew away (Mat’ plachet, chto reka l’etsia; zhena plachet, chto ruchei techet; nevesta plachet—kak rosa padet; vzoidet solntse—rosu vysushit).
A mother cries about her own handful (child), not someone else’s (Mat’ plachet [po detishchu] ne nad gorstochkoi, a nad prigorshnei).67
It is a woman’s habit to help out matters by means of tears (Zhenskii obychai—slezami bede pomogat’).68
Some of the proverbs—evidently spoken by men—suggest that women cry more than is really necessary (e.g., “In women and drunkards tears are cheap”). Still, on the face of it, more tears do suggest more suffering.
Russian literature is rich with the imagery of suffering and self-sacrificing women, some of whom are masochistic, some of whom are not. Pushkin’s Tat’iana Larina has already been mentioned. Nikolai Nekrasov’s long poem Russian Women (1872) features a noblewoman who follows her husband to a Siberian mine and, at the poem’s climax, falls on her knees to kiss her husband’s chains.69 Many of Dostoevsky’s female characters suffer on behalf of their men. Barbara Heldt characterizes one of Dostoevsky’s best-known heroines as follows: “Nastasia Filippovna allows Rogozhin to murder her”; “she is given a multitude of opportunities to cast aside her role as femme fatale or fallen woman; she is shown to be capable of living quietly; but she is ultimately unwilling to live.”70
In Lermontov’s Hero of Our Time Vera declares to Pechorin: “I am your slave [ia tvoia raba]”71—and after suffering great emotional torments over Pechorin, has the good sense to leave him. Tolstoy’s Natasha in War and Peace gives up her aggressive charm entirely when she marries Pierre Bezukhov, degenerating into an unkempt “fertile female” and “slave to her husband.”72 Pasternak’s lecherous old Komarovsky seduces the young girl Lara, making her his slave (“nevol’nitsa”) and causing her great suffering. She then imagines herself to be among the “poor in spirit” who are blessed by Christ.73
Anna Akhmatova, author of the long poem Requiem, which depicts the terrible sufferings of the wives of those arrested during the 1930s, takes pride in having been “with the people,” “unprotected by foreign wings.”74 Solzhenitsyn’s Matriona loses her life while helping rapacious relatives haul away a portion of her house.
These are all very different examples, of course, but women’s suffering is seen as somehow exemplary in all of them. Men sacrifice themselves in literary art too, but their suffering lacks a certain emblematic quality. The righteous Matriona can stand for all of Russia, but Nerzhin, or Kostoglotov, or even Ivan Denisovich cannot.
Women’s folklore is a particularly rich source of information on women’s suffering. For example, any self-respecting peasant woman in tsarist Russia knew how to keen. Men, on the other hand, did not. All of the various forms of laments (“plach,” “prichitanie,” “prichet,” “voi”) were sung exclusively by women. In many areas of Russia a woman who did not possess the “art of the lament” was held in reproach.75