Animal Magic: Contemporary Beliefs and Practices in Ukrainian Villages

Abstract

Ukraine is predominantly an agrarian country with livestock production being the second most important occupation of the villagers. The repetitive upheavals of the 20th century – civil and world wars, revolution, the mass collectivization of 1928-1933, the artificial Great Famine that took the lives of about seven million Ukrainians, village uprisings, and mass resettlements introduced major changes to the traditional peasant world outlook.(2) The collectivization and dekulakization (eliminating the rich peasantry) campaigns, through expropriation of private arable lands and forceful imposition of Soviet collective farms, or kolhospy, was aimed at destroying the institution of private ownership. They were accompanied with arrests, exiles, and executions of many villagers. Village churches were mostly destroyed or turned into either kluby, entertainment centers, or storage places, while priests were imprisoned after being convicted of being enemies of the people. Most traditional village rituals were publicly ridiculed as superstitions alien to the new, Soviet people. All that, as Wanner pointed out, “effectively destroyed the essence of a peasant-based, rural Ukrainian culture.”[Wanner 41] It certainly was expected that villagers would turn into a new, enlightened, and advanced stratum of society. Indeed, some advancement took place in village life: many kinds of traditional, back-breaking labor were mechanized, agricultural operations were accelerated, and secondary education became compulsory, to name but a few changes. But even though Soviet ideology affected visible “landmarks of village life, it had little influence on the invisible, peasant worldview, which remained magical. For people who see the world magically, no accidental events exist. The magical worldview has its own strict logic or system for