As she shakes off the fog of sleep and rolls out of bed each morning, Galina Penzurova tries to remember to touch the floor with her right foot first to ward off a day filled with troubles.
The 26-year-old chemist is always careful not to obstruct the bedroom mirror with open closet doors or discarded clothing for fear of blocking the journey of a recently departed spirit to the next world.If she drops her knife while buttering toast at the breakfast table, she knows to expect a male visitor. If she puts her shirt or sweater on inside out, she casts it to the floor and steps on it before putting it on the right way.
Russian folklore is so rich with omens and superstition that an outsider studying the rituals might conclude the only way to avoid bad luck is to stay in bed all day.
But even that's not safe, warn those truly tuned in to the other-worldly.
"If you have a bad dream and you don't want it to come true," explains Penzurova, "you have to get rid of it first thing in the morning by retelling it to running water from the faucet so that it goes down the drain."
Russians always have been highly superstitious, especially about rites of passage such as traveling, marriage and death. No self-respecting Russian - from cosmonauts to frequent-flying diplomats to the millions who now make their living ferrying goods in the new "shuttle trade" - would embark on a journey without the traditional "sitting for the road" practice in which everyone in the household observes a moment of silence together while seated on their luggage, the couch or a bed.
Whistling indoors, shaking hands over a threshold, returning something borrowed after nightfall and mending a hem or button while wearing a garment have long been shunned by most Russians in the belief they tempt misfortune.
But as this society recovers from seven decades of the rigid Communist ideology that frowned on any belief in rival forces, the occult and the paranormal have risen to new heights of influence on everyday behavior in the uncertain reform era. Ancient prohibitions have been resurrected by the superstitious, from an ever-lengthening list of forbidden gifts to a reluctance to celebrate any holiday, birthday, anniversary or other happy event in advance.
"Today, Russians' behavior is a bit experimental," says Vladimir Druzhinin, director of the Psychology Institute of the Academy of Sciences. "Until the 1990s, the ideology of those in power was imposed as the guiding force. There was no place for folkloric rituals, at least not in public."
Druzhinin and others attribute the renaissance of superstitions to the current quest for certainty and confidence in an era of upheaval.
"The old system of values imposed from above during the Soviet era has collapsed. Now there is a vacuum," Druzhinin says. "This has encouraged the spread of traditional religions as well as religious sects and more irrational forms of belief, like astrology, ESP and fortunetelling."
When the Russian Mir space station and the U.S. space shuttle Atlantis linked up in the cosmos in June 1995, Mir commander Vladimir Dezhurov hesitated fretfully for several seconds after Atlantis commander Robert L. (Hoot) Gibson extended his hand in greeting through the portal linking the spacecraft. Dezhurov eventually threw cultural caution to the wind and shook the hand of his counterpart, ignoring the threshold taboo.