ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a rather light-hearted look at what can be gleaned from a reading of a broad range of women’s narratives relating to their everyday lives in the Soviet Union about some of the ‘customary’ practices that women engaged in that crossed the threshold of 1917 or which emerged more definitively during the Soviet period. Indeed, in some instances, the Communist Party was sufficiently challenged and somewhat undermined by the continuation of certain pre-revolutionary and customary rituals that it adapted and adopted them in its own secular ceremonial practices. New secular rituals were introduced that provided an alternative to traditional religious services and the marking of annual celebratory festivals. Born in 1905, Eugenie Fraser’s childhood memoir offers an account of the Russian Orthodox ritual that provided the foundation for her pre-revolutionary Christening. In Islamic societies, older women were instrumental in maintaining such routine practices as reciting daily prayers, transmitting knowledge of the Koran and ritual fasting.
