In the church of the Donskoy Monastery, a lady sits in prayer before a silver coffin on the cold tile floor. Then she rises, makes a cross and solemnly presses a kiss on the glass of the coffin, behind which the outline of the holy patriarch Tikhon is visible. For a moment the glass fogs up, then the woman makes way for the next believer who wants to kiss the coffin.
“We have not received any message, so we will remain open,” the saleswoman of the monastery shop answers when asked whether the sixteenth-century monastery will close to the public this week. Under pressure from the high corona death rates, Moscow will be closed from Thursday 28 October until at least 7 November. Non-essential shops, restaurants, cinemas and fitness clubs in the capital have to close, as well as schools and crèches. Employers must allow 30 percent of their staff to work from home. Institutions that remain open, such as theaters and museums, will use QR codes.
The churches will also remain open, the municipality said. And that’s fine, says the employee in the store. “We polish the icons with rose water and alcohol, but that is actually unnecessary. Because let’s face it, how can an icon harm your health? It comes from the highest and brings only good. Don’t be afraid and pray to God,” she says, rearranging her candles.
The girlfriend of eighty-year-old Galina Pyatnitskaya also often prayed. “She died of corona earlier this year. She must have contracted it in church, that was the only place where she didn’t wear a mask and people are close together,” says Pyatnitskaya by telephone. The elderly woman lives alone in Moscow. Unlike many peers, she has already had herself vaccinated at the beginning of this year. Now she’s going for a third shot. “What else? I have been through the polio epidemic, vaccines saved us then too.”
Hard measures
With nearly 20,000 dead this October – about a thousand a day – Russia seems hopelessly losing the battle against the virus. In the ten years that the Soviets waged war in Afghanistan, there were fewer deaths than in 2021 in less than a month, so goes a common wisdom. But despite the sad daily records, the number of vaccinated in Russia remains at 32 percent and the excess mortality is creeping towards one million.
The hardest hit are the over 60s. They make up 86 percent of the dead, but only 23 percent have been vaccinated. It was therefore the elderly to whom Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin addressed last week: “Dear grandfathers and grandmothers, get vaccinated, it is the only way,” he begged the elderly people of his city.
Dear grandparents, get vaccinated
Sergei Sobyanin mayor of moscow
Where Moscow previously used rewards to convince the elderly, strict measures are now being taken. Unvaccinated elderly people are requested to stay at home until February 2022, public transport cards will be withdrawn. An impossible task for many Russian elderly, who are often left to their own devices and do not always survive on their meager pension. Yet their stubbornness seems greater than the fear of the virus, and octogenarian Pyatnitskaya knows why. “Government propagandists say something different every day, which confuses people.”
The completely arbitrary government policy does indeed seem to be to blame for the catastrophic situation. Restaurants, shops and other public places are packed and distance is not kept anywhere. Despite fines, only half of the passengers on the Moscow metro wear face masks, local media polled. Not only are the death rates adjusted downwards, the word ‘lockdown’ is also diligently avoided. President Putin uses the euphemistic ‘non-working days’.
The week between the announcement and the introduction of the measure proved sufficient for many Muscovites to escape to plan, as the run that arose on airline tickets to Sochi and Crimea proved. Partly to prevent an influx of Muscovites, Saint Petersburg introduced its own lockdown over the weekend.
Everything better than a vaccine, often seems to be the credo. With shrewd strategies, ‘covid dissidents’, as vaccine refusers are called, manage to avoid vaccination. The 65-year-old mother of Alana Lolajeva (40) arranged via via a false certificate with a QR code. “Recently we were at the doctor, where she just plainly lied that she had been vaccinated. I was ashamed to death,” Lolajeva says from her work via Zoom. “My mother is not afraid of anything. It seems that a certain connection in her brain is missing,” the woman sighs.
Herbs or bear fat
Lolajeva knows dozens of covid-19 dissidents. They act out of fear of the vaccine, superstition, or simply because they don’t believe the virus can do any harm. “A neighbor was critically ill and infected the whole family, but continued to deny that it was corona. Many people believe in home remedies, herbs or bear fat for example. However you speak, no scientific knowledge can compete with it.” Whether it’s the doctor or the gym, she sees the same indifferent disobedience everywhere. “Doctors won’t admit it, but in many doctor’s offices vaccination is discouraged. And my gym lets people in through the back entrance during the lockdown.”
Near the walls of the Donskoy Monastery, 63-year-old Aleksandr Prokurin sits with a pram on a bench in the sun. He has four grandchildren, so with the crèches and schools closing, the nanny-grandfather is busier than ever. Prokurin is also not vaccinated, but is not worried about it. “Me and my wife were sick in June, then you don’t have to vaccinate. Better to get sick than to take the vaccine. And in any case, it is all much less bad now than last year.”
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of October 26, 2021
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