History and traditions of the Russian bath: a brief outline. The history of the bathhouse from hoary antiquity to the innovations of the 21st century. The history of the bathhouse.
For some reason, many people underestimate the civilization of the Russian people, believing that their entire history, upon closer examination, turns out to be a real chronicle of savagery and backwardness. How wrong they are, these skeptics! In fact, the Russian bathhouse is perhaps the most ancient, since its appearance dates back to approximately the same period as the very birth of the Slavic tribe! There was also no written language as such, but we already see in oral folk art mentions of the bath and its healing power. After all, in the bath procedure, the two most powerful natural elements - fire and water - seem to merge together. The ancient Slavs, as you know, were pagans in their beliefs and worshiped a wide variety of gods. And the most “strong”, therefore, the most revered were the god of the sun and fire and the goddess of rain and water. By combining these two forces during the bath procedure, the ancient Slavs seemed to attract them to their side and thus took over part of their power.
The pagan holiday of Ivan Kupala, by the way, is also rooted in the depths of ancient Slavic beliefs. By jumping over fire, our distant ancestors tried to “burn out” evil and disease and cleanse their souls. And nightly swimming in a river or lake personified unity with Mother Nature and communion with her vital forces. In almost all epics and tales we can see echoes of ancient beliefs in the healing and cleansing power of water. Our ancestors knew that health is associated with cleanliness. The legends about “dead” and “living” water that emerged from such “vague guesses” tell us that pure “living” water has healing powers. The bathhouse was considered the keeper of “living” water and health, since it seemed to strengthen and direct vital energy person in the right direction.
The bathhouse was first considered a symbol of overcoming everything bad that can surround a person in earthly life, and in later times it became the personification of friendliness and homeliness. In Russian fairy tales, Ivanushka demands that Baba Yaga first steam him in a bathhouse, feed him, give him something to drink and put him to bed, and then ask him questions. These ideas about hospitality have been preserved in villages to this day, and now a guest who knocks on the door will first of all be offered a steam bath, and then offered a table and a bed.
The bathhouse has always played such an important role in the life of Russian people that in the ancient chronicles of the 10th-12th centuries, which tell about the customs of the “Russians,” we often find references to “soaphouses”. The baths were called “soaps”, “movnits”, “movyu”, “vlazny” and “movny”. Even in the treaty with Byzantium (dating back to 907), the Russians specifically stipulated that the Russian ambassadors who arrived in Constantinople would “create language” whenever they wanted. Baths are mentioned both in the “Tale of Bygone Years” (945) and in the charter of the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery (966). In those ancient times, the monks of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra were very knowledgeable in matters of medicine, since they had the opportunity to read the works of ancient Greek physicians, and it was Greek medicine that first drew attention to the benefits of the steam bath.
In an effort to verify the information they had received, the monks began to build baths and observe the healing effect they had on the sick and “suffering.” When medicinal properties The baths were fully confirmed, something like hospitals began to be set up at the baths, and such baths were already called “institutions for the infirm.” These were probably the very first hospitals in Rus'.
The Russian bath cannot be compared with either European or Asian baths. The Russian bath, in contrast, has a much stronger effect with its heat. An indispensable attribute of the Russian bath - a birch broom - whips hot bodies with all its might. It seems that this is not a bathhouse, but torture.
This is what foreigners who found themselves in a real Russian bathhouse thought at all times. In the steam room, under the blows of the brooms, it seemed to them that “their death had come and was standing on the threshold.” But after the bathhouse, foreigners noted that they felt great. The amazing, thrilling sensations associated with a Russian bath remain forever in the memory of foreigners. The fame of the Russian healing bath spread throughout the world.
In many foreign books of antiquity and the present day, travelers share their impressions of Russia. Is it possible to understand the Russian character without visiting a Russian bathhouse?
Russian baths with their healing powers have won the love of many people outside our country. Fans of Russian baths are building them in both France and America. Once in Canada, our compatriot can relieve his soul in the Sandunovskie baths. They were built like the Sandunovsky baths in Moscow. The attractive power and healing ability of Russian baths are generally recognized.
One of the ancient Arabic manuscripts preserves the memory of a traveler who visited Rus' and took a steam bath. From this source it became known how our ancestors built baths: “... They built wooden house, small in size. It had only one small window, which was located closer to the ceiling. All the cracks between the logs were caulked with tree resin mixed with forest moss. In one of the corners of the hut there is a fireplace surrounded by stones. There was also a large barrel of water in the bathhouse. When the fire flares up, the stones are sprinkled with water, and the door and window are sealed.”
The Russian bathhouse amazed the imagination of foreigners who were accustomed to baths with warm water. Therefore, the Russians, who dived into the ice hole after a scalding bathhouse, were seen by strangers as heroes.
The structure of the baths did not undergo any changes for a long time, and it remains so to this day. The idea remained the same, but its implementation has changed.
Initially, the baths were a small wooden hut, built from solid logs. They tried to place bathhouses near reservoirs so as not to experience difficulties with water. The internal structure of the bathhouse is as follows: approximately a third of the entire room is occupied by a stove-heater. A fire is lit below, which heats the stones placed on top, and also heats the bathhouse. When the stones are hot, the fire is extinguished, the pipe is closed with a damper and steamed, pouring water over the stones to create steam. They soar by climbing onto shelves (emphasis on the second syllable), which are something like a ladder with four or five wide steps. The higher a person climbs on the shelves, the hotter and more “vigorous” the steam is. On the last shelf, almost under the ceiling, only the hardiest and strongest steamers, who don’t mind 100-degree heat, risk steaming.
This is the so-called white bath. At first it was built only from logs, but then brick baths appeared. We find the first mention of a brick bathhouse in the chronicle of 1090, and it was built in the city of Pereyaslavl.
Black bath
If there is a white sauna, then, naturally, there must also be a black sauna, attentive readers will say - and they will be absolutely right! There was such a bathhouse. At first, even before the appearance of white bathhouses, the Russian people heated their bathhouses in black style for centuries. There are few real experts of such a bath now, but this idea does not fade away. There is a fairly widespread misconception that steaming black means suffocating from soot and burning in a small room next to an open stove. Among those who think so, there is not a single person who has experienced first-hand what a black bath is.
There is no need to be afraid that they will soon stop worrying about everything. There are many places throughout Russia where preference is given to the original Russian tradition. Baths in the villages of the Middle Urals, Western Siberia and other places were built in accordance with the behests of ancestors who knew a lot about a real bathhouse. They say there: “The black bath will wash you white.”
So what is the difference between a black bath and a white one? Only in the method of heating the room. After all, the house itself (both for a white and a black bathhouse) was built in the same way and was very small. There were only two small rooms with a rather low ceiling. The height of the ceiling corresponded to the height of an adult man. The small size of the bathhouse made it possible to heat it properly. The main difference between a black-heated bathhouse and all others is the absence of a chimney.
The door to the bathhouse was made very strong, without cracks. In order for it to close tightly and prevent drafts, a wooden step was made in front of the door. The first room of this bath house is called the dressing room. It was equipped with maximum amenities. In the dressing room there was a bench and a clothes hanger.
The dressing room is significantly smaller in size than the bathhouse itself, from which it was separated by a thin wooden partition. They preferred to make such a partition from linden or pine. The partition had a door that closed tightly, thereby preventing smoke and steam from entering the dressing room.
In one of the corners of the bathhouse there was a stove on which large round stones-boulders lay. Next to the stove there was a tub with a large supply of water. The bathhouse had one small window, and it was located above the stove. Thus, the bathhouse could be ventilated as needed.
As already mentioned, the stove in the black bath was without a chimney, so the smoke and soot went directly into the steam room. Naturally, after the first attempt to heat the bathhouse in this way, the walls and ceiling of the steam room became sooty, and this soot was completely impossible to remove. It was for this black color of the walls and ceiling that the bathhouse began to be called black.
After the sauna is heated, all windows and doors are opened so that the smoke comes out and the air in the steam room becomes fresher. Of course, no one started steaming until all the smoke had disappeared, otherwise one could easily get burned in such a bathhouse. Having ventilated the bathhouse, it must be prepared so that you can steam in it. To do this, the bathhouse is “steamed”: a special scraper is passed along the walls, excess soot is washed off, dousing the walls hot water from the gang, and only after these manipulations do they “steam” by splashing water on the heater. This method of steaming is called “black”. It is the most ancient and originates, figuratively speaking, in the Russian oven.
After all, long before baths appeared, Russians were steaming in stoves. How did this happen? Quite simple, but nevertheless very witty. They used the absolutely remarkable property of the Russian stove to retain heat long after food was cooked or bread was baked. Having removed the soot and ash from the mouth of the stove, they tried to wash the walls, laid straw on a tray, placed a tub of water there and placed a broom. Next, help was required: the one who steamed first sat on a shovel or even on an ordinary board, and an assistant carefully pushed him into the mouth. The oven damper closed tightly, and the person began to steam. By sprinkling water on the walls of the oven, you got an absolutely wonderful fragrant steam with the smell of just baked bread.
When the steamer wanted to get out of the oven, he knocked on the damper, and he was taken out of the oven in the same way as he was placed there. In general, this process was very similar to baking bread: like a loaf, they “put” a person in the oven, and when he “brown” from the heat, they quickly took him out. Having steamed, the man doused himself cold water, and if there was a river nearby, he would run and plunge into the river. Most likely, bathing with hot water was not very common; much more often they simply took a steam bath, alternating this with cold douches.
But they washed their hair in a very strange way (in the modern sense). Wood ash was first used to wash hair! Or rather, not the ash itself, but the so-called lye, which was made from ash. Only then did they begin to wash their hair with eggs; it is this ancient method that has survived to this day. And now many beauties, wanting to add beauty and shine to their hair, wash it with an egg in the old fashioned way. Isn’t this the best confirmation of the wisdom of our ancestors, when modern man thoughtfully refuses fashionable patented cosmetics, preferring folk remedies that have been tested for centuries!
If we want to trace the entire “path” of development of the Russian bathhouse, it will be like this: first - a Russian stove, in which they could steam after cooking and baking bread. Then the cramped mouth of the stove “expanded” to the size of a dugout, which was heated in the black way. The heater as such had not yet appeared; instead, in the center of the dugout there was a pile of stones, on which they splashed water. Smoke came out not only through the entrance hole of the dugout, but also through cracks in the roof. Then the cramped and low dugout “grew up”, becoming a small house, half dug into the ground. Such black baths were heated by stoves and already had a separate stove and several shelves. And only after this the Russians began to equip their black baths with chimneys so that the smoke would not accumulate in the steam room, but would go outside. This is how white baths appeared - first wooden, and then stone.
But with the advent of the white bathhouse, the black bathhouse did not give up its positions - they began to exist simultaneously. To this day, in many villages you can find bathhouses that are heated both white and black. Russians have always been very democratic and therefore tried to take into account the interests of all residents of a village, town or city, building two types of baths. After all, there are still people who like black saunas much more. They claim that the steam in a black bathhouse is more fragrant and beneficial than in a white one, because only in a bathhouse heated in the old way does a special, some ancient feeling of home comfort and warmth remain.
Probably, these were the feelings that primitive hunters experienced when they returned from hunting: all the hardships are behind them and they can finally relax and unwind, enjoying the peace. A to modern man, whom civilization has freed from the harsh need to fight wild animals and the elements for his existence, sometimes it is simply necessary to feel like an ancient hunter and warrior, capable of hard physical labor. After all, let’s be honest, our male contemporaries have become more effeminate compared to their courageous ancestors. And the black bathhouse, with its primitive sensations, apparently awakens in them some kind of ancestral, genetic memory, which, as it were, returns them to those harsh times. And it's so great! Having briefly felt like a warrior, a man tries to retain this feeling within himself: when he knows that a lot depends on his courage and determination, he behaves completely differently. He actually becomes more courageous, some special calm dignity appears in him, that brutality that is gradually being lost in our refined, civilized society. That's for sure. Tested in practice!
Actually, this, of course, is not a scientific theory - about genetic memory, which is “awakened” by a hot Russian bathhouse, heated using the black method. But something really happens to them (to men, in the sense) because they come out of the Russian bathhouse somehow different! If you want to check it out, go to some remote village where an old black bathhouse is still preserved. It is guaranteed that your civilized companion, whose most “bloodthirsty” act was cutting up the meat fillet you bought in the supermarket, after visiting the black sauna, will express an ardent desire to go hunting. You will simply be amazed to the core by the changes that have taken place. And besides, after such a bath something happens to the body: it becomes more obedient, almost animal-like flexibility and grace appear, and the whole body becomes ten years younger! Marvelous! And the doctors found scientific explanation“life-giving” properties of a black bath: it turns out that the smoke contains special antiseptic substances that destroy pathogenic bacteria and microbes. This is why the black sauna is so beneficial.
Of course, now not everyone has such an opportunity to experience the effects of a black bath for themselves, and not everyone can withstand it. Let’s be honest, if you’re not used to a black bath, you won’t get burned for long, especially if a person has never taken a steam bath before! But anyone can take a steam bath in a white bathhouse: it is both pleasant and no less useful.
The original Russian white bathhouse looked nondescript from the outside. The wooden hut stood half-grown into the ground. This prevented the winds from blowing through the bathhouse, thereby quickly cooling it. In addition, such a “down-to-earth” location of the bathhouse was very convenient for the correct placement of the stove and chimney. Unlike the black bathhouse, this one had a chimney above it.
The bathhouse was divided into two parts. The dressing room (the smaller part) was arranged according to tradition simply, but taking into account the needs. The bathhouse itself, or steam room, occupied the largest part. Its main attraction was the stove with a chimney.
The stove, the heart of the bathhouse, had several levels. The lowest level was a small recess - a vent. There was a stove above it. There were chimneys running from the stove in the wall. And on the stove there was a layer of stones. A tub of water next to the stove allowed steam to be added as needed. This design of the stove provided good “draft” during combustion, as well as ventilation for the bathhouse.
Very often, for this reason, steam rooms in a white bathhouse were without windows. The air in such a bath is always saturated with oxygen. It is no less hot than in a black sauna, but not as hot and tart. In a white sauna, combustion products are practically not felt in the air, and only the aromas of wood, broom and medicinal decoctions predominate.
There is no doubt that those who experience breathing difficulties due to any illness cannot do without a white-heated bathhouse. The pure aromatic steam of such a bath has a cleansing effect on the lungs. Breathing in an aromatic bath is similar to inhalation. Such baths became the prototypes of modern baths, which inherited their healing power from traditional Russian baths.
When did the bathhouse appear in Rus', and what did they do in it? The Russian bathhouse was first mentioned in The Tale of Bygone Years. This is the 10th century. But some historians believe that the bathhouse appeared in Rus' much earlier, in the 5th–6th centuries. Since ancient times, it has been considered a sacred place where four elements simultaneously dominate: water, fire, earth and air. They cleanse a person not only physically, but also spiritually. The Russian bathhouse is radically different from European and Asian ones - high temperature heat and such an integral attribute - like a birch broom. The Russian bath ritual shocked visiting foreigners, who called the action taking place torture and self-torture. When the British came to Rus' through the North, they noted that these barbarians drowned the huts “in black”, then families bathed in them, torturing each other with twigs, and then, whooping, threw themselves into a river or pond. The first Russian baths were black-style baths. There was a stove without a chimney. Smoke and soot went directly into the steam room. The walls and ceiling instantly became smoky and black - which is what gave these baths their name.
They steamed in them only after they had been well ventilated. They opened all the windows and doors to let the smoke escape. Later they began to install stoves with a chimney. And such baths were called white. They also steamed in Rus' in ordinary home ovens. They had spacious mouths - almost one and a half meters deep and about half a meter high. After cooking, the ash was removed from the warm oven, the soot was washed off, and straw was laid. They put a tub of hot water to sprinkle the roof of the stove, climbed inside, lay down and steamed. In Rus', everyone used the bathhouse: princes, noble people, and ordinary people. Not a single celebration was complete without a bathhouse. So, after the birth of a child, this event had to be “washed” in a bathhouse. The wedding ceremony was not complete without it. On the eve of the wedding, the bride and her friends went to the bathhouse. Accordingly, the groom and his friends visited the steam room. The day after the wedding, the newlyweds also went to the bathhouse. Upon leaving it, they were met by the matchmaker and treated to fried poultry and “bannik” - bread with which the mother of the bride blessed the newlyweds for the crown. Foreigners were amazed that Russians preferred the bathhouse as a place of communication. As Courlander Jacob Reitenfels wrote, “Russians consider it impossible to form friendship without inviting them to the bathhouse and then eating at the same table.” Almost every house in Rus' had its own bathhouse, which was heated once a week. Saturday was considered a bath day. Even public offices were not working. The construction of baths was allowed to everyone who had enough land. A decree of 1649 ordered “soaphouses to be built in vegetable gardens and in hollow places not close to the mansion” to avoid fires. The whole family washed themselves in home baths. Olearius (German scientist 1603-1671), who traveled to Muscovy and Persia in 1633-1639, wrote that “Russians can endure intense heat, from which they become all red and become exhausted to the point that they are no longer able to stay in the bathhouse, they run naked into the street, both men and women, and douse themselves with cold water, but in winter, running out of the bathhouse into the yard, they roll in the snow, rub their bodies with it, as if with soap, and then go to the bathhouse again." . However, nobles and rich people gave preference not to home baths, but to large public baths, where people of all ages and genders also steamed and washed together. Many “enlightenment” and “moralists” of that time called public baths the main hotbed of debauchery. Although in Europe at that time, washing men and women together was common. But the freedom of morals and relationships that reigned in Russian baths surprised foreigners. In their opinion, the Russians were completely devoid of the false modesty inherent - as they said - in every civilized (that is, European) person. Families with small children came to the baths. Here, in the common room, walking girls called rubbing girls worked. There were separate rooms and nooks for wealthy clients of all classes. Only after the Decree of Catherine the Great was joint “washing” prohibited. In 1743, the baths were divided into women's and men's. TO 19th century V major cities Expensive, richly furnished bathhouses with good service and excellent buffets appeared. But the most famous and luxurious were the Sandunovsky baths in Moscow. The entire elite of the Russian nobility visited this bathhouse and where foreigners began to go with pleasure. In 1992, Sanduny was declared an architectural monument and taken under state protection. Russian steam baths did not take root abroad. But sometimes in Europe you can see a sign with the name of a place containing the word banya.
The Russian bathhouse is inextricably linked with the history and culture of the Russian people, or rather, it is even older than the Slavic tribes from which the nation was formed. Historians claim that the bathhouse appeared long before the Slavs and cite as an example the statement of Herodotus, who argued that the ancient Scythians, who lived in ancient times (approximately the 5th-1st centuries BC), already used the bathhouse. They arranged a kind of camp bathhouse, which was a hygienic, therapeutic and cosmetic procedure and simply a form of relaxation and rest. They fastened several poles together, covered them with felt, and inside this hut they brought a metal vessel with hot stones. The Scythians poured water and threw herbs onto the stones, from which fragrant steam immediately began to rise. While inside the hut, the person not only sweated profusely, but also inhaled air saturated with healing fumes. Herodotus wrote: “No Hellenic bath can compare with the Scythian bath. Enjoying it, the Scythians scream with pleasure.” Scythian women, in addition, before the bath, ground pieces of bark and needles of cedar, cypress, and other aromatic plants on a rough stone. Water was added to this mixture to form a thick paste with a very pleasant smell. According to Herodotus, this mixture was rubbed all over the body. When they washed it off, it became clean and shiny.
The first documentary mention of a bathhouse in Rus' is considered to be the agreement of 906 between Prince Oleg and Constantinople on the construction of bathhouses for Russian merchants on the territory of the conquered city of Byzantium. Another mention of Princess Olga's revenge on the Drevlyans in 945, when she avenged their murder of her husband by burning the ambassadors in the bathhouse. A little later in the “Tale of Bygone Years” dated 1113, compiled by the chronicler Nestor, a monk of the Kiev Caves Monastery. Nestor describes the journey of the Apostle Andrew to the land of the Slavs. According to legend, Saint Andrew preached the Word of God in the Kyiv and Novgorod lands, where Andrei witnessed a picture that amazed him: people steamed in wooden huts, whipped themselves with brooms and ran out naked into the cold: “I saw ancient baths... And how they fry them rosy, they will become ragged from their clothes, and, taking a young twig, they will so flog themselves that they come out almost lifeless, and will cool their exhausted body with water. And they will come to life again. Then they are doing a ritual for themselves, not torment." There are sources from other countries, for example: The Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea, who lived in the 5th century AD, writes that the bathhouse accompanied the ancient Slavs all their lives: here they were washed on their birthday, before the wedding and... after death. “And they do not have baths, but make themselves a house made of wood and caulk its cracks with greenish moss. In one of the corners of the house they build a fireplace made of stones, and at the very top, in the ceiling, they open a window for the smoke to escape. There is always a container in the house for water, which is poured over the hot fireplace, and then hot steam rises. And in each hand, each has a bunch of dry branches, which, waving around the body, set the air in motion, attracting it to themselves... And then the pores on their body open and flow with They have rivers of sweat, and on their faces there is joy and a smile." An excellent description of steaming in a black sauna.
Mention of the bathhouse in chronicles before the 10th-12th centuries in Rus' was more often foreign, since in those days it was called: mov, movnya, movnitsa, soapnya, vlaznya, etc. In the charter of Prince Vladimir of Novgorod and Kiev, who introduced Christianity in Rus' and is named was among the people the Red Sun, the baths were called institutions for the infirm. These were a kind of folk hospitals, most likely the first in Rus'. The chronicles of the 11th-12th centuries mention a water supply system built for Yaroslav's courtyard. The Moscow princes took water for the bath from the Moscow River or from the Neglinnaya River. Later, at the beginning of the 16th century, on the orders of Ivan Kalita, an oak pipe was laid from the river behind the walls of the Kremlin and supplied water to a deep well-cache, from which it was then scooped up in buckets and carried home.
Foreign historians and travelers tried to describe the Russian Bath in detail, considering it a landmark that gives color and individuality to the Russian people. At the beginning of the 17th century, the German scientist Adamus Alearius (Olearius) visited Russia and experienced the peculiarities of the Russian bath himself: “In Russia there is not a single city, not a single village that does not have steam baths. Russians can endure extreme heat. Lying down on the bathhouse shelves, they order themselves to be beaten and rub their bodies with hot birch brooms, which I could not bear. From such heat, Russians turn red and douse themselves with cold water. In winter, jumping out of the bathhouse, they lie in the snow, rubbing their bodies with it, as if with soap , and then again enter the hot bath. Such a change in opposite actions is beneficial to their health." He was even more surprised and amazed, as he wrote in “Stories about a Persian Travel,” that when he looked incognito into one of the public baths in Astrakhan: “Men and women were in the bathhouse together and only a few of them were covered with brooms. The majority felt completely free.”
In those days, everyone steamed together in public baths, regardless of gender and age. The first attempts to separate the male and female visitors of the bathhouse into different rooms were made under Ivan the Terrible. Having visited Pskov, the tsar became extremely angry and convened a church council. The fact is that an unpleasant picture appeared before his eyes: in the Pskov public bathhouse, not only city residents - men and women of all ages, but also monks and nuns - were steaming and running naked into the street. As a result, the latter were prohibited from entering the bathhouse together with members of the opposite sex. As for the rest, everything continued as before. Attempts have been made periodically to ban co-washing, but with little success. Only Catherine II, by a special decree, ordered the mandatory construction of a separate room for women at a public bathhouse, where boys over seven years of age were prohibited from entering. However, whole families washed themselves in home baths, with men and women together. However, in public (commercial) baths, people of all ages and genders also steamed together, although women were on one half, and men on the other.
Public baths began to be built in Rus' in ancient times. Due to the fact that there was nowhere to build family baths in the cities, and the authorities were afraid of epidemics, in addition to ordinary washing baths, therapeutic and health baths were built, but more often at monasteries. In 1091, Bishop Ephraim, later the Metropolitan of Kiev, ordered “to establish a building - a bathhouse for doctors - and to heal everyone who comes for free.” During these same years, the monk of the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery Agapius, who became famous as a skilled healer, healed the sick with herbs and baths. According to the monastery charter, the sick were supposed to be washed in the bathhouse three times a month. The monks of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra studied ancient Greek treatises that appeared in Rus' after the Byzantine campaigns. They tried to use healing properties water and steam, described by Greek doctors, for the treatment of various ailments. However, the baths were built not according to the model of the Greek laconicum, but according to the model of the Russian folk chicken hut. There was certainly a bathhouse in every village, and almost all houses had their own separate bathhouse. Its construction was allowed to everyone who had enough land. A decree of 1649 prescribed that “soaphouses should be built in vegetable gardens and in hollow places not close to the mansion.” Home baths were heated only once a week, on Saturdays, and therefore Saturdays were considered bath days and even public places were not open on them.
During the construction of St. Petersburg, Peter I allowed everyone to build bathhouses in the new city without any restrictions, in particular, for the construction of a bathhouse in St. Petersburg there was no need to pay a fee, as in other places in Russia. Later, Peter established a special bath office, which was in charge of the baths of St. Petersburg. However, he himself repeatedly introduced a tax on baths, experiencing great difficulties during the conduct of the Northern War and the war with the Turks. Although he was not the first king to demand tribute from private baths.
The cost of entry to a public bathhouse was low so that everyone, even the poorest, could visit the bathhouse without harming their wallet. An interesting record has been preserved in the state archive that on May 11, 1733, permission was received from the medical office to open a medicinal bathhouse in Moscow, the owner of which was strictly obliged “... to use only external diseases in that bathhouse and not to repair difficult operations without the knowledge and advice of a doctor.” "And take the real price for your work and without excesses, so that there are no complaints about it." In these medicinal baths, which were called bader baths, it was forbidden to sell strong drinks.
In Rus', the most common bathhouse was the black bathhouse." Its peculiarity was that it consisted of one or two rooms and there was no stove in it - instead there was a hearth with a large number of stones heated by a direct flame. Such a bathhouse was a smoking one because it was heated in black with the free exit of smoke through a doorway or a special window. When the stones heated up, the hearth was cleared of ash, the bathhouse was cleared of soot, after which the bathhouse stood and warmed up evenly. And only after that it was ready for debate. Using brick and clay in they began to install a stove and a chimney in the bathhouse, and such a bathhouse was already called a white bathhouse. However, a black bathhouse existed for a long time due to the fact that a tax on “smoke” was periodically introduced, that is, a tax was taken from buildings with a chimney. This was the main reason slow development of baths in white.
The black sauna is still considered the standard of steam sauna conditions, the secret is that the stones heated by direct fire produced amazing finely dispersed steam called light, its quality was unsurpassed and the effect was unforgettable, which is why Russians always wish each other “light steam”.
By the beginning of the 20th century, there were more than 300,000 baths in Russia. Public baths began to be called commercial baths. In addition, there were noble baths - institutions that were more relaxing than hygienic. Post-revolutionary years, the Soviet government began to eradicate the historical past, which is why Russia was overwhelmed by typhus, consumption, even the plague. The authorities again began to restore baths, but not a family bath but a public bath and not a steam bath, but simply a washing room, or as they were later called bath-laundry factories. The concept of a bathhouse began to be replaced by simply a washing procedure. Traditions began to be forgotten. The bath business is practically dead. But with the destruction of Soviet power and the abolition of the common fund, baths and the bath business began to revive again. Of course, it’s too early to talk about mass production, but gradually the consciousness of society is turning towards an understanding of the need to use natural factors to maintain healthy image life. For people of the past, the bathhouse was a place not only for physical cleansing and ablution, but also a place for relaxation, relaxation, and healing. In the bathhouse they gave birth, received treatment, told fortunes, had conversations and meetings, and retired. The bathhouse was the cultural center of every family. Modern family Often there is a lack of such a core that connects and unites everyone; there is no place for cleansing and relaxation, hardening, restoration. Most medicine tries to correct advanced diseases that could have been prevented with simple and effective bath procedures, when applied constantly and with knowledge of technology.
But much more than the simplicity of morals, foreigners were struck by the unprecedented toughness and physical health of the Russians.
Back in 1779, doctor William Tooke, a member of the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, wrote: “Only a few diseases are common among Russians, and they can treat most with simple home remedies and diet. Women here give birth easily, and very often childbirth takes place in a bathhouse. Quantity there are exceptionally few stillborn children here compared to other countries... In general, Russians know only a few medical potions. However, very often instead of them, Russians use a steam bath, which has an effect on the entire human body. Without a doubt, for exceptional health and longevity "that we observe among Russians, they owe a lot to the bathhouse."
The English doctor, Edward Kentish, also pointed out that many fatal diseases are not as fatal for Russians as for other peoples. He attributed such resistance to disease only to frequent visits to the steam bath. Many other foreign doctors of that time shared the same opinion. For example, the Spaniard Sanchez, the doctor of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, argued that the bathhouse helps Russians against smallpox, diseases internal organs, from colds, chronic diseases caused by excessive drinking and eating. “I don’t hope that there will be a doctor who would not recognize a steam bath as beneficial. Everyone clearly sees how happy society would be if it had an easy, harmless and so effective method that it could not only preserve health, but heal or to tame the diseases that so often happen. For my part, only one Russian bath, prepared properly, I consider capable of bringing such great benefits to a person. When I think about the many medicines from pharmacies and chemical laboratories, coming out and being brought from all over the world , then how many times did I want to see that half or three-quarters of them, with the great expense of constructing buildings everywhere, would turn into Russian baths, for the benefit of society.” At the end of his life, having left Russia, Sanchez contributed to the opening of Russian steam baths in all the capitals of Europe, but they began to actively build Russian baths only after the defeat of Napoleon in Russia, when Russian troops reached Paris, installing not only camp, but also stationary baths along the way .
Alexey Bely
The Russian bathhouse was first mentioned in The Tale of Bygone Years. This is the 10th century. But some historians believe that the bathhouse appeared in Rus' much earlier, in the 5th–6th centuries. Since ancient times, it has been considered a sacred place where four elements simultaneously dominate: water, fire, earth and air. They cleanse a person not only physically, but also spiritually.
The Russian bathhouse is fundamentally different from European and Asian ones - in the high temperature of the heat and such an integral attribute as a birch broom. The Russian bath ritual shocked visiting foreigners, who called the action taking place torture and self-torture.
When the British came to Rus' through the North, they noted that these barbarians drowned the huts “in black”, then families bathed in them, torturing each other with twigs, and then, whooping, threw themselves into a river or pond.
The first Russian baths were black-style baths. There was a stove without a chimney. Smoke and soot went directly into the steam room. The walls and ceiling instantly became smoky and black - which is what gave these baths their name.
They steamed in them only after they had been well ventilated. They opened all the windows and doors to let the smoke escape. Later they began to install stoves with a chimney. And such baths were called white. They also steamed in Rus' in ordinary home ovens. They had spacious mouths - almost one and a half meters deep and about half a meter high. After cooking, the ash was removed from the warm oven, the soot was washed off, and straw was laid. They put a tub of hot water to sprinkle the roof of the stove, climbed inside, lay down and steamed.
In Rus', everyone used the bathhouse: princes, noble people, and ordinary people.
Not a single celebration was complete without a bathhouse. So, after the birth of a child, this event had to be “washed” in a bathhouse. The wedding ceremony was not complete without it. On the eve of the wedding, the bride and her friends went to the bathhouse. Accordingly, the groom and his friends visited the steam room. The day after the wedding, the newlyweds also went to the bathhouse. Upon leaving it, they were met by the matchmaker and treated to fried poultry and “bannik” - bread with which the mother of the bride blessed the newlyweds for the crown.
Foreigners were amazed that Russians preferred the bathhouse as a place of communication. As Courlander Jacob Reitenfels wrote, “Russians consider it impossible to form friendship without inviting them to the bathhouse and then eating at the same table.”
Almost every house in Rus' had its own bathhouse, which was heated once a week. Saturday was considered a bath day. Even public offices were not working. The construction of baths was allowed to everyone who had enough land. A decree of 1649 ordered “soaphouses to be built in vegetable gardens and in hollow places not close to the mansion” to avoid fires. The whole family washed themselves in home baths.
Olearius (German scientist 1603-1671), who traveled to Muscovy and Persia in 1633-1639, wrote that “Russians can endure intense heat, from which they become all red and become exhausted to the point that they are no longer able to stay in the bathhouse, they run naked into the street, both men and women, and douse themselves with cold water, but in winter, running out of the bathhouse into the yard, they roll in the snow, rub their bodies with it, as if with soap, and then go to the bathhouse again." .
However, nobles and rich people gave preference not to home baths, but to large public baths, where people of all ages and genders also steamed and washed together. Many “enlightenment” and “moralists” of that time called public baths the main hotbed of debauchery. Although in Europe at that time, washing men and women together was common.
But the freedom of morals and relationships that reigned in Russian baths surprised foreigners. In their opinion, the Russians were completely devoid of the false modesty inherent - as they said - in every civilized (that is, European) person. Families with small children came to the baths. Here, in the common room, walking girls called rubbing girls worked. There were separate rooms and nooks for wealthy clients of all classes.
Only after the Decree of Catherine the Great was joint “washing” prohibited. In 1743, the baths were divided into women's and men's. By the 19th century, expensive, richly furnished bathhouses with good service and excellent buffets appeared in large cities.
But the most famous and luxurious were the Sandunovsky baths in Moscow. The entire elite of the Russian nobility visited this bathhouse and where foreigners began to go with pleasure.
In 1992, Sanduny was declared an architectural monument and taken under state protection. Russian steam baths did not take root abroad. But sometimes in Europe you can see a sign with the name of a place containing the word banya.
The first baths in Rus'
In Rus', baths have been known since ancient times. In his chronicles, Nestor dates their appearance to the first century AD, when St. The Apostle Andrew, preaching the gospel word in Kyiv, then went to Novgorod, where he saw a miracle - those steaming in a bathhouse. According to Nestor’s description, the people steaming in the bathhouse were similar in skin color to boiled crayfish:
“...Having heated up the oven in wooden baths, they entered there naked and doused themselves with water. Then they took a rod (a broom) and began to beat themselves, and they flogged themselves so badly that they barely came out alive. Then, having doused themselves with cold water from the head, they came to life.”
Nestor in his chronicle concludes: “Not being tormented by anyone, they tormented themselves, and did not perform ablution, but torture.”
Water procedures in the form of bathing, dousing and steaming with a broom whipping the body were widely used by Slavic tribes Ancient Rus'. From ancient chronicles we learn that the bathhouse appeared in Rus' long before the baptism of the Slavs. Some historians believe that the bathhouse was allegedly brought to Rus' by the Arabs or Spartans. Other archaeological historians suggest, and quite reasonably, that the Russian bathhouse is the Slavs’ own invention. In confirmation of the latter, there is a completely special, unlike any other, ritual of washing the Slavs.
But some researchers also claim the opposite - that the first bathhouse made its way to the North through Slavic tribes from the East. Even the ancient Greek scientist and traveler Herodotus wrote that the hermits, who had baths in the form of huts, received steam by throwing hemp seeds onto hot stones. Herodotus also mentions that the Scythians, after burying the dead, cleansed themselves with a steam bath.
Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea, who lived in the 5th century. AD writes that the bathhouse accompanied the ancient Slavs all their lives: they were washed here on their birthday, and before the wedding, and... after death.
“And they do not have baths, but make themselves a house of wood and caulk its cracks with greenish moss. A fireplace made of stones is built in one of the corners of the house, and at the very top, in the ceiling, a window is opened to allow smoke to escape. There is always a container for water in the house, which is poured over the hot fireplace, and then hot steam rises. And in everyone’s hands there is a bunch of dry branches, which, waving around the body, set the air in motion, attracting it to themselves... And then the pores on their body open and rivers of sweat flow from them, and on their faces there is joy and a smile.” . This is what one Arab traveler and scientist wrote about the ancient Slavs.
In Rus' everyone went to the bathhouse
In the chronicles of the X-XII centuries, baths in Rus' are often mentioned. In those distant times, our ancestors called baths in their own way: mov, movnya, movnitsa, mylnya, vlaznya, etc.
From the chronicle of 966 we learn:
In the charter of Prince Vladimir of Novgorod and Kyiv, who introduced Christianity to Rus', and popularly called the “Red Sun,” baths were called institutions for the infirm. These were, of a kind, folk hospitals, in all likelihood, the first in Rus'.
In 1091, Bishop Ephraim, later the Metropolitan of Kiev, ordered “to establish a building - a bathhouse for doctors and to heal everyone who comes free of charge (i.e., free of charge. Author). During these same years, the monk of the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery Agapius, who became famous as a skilled healer, healed the sick with herbs and baths. According to the monastery charter, the sick were supposed to be washed in the bathhouse three times a month.
The Laurentian Chronicle, compiled in 1377, mentions a bathhouse at the court of Princess Olga. The name of this bathhouse is interesting - “Istobka”. Probably derived from the word - to melt?
The famous figure, historian and scientist of Russia Karamzin, in his work “History of the Russian State,” cites evidence of foreign travelers who visited our land in ancient times:
... “The inhabitant of the midnight lands loves movement, warming his blood with it. He gets used to enduring frequent changes in air and is strengthened by patience... He despises the bad weather characteristic of the northern climate... He is tempered by his fiery bath.”
In the chronicles of the 11th-12th centuries. the water supply system built for the “Yaroslav’s Courtyard” is mentioned. The Moscow princes took water for the bath from the Moscow River or from the Neglinnaya River. Later, at the beginning of the 16th century, by order of Ivan Kameta, an oak pipe was laid from the river deep into the banks behind the walls of the Kremlin and supplied water to a deep well-cache, from which buckets carried it wherever needed.
"Why are Urusuts healthy and strong?"
In the winter of 1237, Genghis Khan's grandson Batu approached Moscow with his cavalry. He saw log buildings near the river, from which thick steam was pouring out. From there, people often jumped out in a hurry, naked, threw themselves into the ice hole and plunged, while others rolled around in drifts of snow.
This is how the writer and historian Vasily Yan describes this historical episode in the novel “Batu”:
“Batu Khan threw his whip at the log houses:
What are these crazy people doing?
These houses are called soap houses,” the interpreter explained. - There, residents of Mushkara (Moscow) beat themselves with birch brooms, wash themselves with hot water and kvass, then plunge into the ice hole. It is very good for health. That’s why the Urusuts (Rusichs) are so strong.”
Back in the first half of the 12th century, the granddaughter of the Kyiv prince Vladimir Monomakh, Eupraxia, having been interested in traditional medicine since childhood, drew attention to the health benefits of the Russian bath. Collecting various, useful for humans, healing herbs, she prepared decoctions from them and treated them not only with noble people, but also with ordinary peasants. “She did good to people with her medicine,” people said about Eupraxia, for which she was nicknamed Dobrodeya.
At the age of fifteen, she was betrothed to a Byzantine prince. Having moved to her husband in Constantinople, Eupraxia studied in a short time Greek language, read books of Greek scientists: Hippocrates, Galen and Asclepiades. Over time, becoming an outstanding doctor of her time, she collected and studied numerous recipes traditional medicine, fought for people to maintain cleanliness, without which they “wouldn’t be healthy.” Eupraxia already spoke about the “peculiarity” of the Russian bath, its benefits, which “prevents illness and strengthens the body.”