Ukrainian Rushnyky: Binding Amulets and Magical Talismans in the Modern Period

Abstract

The traditional ritual use of rushnyky among the Eastern Slavs continued to flourish throughout the Soviet period, despite the Communist Party’s efforts to curtail what was dismissed as superstitious folkloric survivals in village life. The paper briefly examines use of the rushnyk in the traditional Ukrainian village setting, followed by close readings of a number of towels from the author’s collection. These include careful analysis of a funeral/memorial rushnyk from the mid-20th c. that functioned as a mimetic grave for a soldier lost on the front. Attention is paid to the curious politicization of the ritual towel in Ukraine not only in the Soviet period, but subsequently in independent Ukraine, particularly in the recent country-wide creation of a "Rushnyk of National Unity"—the stitching of an oversized towel as a means to symbolize the binding of the disparate (and often combative) regions of the newly independent nation. This and other examples cited demonstrate innovation in the use of ritual towels and how they are being employed in new contexts where they can play a symbolic (if no longer fully understood ritual/magic) role.