Maslenitsa, or Pancake Week, is a feast to mark the beginning of Spring and has been celebrated by Russians since pagan times. Pancakes symbolize the bright, round spring Sun and the coming warmth after the long, hard winter. In the Orthodox Christian tradition, Maslenitsa precedes the beginning of Lent, a period of fasting which lasts for 40 days. Maslenitsa culminates in the burning of an effigy, the straw doll that appears frequently in this collection of photographs from a parade on Tverskaya Ulitsa on Feb. 14, taken by Moscow Times staff photographer Igor Tabakov.