Russian Holidays
From the Soviet era to today, a history of Russian
festivities
By Alexey Bayukov
I have a Russian-English dictionary that was published by the Pentagon
in the early 1950s. A great thing – consisting of extremely colloquial
language, it was probably compiled either for spies or for those whose
duty it was to recruit them. There is an appendix in the dictionary
with a lot of useful information. For instance, the description of
standing dishes in Soviet restaurants - not to mention that of the
structure of the People's Commissariats and the conversion of old
Russian measurements like vershoks and arshins into metric units -
reads like an interesting story. I also found a list of Soviet holidays.
They are:
|
January
1 -
|
New
Year's Day |
|
January
22 -
|
Joint
celebration of Lenin's memory and the anniversary of the demonstration
at the Czar’s Winter Palace on January 9, 1905 |
|
February
21 -
|
Red
Army and Navy Day |
|
March
12 -
|
February
Revolution of 1917 |
|
March
18 -
|
Commemoration
of the Paris commune |
|
May
1 -
|
May
Day |
|
November
7 -
|
Anniversary
of the October Revolution |
|
December
5 -
|
Constitution
Day |
What
fools, I thought. Instead of measuring vershoks they should have taken
a Soviet encyclopedia and read what was written there. Where was our
main holiday, Victory Day, on May 9? Why did the Americans insert
the stupid joint celebration of Lenin's memory and the anniversary
of January 9? First, I had never heard of a joint celebration before.
If something happened on January 9 it should be celebrated on January
9, not on January 22 or June 28. Plus, how can you possibly mark two
events on the same day if they occurred on different ones?
_____________________
According
to an official Soviet slogan
“Lenin lived, Lenin lives, and Lenin will live forever.”
_____________________
I furthermore found it strange to “celebrate” somebody’s
memory. Such a day should be called Memorial Day or something like
that rather than a celebration. I remember that Vladimir Ulyanov (that
was Lenin’s name before his comrades stole the documents of the
real Lenin somewhere) was born on April 22. It was necessary to know
that date in Soviet schools or you might fail your history course.
You were very likely to be asked the same question on joining the
Komsomol (the Young Communist League, of which you had to be a part
if you wanted to go to college). However, the question of when Lenin
died was singularly inappropriate. According to an official Soviet
slogan “Lenin lived, Lenin lives, and Lenin will live forever.”
Moreover, another slogan asserted that he was more alive than any
other living human being.
The reason for celebrating the February Revolution, and in March to
boot, was similarly unclear. (Actually, the date March 12 is connected
to the transition from the old Russian calendar to the new one, but
I think that it is quite enough to celebrate the October Revolution
in November and that it is not good for a nation’s mental health
to mark a holiday the month after the event took place in history).
It was obvious that without the Great October Revolution the February
one (when the Russian monarchy was overthrown) would never have occurred.
In addition, we knew full well that on November 7 we celebrated practically
all revolutions in the world combined. Before that, people could only
dream of a real revolution, and after it all that was possible was
a counterrevolution. Of course the Soviet people would never tolerate
this. Altogether, it was unimaginable nonsense.
Some holidays from the list are nonetheless still observed today.
We celebrate New Year's Day, Red Army and Navy Day (it was later called
“Soviet Day” – one joke went that the day was “painted”
red before World War II because Stalin had executed virtually all
the Army high command), and May 1 (Labour Day), the senseless holiday
that is nevertheless loved by everybody since, as in the motherland
of Robin Hood, it marks the beginning of the most wonderful month
of the year. Russians get two days off work (May 1 and 2), and it
is a nice holiday.
_____________________
Stalin
knew that millions of people had died
because of his mistakes.
_____________________
With those thoughts in mind, I opened my old Soviet encyclopedia from
Stalin's time and to my great surprise discovered that the American
authors of the dictionary were absolutely right: these were indeed
our holidays. I had forgotten that the Soviet Union where I lived
was very different from that under Josef Stalin.
My grandfather collected stamps, and when I looked at them after his
death, I expected to see a pompous series dedicated to Victory Day
on May 9. There were no such stamps at all. When I asked some older
folks about this, they explained that after the war the authorities
tried to ignore the event as much as possible. Stalin knew that millions
of people had died because of his mistakes (actually, they were not
mistakes - he simply exterminated anybody he thought might threaten
his absolute power, and in his crazed mind, any army general might
constitute such a threat) and was not sure whether he had succeeded
in hiding this fact. He feared that when the fighting ended and people
had time to think it over, they might understand that it was he who
had put the country on the edge of destruction. Victory Day only became
an official holiday in 1965.
A year or so later, International Women's Day was instituted as a
national holiday. This is another favourite holiday in Russia, particularly
among women. According to an official slogan, the Soviet state aimed
to erase all distinctions between the country and the city and between
men and women. In Brezhnev's more liberal times many jokes were made
about this slogan, and it was sometimes hard to tell whether the second
part of it was ever serious. Moreover, the emancipation of women enabled
the Soviet Union to become the second largest superpower in the world.
Just as the United States owed its greatness in large part to feminism,
the Soviet Union secured its might thanks to the women who worked
at railroad shifters, stood in lines in shops, cooked, did the laundry
and raised children while their husbands drank vodka and lay on the
sofa reading the newspaper. Anyway, Russian women really like this
holiday. There is a legend that on this day men do the cooking and
all the other housework. Of course this is only a dream, but Russians
love to dream.
At present we have a men's day too, which is celebrated on February
23. The only problem is that this date coincides with the day when
all Chechens were deported under Stalin's regime in 1944. Chechen
women and children were shipped to Kazakhstan in cattle cars, and
probably a third of them died. This was one of the most evil deeds
of the “father of the nations.” So every year on this day
Russian authorities keep on the alert for terrorist attacks.
_____________________
The
Soviet Union secured its might thanks to the women
who worked at railroad shifters, stood in lines in shops,
cooked, did the laundry and raised children.
_____________________
There was a heated debate about the celebration of the October Revolution.
In actual fact, no revolution occurred at this time. The Bolsheviks
took control of several key buildings in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Unlike the February Revolution, where the majority of the people supported
the overthrow of the Czar, no one in Russia knew who the Bolsheviks
were or what they stood for. However, ten years after the “Revolution”
a movie was made about it, and from that day forward what was shown
in the movie became official Soviet history. A few years after the
collapse of the Soviet Union, this holiday was renamed Reconciliation
Day and was eventually moved to November 4.
December 5, Constitution Day, marked the day Stalin’s constitution
was instituted. When it was replaced by another constitution in democratic
Russia, a new date was chosen for the holiday, which is not widely
observed in the country today. In addition, the first ten days of
January have been declared legal holidays, so hospital employees do
not work at that time.
Religious holidays were strictly forbidden in Soviet Russia. At first,
the Bolsheviks even banned Christmas trees. The tree was later permitted,
but instead of Christmas, Russians were only supposed to celebrate
New Year's Day. Today people are free to observe Christmas too, but
because it is psychologically difficult to celebrate one holiday right
after the other, for most Russians New Year's Day continues to substitute
for Christmas, as during the Soviet era. However, January 7 (Orthodox
Christmas) is an official holiday now. Muslims in Russia are allowed
to take any other day off work as a substitute.
Easter is celebrated more festively than Christmas in Russia. Under
the Brezhnev regime it was the only day of the year when Soviet citizens
could watch rock concerts on TV. The Communists feared that an Easter
procession might draw the youth to religion and so used the rock concerts
as a trick to entice people to stay home that day.
There is a church near my house, and I remember seeing lines of people
there on religious holidays. The only ones in line, though, were old
women. I suspect that if the Communist regime had continued a couple
of decades longer all churches in Russia might have closed without
any fuss. Anyway, today’s Russian holidays are a strange mixture
of Bolshevik and Orthodox ones with some new additions. Just as with
the rest of our life.
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