Are we Having Fun Yet:
Russian Holidays in the Post Communist Period.

Andrei Zorin
Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow

The importance of the national holiday for reaffirming the ideology and self-identification of any state has been realized a long time ago. Actually, the rulers had understood this truth earlier than the scholars. No wonder, then, that having seized power, communists at once changed the whole system of holidays. However, it took a long time for this system to take its final shape. The last step in this process took place in 1977 when the Constitution Day was shifted from December 5 to October 7, commemorating the replacement of the Stalin Constitution by the Brezhnev one.

Indeed, all holidays are meant to serve an ideological purpose. But in the process of being accepted by the overwhelming majority of the country’s population, they lose a lot of their ideological luster. As Michel de Certeau showed in his "Practice of Everyday Life," the weak struggle with the strong by yielding to the demands and filling dominant structures with their own wishes, feelings and desires. They do it, to use a phrase coined by Certeau as we use rented apartment, furnishing it with our own acts and memories. Thus, 23 of February the Red Army Day became the celebration of men, a Men’s Day, complementing the 8th of March, Women’s Day. In turn, Women’s Day has mutated from the celebration of international solidarity of women and their emancipation under the socialist system into a festival of sexual license and a carnivalesque inversion of traditional sex roles. The Day of International Solidarity of Working People, the First of May, became the Festival of Spring. Even the most political of all Holidays, the Founding Day Celebration of November 7 was widely used as a pretext for a family reunion, accompanied with traditional dishes such as the immutable "herring under fur coat" ("seliodka pod shuboi") and particular cold salads. In a way, the October Revolution commemoration of November 7 became a substitute for the banned Christmas.

 But the most exceptional case was definitely the New Year’s celebration. However suspect ideologically, it became ultimately the most popular of Soviet-era holidays. The majority of the population used the traditional address of the General Secretary of Communist Party as an alarm clock of sorts. The end of his broadcast speech marked the beginning of drinking.

 The new regime had to deal with this system of holidays. Apparently, new holidays do not work. Among the key reasons are:

In fact, most people in Russia seem to be blissfully unaware what actually happened on June 12, 1991 – the first democratic presidential election in Russia's history -- designated the official Foundation Holiday of the Russian Federation. As for August 19, 1991, when Yeltsin and his supporters defied the attempt to restore the old Soviet Union, thus clearing the way for the emergence of the truly new Russia, it failed to arouse popular sympathy and, as a holiday, has fared even more miserably than Russia’s Day, June 12.

Unable to promote its own holidays, the new government borrows old ones, both from the Imperial Russia (religious holidays) and from the communist period. It is precisely these holidays that have undergone an interesting inversion. The new authorities have insisted on the private character of all these holidays while popular protesters on the streets have tried to recharge them with political ideology and to transform them into a weapon with which to fight the new regime.

Perhaps the only new holiday with pointed ideological ambitions was the celebration of the 850th anniversary of the city of Moscow. This totally invented founding event, notwithstanding its local character, was promoted as a celebration offering a new vision of Russia, both past and future. In the conceptual paradise of the Moscow celebrations, Russia’s very dramatic history was baudlerized into a story of uninterrupted triumphs and continuous bliss. But perhaps the most important part of these celebrations had to do with an ambitious effort to blend the notions of imperial might and religious righteousness with the values of an emerging consumer society.

Russia is still searching for an identity, and celebrations serve, as usual, as the most acceptable way of reinventing identity. The Pushkin bicentennial in 1999 and the approach of the new millennium will most definitely provide us with new visions and interpretations.

And yes, we are already having fun, but the biggest enjoyment is that of a scholar monitoring first hand all these developments.