Faceted Sobriety Day – MK

Take, if you have, a faceted glass. Pour into it… No, just tea! Or juice, milk, just water, coffee… Have a drink. That’s it, you celebrated two memorable dates at once – the Day of the faceted glass and the Day of sobriety.

But how did these two days end up in one? After all, a faceted glass is associated with us … only with vodka!

Pour your darling into the famous glass up to the “maruskin belt” (I will decipher it below), and this is exactly 167 grams, drink it, pass the glass to a friend in misfortune … Three glasses are half a liter, hence the expression “for three”. Why 9/11? Everything is simple here – it was on this day that the first batch of faceted glasses was produced in Gus-Khrustalny, and this happened a long time ago, during the Great Patriotic War. And there are many legends about the appearance of a glass with edges. Here is the great architect Mukhina, and the workers of the Gus-Khrustalny glass factory, and the unknown medieval Dutch … In the Mukhina museum there are even documents that talk about the task given to her by the government – to come up with convenient dishes for the workers. But if Mukhina is the author of a faceted glass, then she did not work on it for long – they drank from faceted glasses and glasses in Russia even before the revolution. “Faceted glasses fell from the table, Fell and broke – My life was broken …” – a famous gypsy romance, which was also performed by Pyotr Leshchenko. This is the 20s of the last century. But how long should it take for a household item to become popular and immortalized in a romance? So, most likely, the first faceted glass appeared in Russia under Peter the Great – it was made on his orders by a certain glass craftsman for use in sea voyages. The glass breaks with difficulty, is stable in sea turbulence, comfortable in the hands. From there, from the sailors, and the “maruskin belt” – this is how the waterline is called in the maritime language. “Load on the maruskin belt” – load the ship on the very waterline. And then you can pour yourself a full glass, again along the “Maruskin belt” – to the lower border of a smooth strip-rim … And all the other versions – about Mukhina and Kazimir Malevich, about 16 faces and 16 Soviet republics, about the personal request of Stalin’s ally Malenkov All of these are beautiful stories.

But we are celebrating on September 11 the birthday of the Soviet, and not Peter’s faceted glass. That glass, in which canteen workers poured sour cream, with which they poured “seed” into a bag at the bazaars, which was in soda machines, with which they molded homemade dumplings and measured bulk products. Remember – “Two cups of flour mixed with …”? And it was invented specifically for Soviet dishwashers – these huge units were then in all the large factory canteens … And how mentally they drink gulls from a faceted glass in a cup holder to the sound of wheels, in compartments and in reserved seats of all the trains of our vast Russia! So do not think that this handsome glass is intended exclusively for drunkenness.

And an interesting fact that will definitely come in handy in your life – 476 faceted glasses, stacked one inside the other, are equal in height to Vera Mukhina’s sculpture “Worker and Collective Farm Woman”. Don’t ask me how I found this out. It was complicated…

But with the Day of Sobriety, everything is clear, and there are no legends here. It began to be celebrated more than 100 years ago, on August 29. It was on August 29 (according to the then current calendar), as it is written in the Gospel, that King Herod, the son of Herod the Great, got drunk and in a drunken stupor ordered John the Baptist to be beheaded. True, there was not without a woman, a certain Salome, who had a personal dislike for the saint. The drunken Herod liked her so much that he promised to fulfill any of her requests. Salome and asked to cut off John’s head … On August 29, and according to the new style on September 11, the prophet was beheaded and his head was presented to Salome on a platter. Remembering this sad event, the Orthodox Church established a strict fast on this day, and since the crime was committed by the king in a drunken state, it was on this day, September 11, that the All-Russian Day of Sobriety was established. After the revolution, the day of the fight against drunkenness was forgotten as a religious holiday, but not so long ago the Holy Synod restored the annual celebration of the Day of Sobriety.

So, celebrating the day of the faceted glass, do not forget what crimes can be committed on a drunken bench.

Personally, I will go to the temple in the morning and light a candle for the health of all “who suffer from the disease of wine drinking.” And in the evening I will take out an old Soviet faceted glass in a cup holder from a secret place and pour it in … hot aromatic tea!

But how did a faceted glass and the fight against drunkenness end up on the calendar side by side?

Yeah, it’s probably just a coincidence.

Heading columnist Dzhanguli Gvilava, e-mail: [email protected]