Strange day of the calendar: old holidays no longer fit into the new state ideology

So, post-Soviet Russia inherited four public holidays from the USSR: Defender of the Fatherland Day (February 23), International Women’s Day (March 8), Spring and Labor Day (May 1), Victory Day (May 9). Well, there are no questions about the last one. As for the rest, there are very many.

Dolyushka female

Let’s start with the just celebrated International Women’s Day. As everyone knows, it was invented by the German socialist, and then the communist Clara Zetkin. And she found the full support of the delegates of the Second International Conference of Socialists, held in 1910 in Copenhagen. The conference decided: there will be a holiday!

At first, he did not have a specific date. But they began to celebrate it in March almost immediately – already in the next, 1911. It was first celebrated on March 19 – in Germany, Austria-Hungary, Denmark and Switzerland. So the German Social Democrats decided to honor the memory of the victims of the March Revolution in Prussia (1848) and the events associated with the Paris Commune (1871). March 8th International Women’s Day was first observed in 1914. Since then, it has been that way.

As it is clear from what has already been said, initially the holiday was “sharpened” not for the keepers of the hearth, but for warriors – for women who fight for their own and universal rights. Those who celebrated it were not supposed to sit at home on this day. It was supposed to go to protests. At first, the main theme of the rallies and demonstrations was the demand to give women the right to vote. But very soon, with the beginning of the First World War, the anti-war theme came to the fore.

For the history of Russia, International Women’s Day has a special meaning. Although the Second Russian Revolution went down in history as the “February Revolution”, according to the new style, it began on March 8th. It began with a “woman’s revolt” – with rallies dedicated to, as it was then called, the Day of the Worker. Their main slogans were: “Down with war!”, “Down with autocracy!”, “Bread!”.

It is clear that the defenders of the shattered foundations were extremely negative about the holiday at the time of its emergence and rooting on Russian soil. And some zealots of traditional values ​​have retained a wary attitude towards him to this day.

“If you meant a civil holiday, then I think that no, you shouldn’t celebrate,” Archpriest Igor Fomin confidently answers the question on the air of the Spas TV channel to the question: “Is it right for an Orthodox person to celebrate March 8?” (the program “The answer of the priest “). – In Orthodoxy, there are two wonderful completely feminine holidays. This is the Day of the Myrrh-bearing Women – the third week after Easter. And in September – the Day of Faith, Hope, Love and Sophia.”

“Christians do not need to use March 8 to pay tribute to women,” confirms the Pravoslavie.Ru Internet portal (editor-in-chief Metropolitan Tikhon (Shevkunov)). On the same portal you can find such curious information about the roots of Women’s Day: “A number of historians also name another – religious – reason for the holiday, according to which Zetkin’s intentions were to connect the history of the women’s socialist movement with the history of her people – the Jews.

Namely, with that page of this story that tells about Esther, the wife of the Persian king Xerxes… The date of the celebration of Purim in the Jewish religious calendar is “sliding”, as in the Orthodox – the date of the celebration of Easter. However, the date of the celebration of Purim, which came in 1910 on March 8, took hold and took root.

Here, however, a clear mistake: Clara Zetkin, nee Eisner, is a German woman with an admixture of French blood. She “borrowed” her Jewish surname from her husband, the Russian and German revolutionary Osip Zetkin. But the fact of the Aryan origin of the mother of Women’s Day, of course, will not reassure the guardians of ancient traditions. They have more weighty reasons for disliking him.

The author found the most clear and detailed claims to the holiday on the Internet page of the Holy Resurrection Cathedral in the city of Borisov (Belarus). In an article titled “The Feast of Women: How Should a Christian Treat the Feast of March 8?” in particular, the following is reported: “On this day it was necessary to glorify women with certain qualities. And this is another reason to stop celebrating this holiday, since the glorification of a feminist woman brings direct damage to the harmonious life of society and the traditional family way of life …

This holiday was originally conceived … as a holiday of a revolutionary woman, calling her to freedom and independence, and the Church directly tells us: “A wife, let her be afraid of her husband” (Eph. 5:33). Unfortunately, many women cannot understand one thing, that they cannot be happy when they are completely free.”

Arguments, to be sure, weighty. You can also, taking a sin on your soul, enter into an argument with strict uncompromising priests. But how, tell me, to argue with the Lord himself? Absolutely impossible. Such obstinacy would already contradict not only traditional values, but also the Constitution, in which the Lord has recently been registered. It is clearly stated: the Russian Federation preserves “the memory of the ancestors who passed on to us the ideals and faith in God.”

How destructive to faith the emancipation of women, symbolized by and to a large extent still is International Women’s Day, is, of course, a difficult question. Different priests and theologians answer it differently. But in any case, it is obvious that this holiday is not following tradition – the tradition that the church represents and which is raised to the shield of the ideology of power – but a break with it.

Surrender Day

The holiday that we celebrate on February 23, thank God, has no contradictions with Scripture. But there is a serious disconnect between its ideological content and historical facts: Defender of the Fatherland Day is celebrated on the anniversary of the acceptance by the leaders of Soviet Russia of the ultimatum to Kaiser Germany.

The Second Reich, we recall, demanded huge territorial concessions from Soviet Russia (“the areas lying to the west of the line indicated in Brest-Litovsk to the Russian representatives, which previously belonged to Russia, are no longer subject to the territorial sovereignty of Russia”), recognition by the Ukrainian People’s Republic and conclusion with it peace treaty, the payment of indemnity (“compensation for damages to civilians and reimbursement of expenses for the maintenance of prisoners of war”) and, finally, the complete and immediate demobilization of the army in the field.

The German ultimatum was received at Smolny on February 23 at 10.50 am. On the 23rd, the Pravda newspaper published an article by Lenin, Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, “Peace or War?”.

“Our retreating and demobilizing army refuses to fight at all,” the author wrote. “Only an unrestrained phrase can push Russia, under such conditions, to war at the moment, and I personally, of course, would not stay for a second either in the government or in the Central Committee of our party if the politics of the phrase had taken over.”

Lenin presented the same arguments at the meeting of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party that took place on the same day. The discussion was long and heated, but in the end Ilyich convinced his comrades-in-arms: by a majority of votes – 11 against four with four abstentions – the Central Committee spoke in favor of the immediate acceptance of the German proposals. On the night of February 23-24, this decision was approved by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. At 7:32 a.m., the Tsarskoye Selo radio station transmitted radiotelegrams to the capitals of the Central Powers – Berlin, Vienna, Istanbul and Sofia: Russia agrees, Russia surrenders.

In short, February 23, 1918 is associated not so much with national pride as with the greatest national humiliation. And by and large, there is no reason to be proud of what happened then, as it is now fashionable to say, from the word “completely.”

In the Soviet era, the holiday was associated, of course, not with the “shameful world”, but with the birth of the Red Army. But formally and legally, it was born a little earlier: the decree of the Council of People’s Commissars on the creation of the Red Army was issued on January 28, 1918. And on February 23, she did nothing heroic. Even “First Marshal” Voroshilov later admitted (namely, in a report dedicated to the 15th anniversary of the Red Army) that “the timing of the celebration of the anniversary of the Red Army on February 23 is rather random and difficult to explain and does not coincide with historical dates.”

This is first. And secondly, the main purpose of the emerging Red Army was not the fight against an external enemy, which occupied a significant part of the country’s territory and demanded even more, but with which it was supposed not to fight, but to put up, but fighting on the fronts of the flaring civil war.

“The new socialist army should not wage war on the external front against the enemy army,” said the last commander-in-chief of the old army, the Bolshevik Nikolai Krylenko, in January 1918. “It will stand guard over Soviet power, as the basis of its existence, and, at the same time, the most important The task of the army will also be to crush our bourgeoisie.”

That, at any rate, was the original intention. And at the beginning, events developed precisely according to this scenario: the main, and sometimes the only enemy for the Red Army for many years were their own compatriots.

In Soviet times, this circumstance did not diminish, but only emphasized the significance of the holiday: the internal class enemy was considered even more dangerous than the external enemy. But how do the historical roots of the celebration fit in with the current universally held together ideological doctrine, with an attempt to harness red and white patriotism in one wagon? There is discord.

Unkind May

And the holiday of spring and labor – the former Day of International Solidarity of Workers – looks like a completely black sheep in modern state calendars. Just think: in a country where you can get a prison term for a single picket, for reposting a message about an uncoordinated street action, the anniversary of the events qualified by the modern Russian Criminal Code as “mass riots” is celebrated at the state level.

Recall that May 1 became an international proletarian holiday in memory of the bloody events of May 1–4, 1886 in Chicago – workers’ protests, during which dozens of people were injured and killed. In Russia until 1917, May Day actions were considered illegal. But, despite the persecution by the authorities, May Days became more and more widespread from year to year and, accordingly, less and less amenable to police control.

Here, for example, is how a contemporary who sympathizes with the demonstrators describes the Moscow May Day of 1914: “At 4 o’clock in the afternoon, the May Day participants gathered … on Lubyanka Square, where the red banner flew up for the third time and the square resounded with revolutionary songs. Then large forces of brutalized gendarmes moved against the demonstrators and policemen. There were dumps, the workers began to throw stones at the gendarmes. At the Moskva River, towards us, threatening with a saber and cursing, an assistant to the Moscow mayor, Colonel Modl, drove up in a car, surrounded by mounted gendarmes. The demonstrators surrounded the car and lowered it, together with the zealous colonel, into the water …”

Of course, some discrepancy between the rebellious origins of the holiday and the reality filled with the fight against dissent was already felt in Soviet times. But then, at least, the power elite did not consist of millionaires and billionaires. It was believed that there was no need for the proletariat to organize riots, since the power had become its own, proletarian, workers’ and peasants’. The current “leading and guiding force” can boast of many things, but not social closeness to the electorate.

In general, wherever you throw – everywhere a wedge, everywhere a discrepancy with the general line, with the state ideology established by the secret order. And as the latter consolidates, crystallizes, the dissonance, do not go to a fortuneteller, will be felt more and more.

What to do? There are two ways to restore harmony. First: to abolish the old holidays and replace them with new ones, more precisely, with forgotten old ones. For example, International Women’s Day is the Day of the Myrrh-Bearing Women. But this is both troublesome and ungrateful: the people, accustomed to the old holidays, may not appreciate such concern for their morality.

The second way is much easier – to soften the ideological course, stop treating every sneeze in the “wrong” tone as Russophobia and a violation of traditional values. But how then to explain why everything was started? In general, the choice is not easy.