As we noted yesterday, no one celebrates New Year’s more intently than the the Scotts except perhaps the Russians and residents of several other former states of the USSR but for quite different reasons. Christmas, celebrated by the Russian Orthodox church on January 7 by the Western Gregorian calendar and all other religious observations were banned by the Communist government following the Russian Revolution. Eventually under Josef Stalin all “non-patriotic” holidays or those glorifying Lenin and revolutionary events were also scrubbed, including a well-established New Year’s tradition. In 1935 after the failure of the most recent Five Year Plan, regional crop failures and famines, and the spreading influence of the world-wide Depression New Year’s was grudgingly acknowledge by Soviet to give Soviet citizens a glimmer of brightness as the bitter Russian winter closed in.
Russia
had a long New Year’s tradition. From 1492
until a December 1699 decree of Tsar Peter I mandated the adoption of
the Christian Era in 1700 September 1
was the start of each new year. Like
many agricultural peoples the Russians
considered the celebration of the harvest
as an auspicious beginning. According to the decree of Western and modernizing Peter the Great,
the Russians had to decorate their houses with a fir tree, as it was done by the Germans between New Year’s on January 1 and Christmas on the Julian Calendar. But Slavs correlated the fir tree with funeral rites which is why there was
long resistance to the new customs,
especially among the deeply culturally
conservative class of serfs—the vast
majority of the population. The peasantry held many different customs according to regions, but were
generally allowed a holiday from their service
to their feudal lords during the
holiday period.
As
for the nobility, aristocracy, and a small but growing
class of wealthy merchants, they
celebrated with glittering balls—think
of pre-Napoleonic invasion scenes from War and Peace. All of that, of course, came to a screeching halt with the Bolshevik Revolution and subsequent Civil War. In 1918 the Supreme Soviet officially abandoned
the Julian Calendar of the Tsars and Orthodox church synchronizing New Years
with European calendars.
After
the grim years of World War II—the Great Patriotic War to the Soviets, it
became a holiday in 1947. At first there was no paid day off, but that soon fell in line with other holidays. In the post-Soviet
era the Russian Federation
followed by most non-Muslim former
Soviet republics declared Novy
God—New Year’s Eve and Day—a major public holiday in 1999. Under Vladimir
Putin Russia has reconciled with the Orthodox Church and relied on it as a
pillar of his Russian nationalism and vision of a restored Russian Empire or Soviet Union. He has recognized Orthodox Christmas, still
celebrated on the Julian Calendar date, and the whole week between New Year’s
Day and the Feast of the Nativity is
taken by many as an extended winter
holiday.
Given an inch Soviet citizens
ran with the opportunity and took a mile. Plucked from some folk tales and children’s
books the Santa Claus-like figure of Ded Moroz—Grandfather Frost—was soon bring toys to children on New
Year’s morning or distributing them
a houses of culture, theaters, or other public buildings with the aid of his granddaughter Snegurochka—the
Snow Maiden. Some of Ded Moroz’s costume and characteristics borrow not only from
Western Saint Nicholas, but from pagan Siberian shaman figures
associated with the Winter Solstice.
Ded Moroz wears a heel-length fur coat, a fur hat, and valenki—warm felt boots—and has a long white beard.
He walks with a long magic stick and
often rides a troika sleigh.
Snegurochka wears long silver-blue robes and a furry cap or a snowflake-like crown.
New
Year’s Eve the beginning of the celebration is marked by the Kremlin Clock striking midnight preceded
by the New Year Address by the President of Russia—Putin—and followed by the playing of the Russian National Anthem. Fireworks
displays over Red Square and in
most large cities attract large crowds.
Of course this year most public
gatherings are discouraged or banned due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
On
New Year’s Day evening a popular TV
spectacular, Novogodni Ogonek—New
Year’s Party or New Year’s Light)
includes performances from favorite pop
singers and dance troupes with famous personalities and celebrities as presenters and is widely viewed in most of the countries of the
former USSR.
Today
we are featuring a New Year’s song from a hugely popular Russian musical
comedy film—yes there really are such things—Karnavalnaya noch (Carnival Nights) made in 1955 in the post-Stalinist era and the Khrushchev Thaw. It was the Soviet box office leader of 1956 with a total of 48.64 million tickets sold and remains a highly popular New Year’s Eve classic perennial broadcast publicly
that night much like It’s a Wonderful Life or Christmas
Story are annually shown on American
TV.
The
plot revolves around a Novy God program being planned by members of a House of Culture lots of dancing and singing, jazz band
performance, and even magic tricks. The
director of the House of Culture is suddenly replaced by a plodding Stalinist party functionary who tries to scrap the gay plans and replace them with a serious and grim evening of uplifting lectures, political discussions, and some classical music performed by an orchestra of limited talent made up Red Army pensioners. The planners and performers of the original
event scheme to sabotage the new director’s plans and keep him from the stage
so that the original show can go on.
Small wonder that the story resonated with many Russians.
The
nominal star of the film was comedian Igor
Ilyinsky the hapless party functionary. But 21-year-old Lyudmila Gurchenko in her first film role shined as the program’s
lovely singer and a main organizer of the plot.
In this clip she sings a New Year’s song the title of which I cannot
find in English. Enjoy anyway.
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