The History Of The Russian Collective Consciousness In New Year's Cards (Soviet People)

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

For those who have forgotten about the era of developed socialism and the fact that once there was a special human formation called the Soviet people, that is, you and me. Even if the Soviet and faded from consciousness, but in the unconscious it is alive.

The main folk satirist and chronicler of Soviet life, Mikhail Zhvanetsky recalls:

It's just us, it's only with us: you love the light bulb in the front door, like a company chief, like a homeless cat burning from the inside …

It is a pity for the quiet snow in the forest, a fur hat and a ruddy, big-eyed face under it, turning into tender legs, hidden under a denim shell …

It's a pity. Yes … For all my life, for all years, for all the lives of my grandfather, great-grandfather, father, stepfather, second stepfather and me - not a single sensible government …

Well, we all remember the past faces! Well, once again we will strain: the faces, those that are at the kiosk in the morning, those and there, upstairs. As these cannot connect two words, so do those. These are small eyes, a big face, there are no ideas, and those are small eyes, a big face, there are no ideas … These are thinking, what would be in the morning, and those … And what next? …

Something like little things in your pocket: chocolate-covered curds for eighteen kopecks, half a liter for three sixty-two, fruit popsicle for eighteen kopecks …

And only the ancient old people remember in a big way: a deep and constant change in our life for the worse. That is, continuous improvement, leading to a deterioration in life on the basis of building communism, developed socialism and underdeveloped democracy with our face.

Let's remember further in order to justify the frantic striving for this life …

And the situation is so subtle that in a civil war we will again beat each other: that is, unpaid - unpaid, low-paid - without an apartment, sick - sick …

And again the matter will end with Masons, store managers. Armenians and world fatigue … We are such goats, who do not know how to live neither under a dictatorship, nor under a democracy.

“Our people are not ready,” the leaders say. - Not ready! Not ready to live yet. They don't want to die, but they are not ready to live …

Let's go back to New Year's cards - that is, to the mythological reality

We (they, apparently, too) are nowhere without war. And now we can’t and we couldn’t before. Before one war ended, another immediately began. It has been cold since 1946, but against the background of the confrontation, both sides understand that there should not be a war with shells, bullets and bombs. A positive image of a peace-loving power is being created for the external environment and for the population of the country. We are not gray wolves, we are doves. This is how we want to see ourselves.

What was, what was.

1950s! The time of an industrial breakthrough, the development of virgin lands, new buildings, power lines on the taiga glade and creative burning. The postcards depict new cities - in the frosty haze of the early morning or in the light of night lights, with indispensable factory chimneys, with driveways and habitable spaces. We did it!

50s and 60s years of planned Soviet economy and science, which we were once proud of. New Year's motives were combined with the main themes of the country and were reflected in the postcards. Santa Claus keeps up with progress.

As noted by the famous collector of postcards Yevgeny Ivanov,

Soviet Santa Claus actively participates in the social and industrial life of the Soviet people: he is a railway worker on the BAM, flies into space, melts metal, works on computers, delivers mail, etc. carries a bag of gifts …

The favorite detail of postcards of that time was a rocket in the sky - a symbol of the beginning of the space era.

In 1957The Soviet Union launches the first artificial Earth satellite and Belka with Strelka, which ushered in the era of space exploration. We didn't have greens who would shout that it was impossible to make suicide bombers out of dogs. What are two dog souls, when there is no human concern.

April 12, 1961. Yuri Gagarin. It is not difficult to guess with what postcards the citizens of the Soviet Union congratulated each other on the New Year, 1962.

Along with shock socialist construction, the personal life of Soviet citizens went on as usual. Let's take a peek into the parent's bedroom. Happy New Year from his wife to her mistress. In 1962, going "left" was not only immoral, but also dangerous in terms of career. For sex outside the family, they were expelled from office and from the party. The author of the congratulation, apparently, does not want to destroy the unfaithful spouse and the mistress's congratulation looks like a warning.

The last labor romantic impulses of the builders of communism. 1974: all-Union shock construction BAM. The Baikal-Amur Mainline is proud and inviting, especially for young people:

Hear, time is buzzing: BAM! In the vastness of the steep BAM! And the big taiga obeys us. … This bell of our young hearts.

Space again, 1975, docking "Soyuz - Apollo" and handshake of Soviet and American cosmonauts in orbit.

Acquaintance with New Year's cards reveals the main Soviet secret

We live in a country with a harsh climate, we love winter and we respect winter frost.

The snowy frosty winter in the view of the Slavic farmer was associated with a good future harvest. This was judged by the presence of winter frosts. Therefore, on Christmastide, it was customary to perform the rite of “click of frost”: he was invited to a meal and treated with ritual food - pancakes and kutya as the souls of deceased ancestors. Food for Santa Claus was left on the window or on the porch.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the attitude of the Russian Orthodox Church towards Santa Claus was ambiguous, but tolerant. The Soviet people did not favor the church and readily accepted the pagan personification of the forces of nature (winter and frost), while the church hierarchs were cunning and forced to put up with the existence of a pre-Christian deity.

It seems to me that the image of Santa Claus is a normal development of our secular spiritual tradition”(Metropolitan Sergius, 2000).

A truly secular deal with the forces of nature and winter frost was our total nationwide love for winter sports.

The postcards, most likely, simply reflected these realities of our life and sports hobbies, which sublimated the heroic-patriotic spirit of the inhabitants of the northern empire into a peaceful channel with fearlessness in the face of frost. In the wars with Napoleon and Hitler, he was always on our side.

In winter, skating rinks were flooded at the central sports stadium of the city, and in the courtyards there were hockey rinks and their own ice squads.

In the 1970sFor years, our athletes took first places in almost all types of winter sports - a special breakthrough was in figure skating, which from now on was associated with Snegurochka, Irina Rodnina and Alexander Zaitsev.

Many families had skis for each family member and equipment, ski sports sections and competitions, the ski track called and we actively responded.

The social sphere gradually improved and “Khrushchevs” appeared - ideal housing for the average Soviet person. The walk-through room is called a hall in the old-regime manner, but the toilet was no longer on the street and it was possible to wash not collectively, but in a personal bath. With the growth of prosperity, panel houses and apartments with improved layouts appeared. Congratulations on the new home and massive moves to comfortable apartments.

1970s - early 1980s. The heroic theme fades into the background and Soviet people think about apartments, sideboards, and crystals. The desire for coziness, comfort, well-arranged life turned out to be the leading concept of the decade, and if the "sixties" mocked materialism, then the "seventies" gladly surrendered to things, and the authorities recognized the people as having the right to a comfortable life.

There is no ice cream in the villages yet, but for city children it is becoming a familiar delicacy. At work, according to the number of children, they give out sweet kits for the holiday.

Adults have their own standard set for the New Year. The shortages and queues in grocery stores are not reflected in the New Year's feasts. An anti-alcohol company has yet to be announced and Soviet champagne is a legitimate New Year's brand.

Soviet New Year menu:

Food

Olivier salad

Finnish cervelat, boiled pork

Aspic

Jellied fish

Fish red

Potatoes with stew

Sprats

Caviar from order

Pickled and pickled cucumbers and tomatoes from homemade preparations

Chicken (duck for advanced gourmets)

The drinks

Champagne "Soviet" 5.50 rubles.

Stolichnaya vodka 3.62 rubles.

Semi-sweet wine

Soda "Buratino"

Fruits

Tangerines

Apples

Sweets

Purchased cake or homemade "Napoleon"

Candy "Bear in the North"

We are still an actively reading country. Book shortages and hunger only stimulate the search for good literature.

A striking event in the era of political and social stagnation - main sporting year 1980 … The cult figure of the time is the charming and kind Olympic Bear. He was portrayed with reason and without reason - flying on a space rocket, carrying a "peaceful" globe to the peoples of the world.

At the turn of the 1970s and 1980s hang gliding became popular - it seemed romantic, aesthetic and - elite. Valery Leontyev's lyric song "My hang-glider" sounded on the radio, and magazines wrote about how and where the few lucky people train.

By the mid-1980s postcard plots were reduced to endlessly repeated Snow Maidens, bunnies, balls and snowflakes. The social-construction-space theme is gone - the country, as it were, has nothing to do. Can't paint a perestroika mess and cooperative markets?

Therefore, traditionally Moscow and the Courant.

And the worst thing

The socio-economic and political crisis, together with New Year's cards, sent the population of the country into a fabulous archaism. Well-known illustrators of children's fairy tales and animators joined the work on the postcards. Andrey Andrianov, Vladimir Zarubin, Viktor Chizhikov - the author of the world famous Olympic Bear - revived and gave the country a new collective myth.

The total circulation of V. Zarubin's postcards together with envelopes and telegrams amounted to 1,588,270,000 copies. These postcards were copied on shop windows and in wall newspapers. The characters depicted on the cards - the winter deity Santa Claus, the Snow Maiden, bunnies, squirrels, bears, hedgehogs, snowmen radiated charm and goodwill.

On an ordinary external plane, the postcards expressed a festive sweetness with children and animals, but the returning old theme from pre-Soviet Russia actualized the collective unconscious. Children dressed up as animals, children with Santa Claus and forest dwellers personified the archetype of the divine baby, which has a powerful revitalizing effect, designed to breathe life into the consciousness of Soviet people in the era of stagnation.

Postcards, along with radio and television, performed an important state function to unite people at a deep archetypal level. "A lantern for idiots," as Churchill's television was disrespectfully called, appeared in almost every home. Postcards are welcomed by television, despite the fact that in a couple of decades it will completely replace paper media as a more effective means of state propaganda.

In the New Year's competition of bears, squirrels, hedgehogs and bunnies, it was not the Russian bear, as might be expected, that won by a wide margin, but the hare. For many years, it became our official collective totem. Mischievous, elusive, always smiling and designed to combine with childish joy, faith in fairy tales and naivety. This is the image of the Inner Child in the collective unconscious of the builders of fabulous communism.

Few people believed in communism itself and even in developed socialism. We need a fairy tale with archetypal images. And we have them.

Hare with a circulation of 20 million.

In the 80s not only sobering-up stations were popular, but also a series of postcards with fairy-tale stories in the style of Palekh and Khokhloma. Bright, bold in dark colors and a little scary from the appearance of the blue Snow Maiden and the frantic enthusiasm of Santa Claus, who are carried away in the intertime by three horses. Old Russian splendor covered the wretchedness of the perestroika years and the absence of a convincing alternative to Soviet ideology.

The reference to folk craft on the postcards hid the divide that had arisen between the new Russians and the best Soviet people who were engaged in science, art and sang the songs of Yuri Vizbor:

… we will fill our hearts with music, we will arrange holidays from everyday life … it was very good there and everything inspired the hopes that they would change their clothes for life, la la la la lal la la la.

The change of clothes took place abruptly and Khokhloma was associated, perhaps with crimson jackets, or with blood. New Year's cards were taken away from reality and sewed a gap between times. Not only between Tsarist and Soviet times, but also within Soviet times. Not only between Soviet times, but also between two types of Soviet people.

Santa Claus on postcards dissects in a troika without the accompaniment of the FSO. Everyone really loves him with sincere love, and no one encroaches on his life.

90thand even more so in the 2000s, no new plots for New Year's cards were born.

People who survived perestroika began to get used to postcards with Disney characters. The biblical Christmas theme has returned to fashion: a nursery with a newborn Jesus, the Virgin Mary and Joseph.

Modern New Year's cards are no longer loaded with ideology, since there is no ideology left, no collective myth, no pride in the country. Only commerce, personal interests and cynicism. For example, this corporate advertisement of Russian Railways shows its strength to the population of the country in the form of a New Year's member.

All propaganda creative moved to a talking postcard. Paper postcards with a similar Santa Claus against the background of a castle to satisfy loyal moods are rather rare.

After 2014, "patriotic" postcards appear with a demonstration of strength and readiness for a new war, but these are rather works of marginalized people.

Paper postcards are leaving our lives and this is a little sad

To receive congratulations, we just need to go to the mail on our computer. We do not open the mailbox to get out of it a postcard wishing you success and happiness in the New Year.

If you enter "New Year's postcard" in the search engine, then in the search results on the first page you can see links to the history of the postcard and read that postcards have already disappeared twice - after the October coup and after the Great Patriotic War.

A sign of our time are "DIY New Year cards" - the most popular today and the most environmentally friendly.