The History Of The Russian Collective Consciousness In New Year's Cards (until 1941)

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-12 20:57

The custom of congratulating each other on Christmas with colorful pictures came to Russia from England. It was there, in the 1840s, that the first industrial postcards, accessible to the general population, began to be produced. Russian merchants bought English, German and French Christmas cards. Moreover, they chose only those where there were no congratulations in the "foreign" language. The inscription was then printed in the printing house - already in Russian.

The first Russian Christmas cards were issued for charitable purposes by the St. Petersburg Red Cross Sisters Stewardship Committee to raise additional funds for the maintenance of the hospital, outpatient clinic and nursing courses. By Christmas 1898, the Community of St. Eugenia published a series of ten postcards based on watercolor drawings by famous St. Petersburg artists. And although the above postcards did not have the inscription "Merry Christmas!"

Postcards from pre-revolutionary Russia were not inferior in skill to foreign ones, and sometimes even surpassed them. As one of the publishers of the publishing houses of the time wrote:

Finally, we can congratulate our relatives and friends not with a postcard depicting rituals from German life, but with a Russian one, where everything is so close to us and dear, and full of memories of the behests of Russian antiquity.

By the beginning of the 20th century in Russia, the production of illustrated congratulations was established with the involvement of V. Vasnetsov, I. Bilibin, I. Repin, K. Makovsky, A. Benois in the work. At the same time, stories appeared adapted to the taste of the domestic consumer: landscapes of winter nature, snow-covered domes of churches, everyday scenes, very close in spirit to folk popular prints.

The pre-revolutionary postcards mainly depicted pastoral, love, domestic, courtly, pragmatic subjects and small children of different classes.

After the bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1905-1907, a provisional government was formed and life remained relatively stable.

On the postcards, as today, the animal symbols of the year were placed, and 1913 was like the coming 2018 year of the pig.

The attitude towards pigs in Russia and in the West was markedly different. In the Western view, a pig, as well as a hog and a wild boar are symbols of fertility, prosperity and material well-being. But on Russian pre-revolutionary postcards, the pig was most often associated with sensuality, licentiousness, greed, uncleanliness, greed, and gluttony.

It is unlikely that the cultural code of our unconscious has changed over the past hundred years. Our next attempt to become more Europeans has failed and it is possible that the archaism that manifested itself 100 years ago will accompany us today.

But back to history. The First World War 1914-1918 is in the yard. German elephants will not bring happiness to Russia and hopes for a good New Year will burst like soap bubbles.

The propaganda of patriotism did not affect the peasants, who, sitting in the trenches of a war they did not understand, were thinking not about heroic victories for the glory of the Russian state, but about the allotments of land left in the village.

The 17-year Bolshevik coup put an end to the Russian Empire, the monarchy and the lords. The tradition of sending New Year and Christmas cards was discontinued. In 1923, a circular was issued, where it was said that the household environment of the Christmas holiday with Christmastide stories and Christmas trees with candles, allegedly, had a harmful effect on the upbringing of children. A campaign was launched to discredit the New Year holidays. Not only the Christmas tree and New Year's toys, but also the New Year's cards loved by the people as attributes of the bourgeois way of life, were under threat of criminal prosecution.

For more than 10 years, the RSFSR and the USSR did without New Year's greeting cards and without a bourgeois holiday. Only in 1935, by a decree of the Council of People's Commissars, the celebration of the New Year was returned, a New Year's ritual and symbols were developed for the formation of a new collective consciousness. The printing of New Year's postcards has also revived.

The Kremlin is the same, the same congratulations, the state symbols have changed and "comrades" have appeared, which we once became and for the most part remain to this day:

Until 1939, New Year's cards were issued in small editions, but for many subsequent decades, the standard for depicting the Kremlin stars and chimes was set. This emphasized that the New Year does not come with the ringing of a church bell, but with the chime of the clock on the Spasskaya Tower of the Moscow Kremlin.

Ideologically verified Soviet subjects retained the feeling of a holiday, but the angels on the elegant Christmas tree, red-cheeked Santa Clauses and Art Nouveau snowflakes were replaced by athletes, pioneers and joyful Soviet people. The archaic deity will be in full demand again only during the war years.