Russian Calendar

DECEMBER

1 Fifty-five years ago, the first Suvorov Military Schools opened in Russia. Named after the famous Russian General Alexander Vasiliyevich Suvorov, the schools were opened in 1943, when  Soviet troops had already turned the tide in the war with the Nazis, but when the storming of the Reichstag was still years away. The first pupils of the schools were orphans whose parents perished on the front or on territory occupied by the Nazis, and children of Soviet partizans. Eleven such schools opened in 1943, followed by six more in 1944. The school accepted pupils over the age of 10 and they studied there for seven years. Hundreds of officers graduated from Suvorov’s schools. Today the schools accept boys aged 15 or 16 – undergraduates of secondary schools – and they study for two years at the Suvorov school, after which they enter a higher military school.

5 195 years ago the famous Russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev was born. He is perhaps most famous for his poetic line, “In Russia you must simply believe.” Yet, this fine poet was also a diplomat and a life-long public servant. Upon graduating from Moscow University in 1821, he served for more than 20 years at different diplomatic missions, most notably in Munich and then in Torino, Italy. Upon returning to Russia, he served at the Russian Foreign Ministry and then headed the Committee on Foreign Censorship. At first sight, such public service seems incompatible with poetry. Certainly this was the Soviet interpretation of Tyutchev’s biography – then, a poet’s sympathy for revolutionaries was a must for official blessing by the state, which saw Tyutchev’s loyalty to the state and his Pan-Slavic as weakness. Still, Tyutchev, a loyal adherent of Russian statehood, remains one of Russia’s most cherished poets. 

8 Vladimir Gilyarovsky (1853-1935) was born on this day 145 years ago. His cultural history of Moscow, Moscow and Muscovites, remains a must-read for all Russians (and Russophiles). Nicknamed Uncle Gilyai for his goodness and fabulous physical force, Guilyarovsky’s memory inspired a Russian-American restaurant on Moscow’s Stoleshnikov lane. There, customers can see Gilyai’s steel poker, which he could bend with his bare hands. 

11 Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn {Russian Life, November 1997} turns 80 on this day. His important novels (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, The First Circle, Cancer Ward, among others), and his immensely important chronicle The Gulag Archipelago, made him one of the most influential writers of this century. Certainly none have had so large an impact on political events. Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1960 but was not allowed to travel abroad to accept the award. He spent 20 years (1974-1994) in exile from his homeland for his writings and currently resides in Moscow.

13 The poet Valery Bryusov was born 125 years ago. One of the founders of Russian symbolism, he worked for a long time at the Metropol hotel, where the headquarters of the editorial magazine of the Symbolists was located. Bryusov’s verses are distinguished by their classy, rhythmic, almost geometrically precise rhyme, yet they lack the warmth and internal energy of most Russian poets. Unlike the symbolist Zinaida Gipius, who was at odds with the Bolsheviks and emigrated to Paris, Bryusov supported the Soviet regime. 

23 Forty-five years ago, Lavrenty Beria, notorious executioner for Stalin, was shot. Beria, who headed the Soviet security forces from 1938 to his death in 1953, was, like Stalin, a Georgian. Beria personally oversaw and participated in the torture of victims of Stalin’s terror, and, among other tasks, headed up Russia’s atomic bomb program. He was also known for his perversions, and victimized dozens of girls and young women, kidnapping them at random while riding about Moscow in his infamous black sedan. After Stalin’s death, Beria moved to take over the reins of power. From March to June 1953 he was largely in control of much of the government. But, on June 26, Beria was arrested in the Kremlin in a plot organized by Nikita Khrushchev and supported by Georgy Zhukov and other military leaders. Some versions, including Khrushchev’s, have it that Beria was executed earlier than December 23. In any event, Beria was tried on treason charges by the Supreme Court in December and reportedly executed on the 23rd, when the verdict was reached.

24 One hundred years ago Russia lost one of its best portrait painters, Fedor Rokotov (1735-1808). His canvasses have uncommon psychological depth, faithfully rendering the person’s true character, regardless of his/her social roots. 

28 This is the 90th anniversary of the birth of Yevgeny Vutetich (1908-1974). Vutetich was a sculptor whose works are known by anyone who has visited Russian historical sites. He dedicated his artistic life to chronicling the heroic deeds of the Soviet and Russian people. A few of his better-known creations include: the memorial to the heroes of Stalingrad on Mamaev hill in Volgograd, a monument to Soviet soldiers in Berlin’s Treptov park, the statue “Let’s Beat Swords into Ploughshares,” and a number of sculptures dedicated to Soviet marshals who were heroes of the Great Patriotic War (Ivan Chernyakhovsky, Nikolai Vatutin, Vasily Chuykov and others).

JANUARY

22 This is the 95th anniversary of writer Arkady Gaidar (1904-1941). He was born in the village of Lgov (Kursk region) under the name of Golikov, but became famous under his nom de plume, “Gaidar.” In 1918, at the age of 14, Gaidar enrolled as a volunteer in the Red Army. By the age of 16, he was already a regiment commander! This fact was later used repeatedly by Soviet educators, who would often tell young boys, “At your age, Gaidar was already at the head of a regiment!” In 1924, Gaidar had to resign from the army after a serious head wound. In 1925, he began his writing career with a series of short stories. His true calling was writing children’s books. From today’s perspective, the ideological tinge of Gaidar’s books might seem questionable, but his fame was not ill-won, for his writing was both entertaining and captivating. (e.g. his famous novels, The School and The Fate of a Drummer). In 1940, Gaidar wrote his most famous book for children, Timur and his Team [Gaidar’s son was also named Timur], about a youth movement, the timurovtsy, who, on their own initiative, helped the aged and widows. During the Second World War, Gaidar worked as a war correspondent. In the fall of 1941 he perished heroically when fighting with a partisan squad in an unequal battle against the Germans. Today, the world knows Gaidar’s grandson better than the author. Yegor Timurovich Gaidar was the reform-oriented Russian premier under whose tenure Russia first embraced the market economy. Yegor Gaidar’s reforms, interestingly, were criticized for neglecting the elderly and disadvantaged, or, of not living up to the spirit of the timurovtsy.

31 120 years ago, Boris Savinkov (1879-1925) was born. Savinkov was a very controversial political figure who made his political debut as a member of the Socialist-Revolutionaries Party (SRs). Savinkov belonged to the group of SRs which emphasized the importance of individual terrorism. He personally participated in the assassination of Interior Minister Vyacheslav Pleve (in 1904) and Grand Prince Sergei Alexandrovich (1905). In 1906, Savinkov was arrested and condemned to death. But he escaped from jail and ended up in France where, in 1914, he joined the French army in WWI. Savinkov’s personality was characterized by adventurism, extreme cruelty and cynicism. In his later years he also began writing books (i.e. Black Horse, published only recently) under the pseudonym V. Ropshin. After the February revolution, Savinkov returned to Russia, where he became a commissar of the Supreme Command of the Provisional Government. After the October Revolution, he became one of the Bolsheviks’ fiercest enemies and headed 1918 anti-Soviet revolts in the towns of Yaroslavl, Murom and Rybinsk. The Bolsheviks quelled the revolts and Savinkov fled to neighboring Poland, where he prepared new terrorist acts against the Bolsheviks. In 1924, Savinkov was arrested trying to cross the border illegally. At his court trial, he voiced his support for the Bolshevik regime, but was sentenced to a 10-year prison term. On May 7, 1925 he committed suicide in a Lubyanka jail under somewhat mysterious circumstances (historians argue whether he jumped from the internal stairs or whether someone “helped” him). 

– Valentina Kolesnikova