On January 12, 1755, Empress Elizabeth Petrovna signed a decree placed before her by her favorite, Count Shuvalov, ordering the founding of Moscow University. The Count had chosen this day for the signing because it was his mother’s saint’s day.
St. Tatyana’s Day is an odd mixture of the official and the unofficial. At first, the founding of the university was not celebrated at all. Then the establishment of the university began to be celebrated on April 26, the date when it had first opened its doors and also the anniversary of Elizabeth’s coronation. After about a hundred years of this practice, Nicholas I ordered that the founding should be celebrated on the anniversary of the signing of the original decree, and not the beginning of classes.
One might think that the lack of logic behind this change and the fact that it had come “from above” would have doomed Tatyana’s Day, but this was not the case. By the end of the 19th century, a few years after the royal decree, Tatyana’s Day had become one of Moscow’s most popular holidays. Back then, being a professor, graduate, or student of Moscow University meant a great deal, more than it does now. A significant portion of Moscow’s intelligentsia had ties to the university and revered Tatyana’s Day.
Nikolai Teleshov, Notes of a Writer
All Moscow knew that January 12… would be a raucous celebration by university youth, middle-aged and elderly university leaders, respected professors, and the former charges of the Moscow alma mater – doctors, lawyers, teachers, and other members of the intelligentsia.
Even in the early days, there was a whimsical interplay between the official and unofficial manifestations of the holiday.
P. Ivanov, Memoirs
A great hall. The dark greenery of tropical plants. Rows of chairs. An academic department. The absence of bright lights. Important personages, medals, sashes across the shoulders, dress uniforms, proper tailcoats, the faculty collegium in full force. Behind the columns, the blue collars of student frockcoats. Propriety, severity, composure… Academic oratory. The speech is measured, drawn-out, without enthusiasm or embellishment… Then the university report… It’s almost over. Students begin to whisper among themselves. The medals are handed out. A flourish. The hall comes to life. The national anthem. Tentative cries of “Hurray!” End of Act I. The important personages file out… From somewhere in the back come scattered voices: Gaudeamus! Gaudeamus! [Let us be merry!] These cries grow louder. Gradually they fill the entire hall. Gaudeamus! Gaudeamus! There is singing of Gaudeamus igitur! Hurrah! Hurrah! The roar grows louder. Unimaginable noise. The free spirit comes into its own.
The second half of the day, the spirit of freewheeling carnival reigns supreme, as if everything has been turned upside down. Inebriated students chat with their distinguished elders – people who under normal circumstances would not give them the time of day – as if they were old chums. The owners of beer joints and taverns rub their hands together in eager anticipation.
Mirrors and china are removed from the expensive Hermitage Restaurant and elegant tables are replaced with simple ones. The floors, normally covered with sumptuous carpets, are sprinkled with sawdust so it will be easier to sweep away the garbage, broken wine glasses, and other traces of carousal. The kitchen does not bother with its usual culinary wonders, instead preparing cold zakuski, and rather than fine wines the restaurant offers cheap vodka and beer.
Everyone gathers around the table willy-nilly, without regard to rank, station, or age. Professors, assistant professors, and lawyers dress as if they were still beardless youths, wearing the simplest clothing they could find in their wardrobes – both in the spirit of egalitarianism and to protect their finer suits from the damage that would inevitably befall them over the course of a night of unrestrained drunkenness. By morning, the porters would be writing addresses on many a back, so that “trough-mates” could take their fallen comrades home.
Vlas Doroshevich, On Tatyana’s Day
Heavens, my dear! That’s the suit I wear to criminal court! Give me the one I wear for civil cases… it’s older. There we are! That’s just fine… Farewell, my little dove! Dinner? No, I’ll be dining at Hermitage. Could you really have forgotten? Today’s Tatyana’s Day… tradition, you know… No, no no! No cologne. It’s an egalitarian holiday! Youth, you know, can be high-spirited… And drunk. I’ll be saying a few words. They might toss me up in the air, and if they smell cologne they might decide not to catch me on the way down…
Tatyana
(A 19th century student song)
Hail to Tatyana, Tatyana, Tatyana
Brothers all will get drunk, we’re gonna’, we’re gonna’…
On Tatyana’s splendid day…
A lone voice shouts:
Who’s to blame? Can’t be us.
And the reply:
Tatyana’s causing all the fuss!
Hail to Tatyana!
Hail to Tatyana, Tatyana, Tatyana.
Brother’s all will get drunk, we’re gonna’, we’re gonna’…
Now we’re left without a kopek, there’s no way, no way
To mark Tatyana’s special day, her day, her day.
We’re in debt up to our ears
Our accounts are in arrears…
Drunkenness, which for some reason even today is often viewed not so much as a misfortune or vice as a mark of total freedom and emancipation, exceeded all limits on Tatyana’s Day. Most of the reminiscences about the celebration dating to the turn of the last century were stories about carefree carousing at the Hermitage, about the wacky antics of young and not-so-young men, many of whom would never have dreamed of such behavior on any other day. It reached the point where Lev Tolstoy issued a public appeal to Moscow’s students calling for them to stop their drinking bouts and set an example for the people. Did they listen? Those very same students who would begin their celebrations in misty-eyed song about the hardships endured by the Russian people (Выдь на Волгу, чей стон раздается…), to whom they swore their eternal devotion, a few hours later would be slurring a new version of the holiday’s theme song.
Lev Tolstoy gave us a scolding, a scolding, a scolding,
We all should stop our drinking, our drinking, our drinking,
We’re accused of being boozers.
Then came the revolution. Moscow University was still there, but the student body and faculty, of course, were now very different. The holy martyr Tatyana was out of fashion, as were all saint’s days. The university’s Church of St. Tatyana was closed, Count Shuvalov was forgotten, the university was now Lomonosov Moscow State University (MGU for short), and Tatyana’s Day simply vanished. Why? The people who had gathered at Hermitage and sung Gaudeamus and the Tatyana song were no longer there. The university still had an anniversary, although now, after the switch to the Gregorian calendar, it was the 25th of January rather than the 12th. It did not occur to anyone, however, to celebrate this date.
Lev Ospovat, MGU Class of 1952
We found many occasions to celebrate, but I don’t remember Tatyana’s Day at all. I don’t think I even knew back then when the university had been founded. We certainly knew when they started to build the tall building at MGU [the main building, one of the Stalin-gothic Высотные здания], we would go to the construction site – that we knew.
Eleonora Pavlyuchenko,
MGU class of 1952
We all tended to celebrate the revolutionary holidays – May Day, Victory Day, November 7…
But with the passage of years, somehow Tatyana started to come back to life. At first the occasion was marked just by those who were actively working to restore the traditions of old.
Alexander Shevyrev, MGU class of 1978
Our group of friends started to celebrate Tatyana’s Day in 1979, after we finished the university and started our graduate studies. We needed an excuse to get together and we chose Tatyana’s Day, even though it had been completely forgotten at the university. January 25th was often celebrated just because it was usually the last day of the session, but those who finished their exams earlier or later celebrated on other days. The official date of the founding of the university was January 23, since they calculated what old style January 12 would be as if we were still in the 18th century. This was evidently done on purpose, to disassociate the date of the university’s founding from the religious holiday. In any event, this wasn’t a major holiday. We all got together for shashlik at a place on Maroseyka Street and had a raucous time there, after which we would drink half the night away in the library building, where one of us worked. Ever since then we’ve been celebrating Tatyana’s Day every year. But when we saw our drunken classmates in the metro when we were going to the library after the restaurant, they said that they were also celebrating Tatyana’s Day. So I suppose we were not the only ones who remembered that holiday back then.
Finally perestroika burst onto the scene. Saint’s days and Count Shuvalov came back into fashion, and the religious community raised a great ruckus and managed to expel the university theater from the Church of St. Tatyana, where, through no fault of its own, it had been located. Tatyana’s Day was once again recognized as a holiday. In its present incarnation, it has taken on an increasingly official character with each passing year. The mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, chose this day to make a gift of busses to Moscow schools, which for some reason were delivered to the square in front of MGU. On a cold January day, teachers had to show up to accept the gift, bringing with them all the Tatyanas they could find in their schools. And President Putin now sends his congratulations to Moscow University. University students throughout the country are beginning to officially celebrate this Moscow holiday.
Maria Filippenko, MGU class of 1998
We celebrated this holiday, but only among close friends, especially since there were several Tatyanas among us. Students are always looking for an excuse to drink. There were concerts every year in the Lenin Hills campus House of Culture; we went there once – it was such a mob scene, suffocating, and we couldn’t find seats. But the School of Economics had discotheques and we Philology girls would go there.
Anna Mazanik, Fifth year student
Usually there’s nothing happening on Tatyana’s Day, because it’s the end of the session and everybody’s got their hands full.
They say that students get together at Provost Sadovnichy’s and drink medovukha [mead]. That’s something they show on television. Supposedly any student can stop in and he pours them some medovukha, but neither I nor anyone I know has been there. They say you can’t get in and it’s just for PR. If anyone celebrates, it’s on a local scale; departments will have little gatherings. For us the Day of the Historian is much more important – we stage our own plays and put a lot of effort into getting ready. Now that’s a real holiday.
The official aspect of the holiday seems to have put a damper on spontaneous student revelry. But in truth, all students really need is an excuse.
Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.
Russian Life 73 Main Street, Suite 402 Montpelier VT 05602
802-223-4955
[email protected]
