The Unseemly Holiday

March 8: International Women’s Day

My first memory of March 8th: I am in first grade.

Words of congratulations to the mothers of class 1B have been written on the blackboard and we are copying them down.

The first word to tackle is "Dear." After this "dear," our teacher had inserted a sample name and patronymic, "Maria Ivanovna." We are each given a greeting card on which to write our message. I become so absorbed in my efforts at beautiful handwriting that I absentmindedly start to congratulate the imaginary Maria Ivanovna. Catching myself, I try to somehow correct my mistake and convert this name into the name of my own mother. Ball point pens were still unheard of in our classrooms – we used fountain pens – and the beautiful card is soon the site of an ink puddle. With great fanfare, it is announced to the entire class that Tamara Eidelman doesn't love her mother. Nevertheless, I am given another card.

Then in singing class we learned:

Today's a holiday for mothers

Today is mother's day

Nice carnations, fragrant lilacs

Would make my mother gay

But lilac does not bloom in March

And carnations – there's no way

I'll have to draw for Mama

A nice lilac bouquet.

The number of such lilac bouquets drawn for the mothers of the Soviet Union is beyond calculation. Buying flowers really was a problem, although around March 8th mimosas were brought into Moscow. Some of them were quite nice and bushy; others were already starting to dry out and darken. There was little to choose from – you bought whatever you managed to get your hands on. Mimosas were good because they lasted quite a while in a vase. What they lacked was aroma, and in this they were fitting flowers for this holiday.

Later, during perestroika, you could find tulips for sale in the metro. Word had it that they were imported from Holland by some Azerbaijani businessman. But at that time, the late 1980s, few gave flowers on March 8th. Nobody could afford it and everyone was preoccupied with the political changes taking place. Furthermore, there was little desire to celebrate Soviet holidays. March 8th was closely associated with solemn meetings of the Communist Party's Central Committee, with the female cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova seated at the presidium and endless speeches about the liberation of Soviet womanhood.

While all this was going on, liberated Soviet womanhood, having been given this day off (along with everyone else) starting in 1965, would have been in the kitchen fixing the holiday meal and then washing the dishes while their apparently less liberated husbands were watching television, reading the paper, or escaping the boredom of the day by getting together with "the guys" outside somewhere, engaging in manly banter, having a bit to drink, and tinkering with their cars, if they were fortunate enough to have one.

But suddenly, in the early nineties everyone started giving flowers. Whether it was that prices had come down or that living standards had risen, flowers on March 8th again became the norm. As before, you could find mimosas for sale, but they were now competing not only with tulips, but with carnations and roses. By now, everyone had forgotten triumphant party speeches and the liberation of Soviet womanhood. Only those men who didn't feel like running around in search of flowers would jokingly ask their girlfriends why they cared about a holiday founded by some Clara Zetkin (the 19th century German socialist and woman's rights activist who established March 8th as International Woman's Day).

And really, what was this holiday all about? It is not entirely clear when and how it first originated in Russia. In Soviet times, the legend was that, on March 8, 1857, New York City's textile workers held a demonstration to fight for their rights. This story had a suspicious similarity to the story of the Chicago workers' demonstration that was supposedly behind the origin of the May Day holiday. It was said that the textile worker legend was concocted so that the Western woman's movement would not see March 8th as just a Soviet holiday. It was, after all, on the official United Nations calendar.

Clara Zetkin's role in the matter is more or less clear. It is she who, at a 1910 gathering of women of the Second International in Copenhagen, proposed establishing an international woman's day. Women revolutionaries, for whom woman's liberation was an integral part of the struggle, agreed and designated March 19 as the day. It was later moved to the 8th – perhaps because the 19th in Western Europe was the 8th in Russia (which was still using Julian calendar at the time), or perhaps for other reasons.

After the First World War, the holiday was forgotten almost everywhere, except in Soviet Russia, where various official efforts were made to prop it up. Here, women really were working as equals with men – and voted, and wore short hairdos, and were supposed to be full-fledged comrades-in-arms in the march toward Communism. True, nobody stepped in to relieve these comrades-in-arms of their housework and even today in Russia the practice of shaking a woman's hand is extremely rare (whereas friendly or collegial handshaking among men is standard).

Nonetheless, this strange, artificial Soviet holiday – conceived by a German women’s rights activist whose decidedly unfeminine image has little to do with the model of Soviet womanhood – somehow endured. Hardly anyone went around offering congratulations on May Day or November 7th holidays, but Woman's Day was different. There may have been a bit of sarcasm and sneering, a few snide references to Clara Zetkin, but women were congratulated on March 8. The holiday's artificiality gradually faded, along with memories of ceremonial Central Committee observances, and what was left was a pleasant association with the beginning of spring and the giving of flowers.

What is more, this incomprehensible holiday outlived all the Central Committee meetings: it did not collapse with the fall of the Soviet Union. It is still an official holiday – a day off work – throughout most of the former Soviet republics. And it is surviving competition with its imported rival, Valentine's Day, and has a solid lead among spring holidays in terms of sales of flowers and candy. It even has a soul mate: February 23rd, a truly puzzling and contrived holiday that used to be called Soviet Army Day, but lives on as Defenders of the Fatherland Day. While television screens regale us with tributes to the army and other stalwarts, in schools, institutes, and offices, this is the day when women congratulate men, whatever their military status. And when they hand out gifts on this day, they know that in two weeks it will be their turn.

March 8th has, however, had to withstand attacks by nationalists who dreamt up a fairy tale about how Clara Zetkin timed the holiday to coincide with the Jewish holiday Purim, which commemorates the victory of Queen Esther over the Persian Vizier Haman. The allegation barely warrants a response. In the first place, Purim was celebrated on March 25 in 1910. Second, whether they were of Christian or Jewish extraction, the atheistic revolutionaries who gathered in Copenhagen that year cared little for the religious holidays of their parents and grandparents. Furthermore, Clara Zetkin herself came from a Christian family; the Jewish surname was actually her husband's.

Lately, the concern has been expressed that it is unseemly to celebrate March 8th when it comes (as it often does) during Lent. That is something believers can decide for themselves, but where is it written that you should not buy someone a nice bouquet or some other gift during Lent?

For some reason, this holiday lives on, although women do not enjoy all the freedoms it was initially meant to represent and their rights are mostly on paper. Men still feel that a woman's place (after her workday is over) is in the kitchen, and hundreds of thousands of deadbeat husbands manage to elude their child support obligations. But on our day in March when we are given flowers and congratulations, even if we have not come close to real equality, we at least are charged with positive energy – not a bad thing. On the other hand, what Russian man hasn't at least once in his life pronounced the words, "Quiet, woman. Your day is March 8th!"