The May Holidays

The first days of May are a joyous time. Spring has finally sprung in our northern parts, the sun is shining, and the trees have begun leafing out. For the most part, cherry trees blossom a bit later in May (although these days everything is changing), and the cold snap that usually accompanies their flowering falls toward the middle of the month.

In early May, everyone is feeling exhausted after a long, vitamin-deprived winter: schoolchildren are dragging themselves to the June 1 school-year finish line, and their parents are just starting to recover from the cold, dark winter. That’s when the holidays hit.

The May holidays are a rather strange time. In Soviet times, the holidays significant enough to come with a day off were May 1, International Workers Solidarity Day, which for some reason was celebrated over two days, with workers getting May 2 off as well, and May 9, Victory Day. Sandwiched between them were two other holidays that were also taken seriously, despite being working days: Day of the Press on May 5 (the anniversary of Pravda’s first issue) and Radio Day on May 7.

International Workers Solidarity Day started out as a response to the Haymarket massacre, when protesting workers were shot in Chicago in 1886, but that origin was quickly forgotten and the day’s main slogan became “Peace! Labor! May!” Despite the grim ideological underpinnings, this was always a rather cheerful holiday. Soviet citizens were supposed to start this usually sunny day by attending a demonstration. Many people saw this as a dreaded duty that they would do anything to wriggle out of, coming up with illnesses or urgent family matters. But others took part in these marches with great pleasure, bringing along the kids, who would be dressed in their holiday best and given little flags to wave. For these enthusiasts, it was pure fun to be able to march as part of a huge smiling crowd. When your boss wasn’t looking, you could quickly share the bottle of vodka and shot glasses strategically stashed in pockets to truly enjoy this joyous day off.

Unless, of course, you were so unfortunate as to be charged with carrying one of the slogan-emblazoned banners and streamers under which demonstrators were supposed to march. Carrying them was not easy and, most importantly, once you took the pole in hand, you were stuck: no sneaking home after being marked “present” or partaking in a quick round of drinks. You had to carry your message of peace and solidarity to the very end, and then take it back to your place of work.

In any event, the demonstrations ended fairly early and the afternoon was free, plus you didn’t have to go to work the following day either. Why this was a two-day holiday is a mystery, but maybe it was to make up for the fact that May 1 wasn’t really a day off, since participating in demonstrations was mandatory.

Two days after this holiday concluded came Day of the Press, May 5, which no one but journalists really cared much about, although everyone was reminded that it was on this day in 1912 that the first issue of Pravda rolled off the presses. Pravda was a depressing and dreadfully boring newspaper whose pages were freighted with mind-numbing ideology. People were supposed to subscribe to it, and its lead articles were studied in the political awareness classes workers and students were supposed to attend, but this did not make the newspaper any more readable. Some skeptically inclined young people tried to squeeze entertainment out of it by imagining one of the grandiloquent headlines – something along the lines of “We Rise as One for Peace” – as a caption for a pornographic picture. The only other thing Pravda was any good for was trying to fathom the Kremlin’s hidden intentions.

Other newspapers, such as Izvestia and Trud, also published ideological claptrap on their front pages and told of the wonderful life of Soviet workers, but at least you could find some real-life news there. The publications that really mattered to the serious reader were Literary Gazette and Yunost [Youth], and for a huge number of fans from the most diverse segments of society, the magazines Rabotnitsa [the feminine form of the word “worker”], Krestyanka [the feminine form of the word “peasant”] or Ogonyok [Little Fire] cannot be overstated.

Given the dull and poorly produced fare shown on television, the small number of films released, and restaurants that were accessible only to an elite few, the ability to read a genuinely interesting article on literature or society in Literaturka (as Literary Gazette was fondly known), to see a new, usually interesting, author in Yunost, to look at the pictures in Ogonyok and do the crossword puzzle, to read the “stories from life” in Rabotnitsa or Krestyanka, or a story about a new scientific discovery in Znaniye-sila [Knowledge is Strength] or Nauka i zhizn [Science and Life] was a rare source of joy.

Two days after the little-noticed Day of the Press came another little-noticed holiday: the Day of Radio, established to commemorate May 7, 1895, when Alexander Popov reputedly demonstrated his invention – essentially a radio transmitter – at a meeting of the Russian Physical and Chemical Society. [As noted in Russian Life Mar/Apr 2019, the historical record shows that Popov only submitted a paper on that day, and did not demonstrate his technology until a year later.] True, the Italian Guglielmo Marconi demonstrated a transmitter to his mother as early as December 1894, but his real breakthrough came only during the summer of 1895, so for Russia, it was Popov who was the true father of radio technology. To this day, on May 7 each year students at Urals University’s School of Radio in Yekaterinburg clean the institution’s statue of Popov, who studied and lived for some time in the city.

For twentieth-century Russia, as for the rest of the world, radio was of incalculable importance. Several generations grew up “under the dish,” “the dish” being the omnipresent radio mounted on the walls of virtually every home in the Soviet Union. These devices, which offered only one channel, started their broadcast day at six in the morning with the Soviet anthem.

Radio was used, of course, as yet another – and very effective – brainwashing tool, but it also gave people a way to hear classical or popular music, as well as wonderful radio-theater productions for children and adults. The appearance of transistors, and the ability to carry radios around with you, was a true revolution. But when it turned out that the Spidola transistor radio, produced beginning in 1960 in Latvia, could be rigged (if you were tech savvy enough or knew people who were) to pick up Western radio stations (despite the constant jamming), radio took on a completely new political importance. A huge swath of the population gained new sources of information, including about their own country (for example, people in the Soviet Union first heard about the Gulag Archipelago on the BBC or the Voice of America).

In the Soviet era, radio successfully competed with television, losing this rivalry only in the 1980s but regaining popularity once again in the 1990s, when cars became more common and people listened to the radio while driving around.

The last of the May holidays, May 9, Victory Day, continues to have a lot more emotional resonance than any of the other holidays, especially for those with family members who fought or otherwise suffered during the war – pretty much everyone. With its trademark military parades, viewed from atop Lenin’s Mausoleum by the country’s leaders, veteran get-togethers, and formal and informal celebrations, the holiday is a good way for the powers that be to drum up patriotism, and they certainly do not miss the opportunity.

Such is Russia’s holiday-filled nine days of May, its celebration of spring and the promises of summer. Despite their Soviet origins, these holidays have all hung on to the present day (although Day of the Press has shifted to May 3 and merged with World Press Freedom Day), so don’t expect email replies from Russian friends and colleagues for the first 10 days of the month. Just get outside and enjoy the warmer weather.