Russian Calendar

OCTOBER

1 Day of the Elderly. Fifty years ago the USSR recognized the People’s Republic of China. The USSR was the first to acknowledge the new state. In the 1950s, one of the most popular Soviet songs was “Russians and Chinese Are Brothers Forever,” which turned out not to be the case. In the 1960s, bilateral relations soured and there was military confrontation along the Amur River. In the late 1980s 1990s, relations warmed considerably through trade ties (consumer goods to Russia, arms to China) and especially when both stood against NATO on the war in Yugoslavia. This summer, a huge Chinese supermarket was unveiled with great fanfare in Moscow (see photo).

4 Day of Armed Space Forces

5 Teacher’s Day

11 This is the 105th birthday of the writer Boris Pilnyak (true name Vogau, 1894-1938). His literary pseudonym was taken from the Ukrainian village where, in 1915, he wrote his first short stories and novels. “I was gifted by a bitter fame,” Pilnyak wrote. He was the most visible “accepted” writer in 1920s Russia, even though his works, e.g. The Naked Year (1921) were less than enthusiastic about the proletariat, focusing on the byt (everyday life) of those living in Russia. His short novel The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon (1926) was based on a rumors that Soviet Marshal Mikhail Frunze died on the operating table because Stalin insisted on an ulcer operation the general did not need. The novel was repressed; Stalin saw it as a Trotskyite provocation. But it was Mahogany (1929), published in Berlin before the Soviet censors could reject it, which resulted in his expulsion from the influential Russian Association of Proletarian Writers. Nonetheless, he was still allowed to travel and write, producing the “mandatory” pro-socialist works. His novel The Volga Flows into the Caspian Sea (1930) and OK: An American Novel (1932, essentially negative views of the US), were seeming attempts to return to the regimes better graces, but Pilnyak had already been labeled unreliable. He was shot in 1937.

14 Thirty-five years ago today, a bloodless coup dethroned Soviet Communist Party Leader Nikita Khrushchev. A Central Committee plenum was called for the night of the 13th and Khrushchev was summoned to Moscow (he was vacationing on the Black Sea) and told to resign his post as First Secretary. Leonid Brezhnev was voted in as the new First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin was made chairman of the Council of Ministers. On the 15th, TASS announced that Khrushchev voluntarily left office “for reasons of health.”

Orthodox Believers also mark one of their most venerated and loved holidays today, the Intercession of the Virgin. 

15 Today is the 185th birthday of Mikhail Lermontov (1814-1941), who is oft-cited as second in the Russian poetic pantheon, after Pushkin. As the story on page 19 relates, Lermontov was gifted with talents that may well have been on a par with Pushkin, but his life was cut too short to offer a true comparison. Certainly many aspects of Lermontov’s life echoed those of Pushkin (brilliant prose and verse, a tempestuous private life, exile and problems with censors and the tsar’s secret police, a life ended in a pointless duel). 

18 105th birthday of Yuri Tynyanov (1894-1943) whose biography of Griboyedov, The Death of Vizier-Muhtar, was excerpted in the Feb/March 1999 issue of Russian Life. Tynyanov is also famous for his works of biographical fiction on Pushkin’s friend, the Decembrist Wilhelm Kukhelbecker (Kyukhlya), and on Pushkin himself (unfinished). Tynyanov combined the gift of researcher and writer. “I begin where the document ends,” he said.

25 Customs Worker Day

28 This is the 240th birthday of the architect Andrei Voronikhin (1759-1801). Voronikhin was born a serf on one of the Stroganov estates in the Urals. He so impressed these famous art patrons with his talent, that they brought him to Moscow to study architecture under the tutelage of Kazakov and Bazhenov. He later underwent private training in Paris. He remodeled the interior of the Stroganov Palace and redesigned Pavlovsky Palace. But his most famous work is St. Petersburg’s Kazan Mother of God Cathedral. 

29 Former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov celebrates his 70th birthday today. Born in Kiev, he grew up in Tbilisi (he is thus fluent in Georgian). In 1953 he graduated from the State Institute of Oriental Studies and was posted in the Middle East as a Pravda correspondent. Since the late 1970s, he has been an influential player in Russian politics and foreign policy, with well-documented ties to the intelligence services. He became an academician in 1979 and headed the influential think tank IMEMO (Institute of World Economy and International Relations) from 1985-1989. He advised Mikhail Gorbachev on foreign policy, and was nominated by Gorbachev to the post of Chairman of the Chamber of Union of the USSR Supreme Soviet. From 1991-1995, he headed the Russian Intelligence Service (SVR), from 1995-1998 he was foreign minister, and from September 1998 through June 1999 prime minister. At the time of writing he was Russia’s most popular politician, even though he has never run for public office. But his well-cultivated image as a quietly analytical outsider and an incorruptible technocrat plays well against the images of other important political actors.

31 Day of Automobile Transportation Workers. 

NOVEMBER

6 Orthodox believers mark “Dmitry’s Parental Saturday”—an All Saints Day to remember relatives who have passed on and Orthodox warriors who fell on the field of battle. 

Today is also the 205th birthday of the architect Konstantin Thon (1794-1881), creator of the so-called eclectic Russian-Byzantine style popular in 19th century Russia. It is hard to imagine Moscow without his beautiful creations: the Big Kremlin Palace, the Armory Chamber, the Leningrad Railway Station and, of course, the resurrected Christ the Savior Cathedral. The latter was demolished on Stalin’s orders on December 5, 1931 and rebuilt according to Thon’s original drawings. 

7 Day of National Accord and Reconciliation (formerly Day of the October Revolution). 

8 The actor Oleg Borisov would have turned 70 on this day (1929-1994). He was loved for his leading roles in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. One of the last plays he acted in was Paul I, in which he successfully portrayed the tsar’s contradictory character as both reformer and revanchist. Hardly a pet of Soviet film critics, Borisov was adored by the intelligentsia for his sarcastic, semi-comic, semi-tragic style, which often bordered on the absurd. One of his strongest works in cinema was as a non-conformist investigator in the film A Train Has Stopped. In the film, a vicious circle of unforgivable human errors leads to a train crash and a death. Borisov’s portrayal of the investigator exposed the failings of the Soviet system of management, which encouraged complacency and negligence, often forcing ordinary citizens to make pointless sacrifices.

10 Militia Day 

15 All Russian Day of the Draftee

17 Thirty years ago, in 1969, the US and USSR began their first serious attempt at nuclear arms control, the SALT talks.

18 Today is the centenary of aviator Mikhail Vodopyanov (1899-1980). His name, together with that of Ivan Papanin (whose 105th birthday falls on November 26), became legendary in the 1930s. In 1934, Papanin headed the Polar Station on Chelyuskin Cape. The ice-breaker Chelyuskin, which was supplying the station with food, got stuck in the ice and aviators, headed by Vodopyanov, rushed to the researchers’ aid, earning Vodopyanov the title of Hero of The Soviet Union. History repeated itself in 1937. Papanin headed a drifting station at the North Pole and Vodopyanov again supplied him with equipment by air.

20 130 years ago Zinaida Gippius (1869-1945) was born. A poet, she was a founder of poetic symbolism. Soviet critics called her work decadent, contemporary critics call her “one of the brightest figures of the so-called Silver Century of Russian culture.” Gippius condemned the revolution and split with other symbolists, e.g. Alexander Blok, when they sided with the Bolsheviks. Her husband, writer and literary critic Dmitry Merezhkovsky, helped initiate symbolism, proclaiming a new art based on religious, mystic ideas and renouncing realism as “dead talk of dead people about economic well-being.” In 1893, Gippius wrote in her poem “Song,” “I need something that cannot be found in this world.” She developed an egocentric poetry, proclaiming in her 1894 poem “Dedicacy” “I love myself like a God.” He talent truly shined in her prose, for example in her novel The Devil’s Puppet. Gippius and her husband emigrated to Paris in 1920, where they pursued their literary work for a quarter century. Gippius was buried at the famous Russian cemetery in Paris, Sainte-Geneviève-des Bois. The symbolism movement she helped found largely died out in Russia by the time of the first World War. 

21 Day of the Rocket Forces and Artillery

28 Two years ago, a law established the last Sunday in November as Mother’s Day in Russia. This year it falls on the 28th. Also on this day in 1829, 170 years ago, pianist and composer Anton Rubinstein (1829-1894) was born. Son of a Russian merchant, at the age of eleven, he played for the Hungarian virtuoso Franz List, who declared the piano prodigy his musical heir. A brilliant performer, Rubinstein is  known for his operas Machiavelli, Nerone, The Merchant Kalashnikov and especially Demon (the latter two were inspired by Lermontov poems, see story on pp 19). Rubinstein also spearheaded the construction and opening of both the Russian Music Society and the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1862 (where he held the post of director from 1887 until 1891). As the founder of these two institutions and an indefatigable lobbyist, he opened the path for the musical profession in Russia, a path first trod by the prodigal early graduate of his Conservatory, Pyotr Chaikovsky.

29 On this day 60 years ago the USSR launched a War against Finland, after that country failed to heed Soviet demands to give up the Karelian isthmus in exchange for Soviet land north of Lake Ladoga. Fierce Finnish resistance turned the war into a debacle and the USSR was evicted from the League of Nations. By March of 1940, the USSR was gaining ground and Finland sued for peace. The Soviet Union got its isthmus. But just over a year later, the Finns, allied with Nazi Germany, rolled through the isthmus and occupied it until 1944.

DECEMBER

1 On this day 65 years ago, Sergei Kirov, Leningrad Party leader, was shot by Leonid Nikolaev as he entered his offices at Smolny. History has yet to unveil all its secrets surrounding the murder, but it is clear Stalin was complicit in the murder of Kirov, who was the most independent-minded of Politburo members at the time (at the 17th Party Congress in early 1934, there was significant opposition and some members urged Kirov to challenge Stalin’s leadership). Draconian “anti-terrorist” measures were put in place on the day of Kirov’s murder, allowing summary arrest, judgement and execution. A purge of the Leningrad Party organization ensued. On the 16th, Lev Kamenev and Grigori Zinoviev were arrested and a conspiracy theory was concocted with them and other “oppositionists” at its center. It was the beginning of Stalin’s Great Terror, which lasted through 1938.

12  Day of the Russian Constitution.

14 In 1989, Andrei Sakharov, the “conscience of the nation” died; tens of thousands of Muscovites attended his funeral. A physicist who worked on Russia’s nuclear program, Sakharov was exiled to Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod) in 1980 after 10 years as a dissident, calling for greater democracy. He won the Nobel Peace Prize  in 1975. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev announced an end to Sakharov’s internal exile in December 1986. Sakharov became a spokesman for democracy under Gorbachev’s reforms, particularly in his role as a deputy in the new Supreme Soviet.

15 In Moscow in 1954, the Second Congress of Writers convened. It slowed down a literary thaw initiated after Stalin’s death while signaling a slight relaxation in state control over literature. 

17  Day of Stategic Rocket Forces. Ten years ago on this day important basic reforms to the Soviet penal code were put in place. Internal exile was abolished, the number of crimes subject to the death penalty was restricted and sentencing was lightened across the board. (See story on Russian prisons, page 37) Today is also the 110th birthday of Vaclav Nizhinsky (1889-1950), a genius of dance who remained a riddle in the history of Russian and world ballet. Nizhinsky was a star dancer and choreographer in Sergei Diaghilev’s famous ballet troupe, the Ballets Russe, and enjoyed tremendous success in London and America. In 1913, he married a young dancer, Romola de Pulszky. Diaghilev, who had been Nizhinsky’s lover, was enraged and fired Nizhinsky from the Ballets Russe. Soon thereafter, Nizhinsky suffered a breakdown and spent the final 31 years of his life in and out of mental hospitals. 

19 Day of the Energy Worker. As well, for Russian Orthodox, today is the Day of the Miraculous St. Nicholas, one of the most venerated Russian saints. Today is also the 55th birthday of actress Anastasia Vertinskaya, daughter of the maverick actor and bard Alexander Vertinsky. Her beauty attracted directors early: at 15 she made her debut as Assol in the film The Scarlet Sail (1961), the screen version of Alexander Grin’s namesake novel and one year later as the lovely Guttiere in the popular Man-Amphibian.

20 Day of the Security Worker.

21 Ninety years ago the actress Zoya Fedorova (1909-1981), one of the most popular cinema stars of the 1930s, was born. The mystery of her tragic death (she was shot in her apartment) was never discovered, although some suspected it was connected with her daughter Viktoria, an actress who emigrated to America, where she shot a film dedicated to her mother.

Until recently, this was noted as the day in 1879 when Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, alias “Koba” and “Stalin,” was born in the town of Gori, Georgia. It was the day Stalin and the country celebrated as his birthday during his lifetime. But, in 1990, researchers poring over church records discovered that Stalin was actually born on December 6, 1878. Stalin’s father was a shoemaker and Iosif was on the path to the priesthood until he was expelled from seminary at the age of 20. Soon he took up the life of a revolutionary (as “Koba”) and spent two terms of exile in Siberia. His role in the 1917 Bolshevik coup was minimal, compared to Lenin or Trotsky, but his later perfection of Lenin’s style of dictatorial leadership and revolutionary terror would serve him well in rising to the apex of Soviet power and constructing the world’s first totalitarian state. By 1928 there were few who could challenge his leadership of the Party and the country; within 10 years there were none—they had all been physically eliminated. During his thirty-year reign of terror, over 35 million Soviets died from famine, forced labor and summary executions; another 20 million died in WWII, at least in part because of his ruthless decimation of the Red Army before the war. In March 1953, as he was preparing a new wave of terror, he collapsed from a stroke at his dacha. With a mix of opportunism and fear, his minions in the Politburo did nothing and let him die. 

23 Today is the bicentenary of the Russian painter Karl Bryullov’s birth (1799-1852). Bryullov was a brilliant portrait artist who earned his fame while still a student at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts (see Russian Life cover, March 1996). “There is whole sea of brightness in his canvasses,” Gogol said. The coming issue of Russian Life will feature a story on this important artist.

26 On this day twenty years ago, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan after Afghan security forces murdered leader Hafizullah Amin. The new, pro-Soviet leader, Babrak Karmal, asked the USSR for “fraternal assistance” in propping up his regime. Civil war ensued, killing over a million Afghanis and some 13,000 Soviets. Soviet troops finally began to leave Afghanistan in May 1988; the last troops left on February 15, 1989.

— Valentina Kolesnikova