Peter and Paul Day

July 12 

for most people who grew up in the cities of the Soviet Union, July 12th was a summer day like any other. 

Times have changed. Today, the main Orthodox holidays are major media events. But during my youth, few knew that July 12 commemorates the apostles Peter and Paul, two of Orthodoxy’s most revered saints, and that it marks the end of the Apostles’ Fast, known in Russian as Peter’s Lent.