Sprouting Spring Celebrations

Professions pack the calendar

Back in Soviet times, holidays were a time for the entire country to come together in common celebration. At the top of the list were New Year’s Eve and Victory Day (May 9). Next in importance came the anniversary of the October Revolution (absurdly celebrated on November 7). There may not have been much genuine enthusiasm for that holiday, but at least it was a day off.

The spring holidays were more or less straightforward: International Women’s Day, March 8, when mimosas appeared and people bought them for the ladies in their lives; the idiotic April 1, when people were supposed to play pranks on one another; and the strange holiday of May 1, when people were forced to march in honor of “Worker Solidarity.” For some reason we had May 2 off as well, even though the slogan of the holiday was “Peace! Labor! May!” City people often took an additional couple of days off so they could head out of town and help their relatives plant potatoes.

Another distinctly Soviet spring holiday was April 12, commemorating the day in 1919 when workers at a railway maintenance depot known as Moskva-Sortirovochnaya (Moscow-Classification Yard) staged the first subbotnik, which was basically an event when people worked on Saturday without getting paid (see Russian Life, March/April 2014). Some Saturday in April was always chosen for Soviet citizens to continue this tradition, usually timed to coincide either with Lenin’s birthday on April 22, or, out of spite (as in 1919), with Easter. Replacing Easter with a subbotnik was of course quite unpleasant for the devout, but most people took it in stride. Not much work was actually performed at these subbotniks – a bit of raking and sweeping in the fresh air, followed by comradely shots of vodka “to celebrate.”

The 1960s saw the proliferation of a category of holidays that could not aspire to the significance of New Year’s or May Day. These were the holidays honoring specific professions. There were just a few big ones, for instance Day of the Teacher in early October, when pupils brought flowers to school, or and Day of the Police on December 10, which was mainly marked by the broadcasting of a fantastic concert on television. Day of the Paratrooper fell in August, and seems to have been mainly celebrated by rowdy men in blue-striped shirts splashing in fountains, but this was not something that was ever openly discussed in the media.

Over the following decades, new professional holidays cropped up one after another. The nineties and the first decade of our current century seem to have been the most prolific in this regard, as suddenly there were a great number of new professions and each wanted its own holiday.

Looking at the calendar today, one gets the feeling that March and April have been taken over by the silovye struktury – the “power structures” (basically the branches of government that have guns): March 1 is the special day for Ministry of Internal Affairs criminologists; March 11 is for narcotics agents, as well as employees of private security firms; March 12 is for prison guards; March 19 is for submariners; March 24 is for air force navigators; April 6 is for Ministry of Internal Affairs investigators; April 8 is for military enlistment officers; April 15 is for electronic warfare experts; and April 17 is for veterans of both the police and Russia’s Internal Troops.

Why have the military and law enforcement so aggressively claimed March and April for their holidays? Some of these dates do commemorate an event in their organization’s history, but many seem more or less random.

A few non-military, non-law enforcement professions have managed to gain footholds in the sought-after spring months, such as web hosting providers, who are honored on March 1, and box office cashiers, who have staked out the first Monday in March. In Russia, box office cashiers are important people. It is not as hard to get tickets as it was 30 years ago, but for real theater buffs, it doesn’t hurt to say a few warm words to the woman (usually) in the box office on her special day.

Other groups that have snagged March holidays include land surveyors and cartographers (the second Sunday of the month) and archivists (March 10). Housing maintenance workers – dvorniks, plumbers, locksmiths – used to claim the fourth Sunday in July as their holiday, but for some reason moved it to the third Sunday in March. It’s hard to see the logic, and the Tajiks who mostly play the role of dvornik (the person in charge of keeping common areas in and around buildings clean and orderly) in today’s Moscow probably don’t realize they have a special day anyway.

Apparently March 22 is the Day of the Taxi Driver, and not just in Russia (it was on this day in 1907 that the first taxi appeared in London). The 23rd is the Day of the Hydrometeorologist and coincides with World Meteorological Day, which probably has to do with the spring equinox, one natural event they are able to reliably forecast. On March 25 we celebrate cultural figures.

Moving on to April, geologists are celebrated the second Sunday of the month. They were given a holiday in spring because that is when their annual exploration is usually launched. The Day of the Geologist started back in 1966, when a huge oil deposit was discovered in Western Siberia, so really this could be called the Day of Oil, although oil industry workers have their own day, in early September.

We can all agree that April 7 marks an important day in Russian history: the birth of the Runet (the Russian internet), when, in 1994, the .ru domain was registered. April 12, the Day of Cosmonautics, also commemorates a truly significant event: Yuri Gagarin’s inaugural human flight into outer space. On this day, schools once canceled classes and thousands of people would go out onto the street to sing, dance, and celebrate. Today, the conquest of space has become almost mundane. Many Russians don’t even realize what’s so special about April 12.

April 13 honors patrons of the arts, a holiday established on the initiative of the Hermitage Museum. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the support of the arts and charities by wealthy individuals is of tremendous importance. This day coincides with the birthday of Rome’s first great patron of the arts, Gaius Maecenas. The word for patron of the arts in Russian (metsenat), as well as many other languages, is based on his name. The holiday is really just an excuse for Russia’s generally impoverished arts institutions to make a big fuss over those with the means of keeping them afloat.

April 20 honors blood donors, of which Russia has a terrible shortage. The 21st is Day of the Chief Accountant, someone without whom no company can survive. Chief accountants may be indispensible, but they are also vulnerable to being sent to prison whenever a scapegoat is needed due to financial misdealings. Do accountants think about this as they accept congratulations on their special day?

On April 30 we celebrate firefighters, perhaps in anticipation of Walpurgis Night, the eve of the Witches’ Sabbath, clearly a fire hazard.

Nobody took the trouble of setting aside a day to honor workers in the scrap-processing industry, so they decided to claim April 19 for their holiday. We wish them all the best in this competitive season of professional holidays!