Russian Blog
This is a blog by JustRussian about learning Russian. You will find useful tips for learning Russian, Russian courses available in London, information about Russian culture and links to websites with information for students of Russian.
The Russian Day of National Unity – the 4th of November
By Vlada 2 November 07
Teaching Russian courses in London, I am often asked questions about Russian traditions, customs and celebrations. So one of the themes for my blog is Russian holidays and traditions, especially the ones that are unknown in Britain.
The coming holiday: Day of National Unity –the 4th of November
This is a confusing holiday, I should say. The thing is, no one really knows what we are celebrating. Most people think it’s a replacement for the old Soviet holiday, the Day of October Revolution of 1917 – the event which put Russia on the path to communism and changed the face of the country for good. The old holiday was on the 7th of November and was celebrated in the Soviet era on a grand scale, with the famous (“let’s scare the West!”) military parades in Red Square, concerts, speeches and patriotic films on the telly. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the 7th of November is not a national holiday any more and is marked in the calendar as “The day of National Concord and Reconciliation”, to commemorate the conflict and suffering that the revolution brought about. It’s now considered to be a memorable day but not a national holiday.
As it turns out, the 4th of November has nothing to do with the 7th, they just happen to be close by (after all, you can’t just abolish one national holiday and not replace it with another – people need their day off!). This holiday was celebrated in Russia before the Revolution of 1917, marking an equally important event in Russian history – the end of “Smouta” in 1612. The word “smouta” is difficult to translate into English with one word. It means a turbulent time of trouble and uncertainty.
Here is a short history of the smouta:
In 1603, there were rebellions in many of the western, central and southern regions of Russia. Rebel troops approached Moscow and were defeated by a government army. But next year another rebel appeared – a monk called Grigory Otrepyev, who claimed to be Dimitry, the son of Ivan the Terrible, saved by a miracle. Dimitry was officially considered to have died in an accident a few years earlier, but unofficially was believed to have been murdered by the then Tsar Boris Godunov in his fight for the throne. Grigory raised an army and managed to enter Moscow after the unexpected death of the tsar, Boris Godunov. Known as “the Impostor” and “the False Dimitry”, he ruled for a short while but was killed in 1606 (his ashes were shot from a gun off the Kremlin wall… but let’s not go into gory detail!). The tsar’s throne was taken by Vassily Shuysky, an aristocrat tracing his pedigree back to the first king of Russia Rurik. But soon False Dimitry number 2 appeared. He laid siege to Moscow, and at the same time Russia was attacked by the armies of the Polish and Swedish kings. The Poles captured Moscow. The Swedes tried to take over the north-west of Russia. The rest of Russia was at the mercy of hordes of rebels and bandits. False Dimitry number 2 was killed but promptly replaced by number 3. From then on any more or less self-respecting rebel armed formation had its own Dimitry. The situation was desperate.
The country was saved in the autumn of 1612 by a people’s army, raised and led by two people – a commoner Kozma Minin and a prince Dmitry Pozharsky. (you can see a bronze representation of them in Red Square, just in front of St Basil’s Cathedral). On the 4th of November 1612, their army liberated the centre of Moscow from Polish troops. A new, very young tsar was elected – Michail Romanov, the first tsar of the Romanov dynasty.
They say the army and the crusade lead by Minin and Pozharsky (people symbolically belonging to different classes of society) was a unique phenomenon in Russian history because it was the only time when the people themselves took control of the destiny of the country, while the state authority was completely helpless. People collected money and went to establish order in the capital. They went to fight not for the tsar (there was no tsar!) but for the country – and they won.
So, that’s what we are celebrating on the 4th of November, instead of the revolution… I must admit, I was a bit vague about it until I decided to write this post and looked it up. But now we know!