Commemorate and Celebrate
4 December 2024 ~ Russia Day in Kaliningrad Honours Past and Present
RUSSIA DAY has been celebrated annually on 12 June since 1992. It is the national holiday of the Russian Federation, originally and officially known as the Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), but that was a bit of a mouthful, even for Russians, so mercifully it was changed in 1998, so that even I can say it.
The idea that the Russian calendar is dominated by celebrations is not entirely misleading if you factor in everything from music, film, theatre, food, famous people to winter. However, Russia has no more public holidays than most other countries ~ eight, I believe.
Just like Bank Holidays in the UK, most public offices and schools are closed on 12th June. It’s a national day off, with events taking place throughout the country.
It’s also a chance for Russians to revisit, remind themselves of and celebrate all things Russian.
For some people, older people, those who were brought up in the USSR, the day has different significances. For those who bemoan the loss of the Soviet Union, it is a day of fond, if not sad, remembrance; for those who answer ‘No’ to my question, “Do you miss the Soviet Union?”, it is a day to celebrate pre-Soviet history, the Russia of the here and now and/or the Russia of the future.
Without mastery of the crystal ball to preview destiny, at least two of these time periods coalesced in Kaliningrad’s 2024 Russian Day festival. Held in the attractive grass and meandering paved precincts bordering Königsberg’s Upper Pond, Russian culture and its past were brought evocatively to life in colourful costumed pageants, tableau vivant and displays of living history. Craft stalls of a multifarious nature plied their trade in traditional hand-made Russian goods, augmented by the up to date and novel to attract the eyes of children and appeal to less retrospective types.
Also at hand was costume and fine jewellery, which, If you failed to keep your navigational wits about you, could eventually end up on the hands, around the wrists and upon the neck of your wife or girlfriend.
“Look, over there! [away from the jewellery stalls]. There’s a very interesting, er, what do you call it, thingymajig.”
June, like most other months of the year, can be temperamental (I knew a girl called June once. Heaven knows why they christened her that, they would better have called her December.), but I am pleased to say that on the twelth day of this June, the clouds rolled back in the heavens, the sun came out to join us and Russia Day in Kaliningrad was a gala day to remember.
The English are told to celebrate everybody else’s culture (hint almost everybody else’s!)
Unfortunately, the English, what’s left of us, have no such state-ordained or government-supported equivalent to Russia Day; in fact, quite the opposite. We are encouraged to celebrate Black History Month. (I’m sure they would like to extend this to Black History 12 months, which they are doing anyway via the TV commercials.) Headlines in the liberal press exhort us to learn about everyone else, all except ourselves: “What you should know about Ramadan and Eid” “What you should know about Diwali” and “What you shouldn’t know about any of your own Christian festivals, coz it don’t matter!”
St Patrick’s Day is a public holiday for the Irish, but St George’s Day (the Patron Saint of England) is hardly recognised anymore and deliberately suppressed by the left, who are afraid that it could remind the English of their ancestral history, and thus consolidate their cultural identity, which they, the left, have for some time now been working hard to eradicate.
One black activist operating in the UK has put it on record that in his opinion the English do not deserve a day off to celebrate its culture. I should imagine that the English feel that they don’t deserve him.
Hopefully, Farage and Reform will change all that in the very near future! 👍
Copyright © 2018-2024 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.
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