19/01/2021
After the 1917 Russian revolution, the military occupation of the newly-created national republics, and the subsequent creation of the USSR, Soviet authorities attained political power. They then targeted still popular, so-called “bourgeois,” deeply rooted religious traditions. Obviously, Christmas was one of the strongest cultural links with the pre-Soviet period that was to be uprooted and eliminated. “Religion — the brakes of the five-year plan” — was the motto of the epoch.
By April 1923, the XIIth Congress of the Communist Party adopted a resolution, “On the Launching of Anti-religious Agitation and Propaganda.” The resolution facilitated the complete eradication of folk customs associated with religious celebrations, including musical works with religious and biblical themes.
Instead of koliady, songs marking the birth of Christ (Christmas carols); shchedrivky and vinshyvky, sung on the feast of St. Basil and St. Melany, coinciding with the New Year, the party proposed communist songs glorifying proletarians. Similar was the fate of St. Nicholas’ day, the Christmas tree, and even the symbol of the Christmas star.
For Ukrainians, all of these occasions were steeped in tradition and central to religious celebrations. The examples of rapidly created communist traditions were not only ridiculous but in many cases surreal. They also showcase how terrible and traumatic the totalitarian ideology was. At the same time, inspiring is the fact that the Ukrainian people were able to preserve — and later revive — these musical and religious traditions, despite 70 years of propaganda and repression.
At first, the party was eager to follow Lenin's recommendation that "it is necessary to replace the religious worldview with a coherent communist scientific system." Authorities printed more scientific books ridiculing and — by the late 1920s — outright banning religious holidays. “[The regime...