The Russian Birch Festival: Performing the Concept of Trinitarianism in the Soviet Union

Abstract

This paper is focused on the means of transforming Trinity Sunday and attempts to “reinvent” this festival into the Russian Birch festival. In late 50s of the 20th century in a burst of the anticlerical campaign, the Soviet festival committees were concerned with creating new secular rituals, and anti-religious analogues of festivals, which would be able to get rid of ingrained “popular Orthodoxy”. The modes of performing the meaningful core of Trinity Sunday are a subject of this research, and theatrical and methodological scenario-based experience in holding the Russian Birch festival is an object. This research is based on numerous methodological guidelines, scenarios, reviews, and transcripts of relevant committees, which made it possible to shed light on complicated processes of generating a new festival. This paper represents the way, in which heroic and plot and compositional framework of original Trinity Sunday was being substituted. This research results in the following: in spite of the anticlerical position being declared, which had constituted the basis for the substitution of Trinity Sunday for the Russian Birch festival, in fact, the newly “invented” festival duplicated the basic functions and elements of the trinitarian concept and was within the framework of Trinity Sunday in terms of archetype. Moreover, the association with commemoration of the dead appropriate to Trinity was reflected in a cult of a heroic death of a soldier of the Soviet Army and updating of other cultural agendas.

Keywords

• theatrical performance
• soviet culture
• trinity sunday
• festive culture in the ussr
• russian birch