How the first persons of the Soviet Union celebrated the New Year

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Over the past decades, the New Year has been one of the most beloved holidays in countries that were once one big state - the USSR. And today people of different generations remember the feeling of magic that accompanied this holiday in childhood. Ordinary people celebrated the New Year on a grand scale, trying to get scarce food and prepare sweet gifts for children. And how did the leaders of the Land of Soviets meet this holiday?

Vladimir Lenin

For Vladimir Ilyich, New Year's holidays practically did not exist, since these days he was just working. There is information that only in the last years of his life Ilyich organized a holiday in his Gorki. The tree was dressed up and on December 31, children from the surrounding villages were invited to visit Lenin. Children were given sweet gifts at the Christmas tree, which were very modest. Along with a few sweets, the gift contained lumps of sugar wrapped in colored paper.

However, some sources also contain information that the holiday arranged by Lenin on the New Year is an invention.

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Joseph Stalin

Iosif Vissarionovich was not too fond of holidays that were not associated with ideology. However, both he and his family celebrated the New Year. Although there were times when the New Year was not welcomed. All this was due to the tradition of decorating the tree at Christmas. This holiday and the associated attributes were considered a religious relic and were massively condemned. Nevertheless, it was not possible to completely eradicate the desire of the people to celebrate the usual holidays, then it was decided to celebrate with a Christmas tree not Christmas, but New Year.

Joseph Stalin began hosting annual receptions around the mid-1930s, and traditionally celebrated the holiday with his family at home. If initially the celebration resembled an ordinary feast with booze, then at the New Year's Kremlin receptions the matter was already put on a grand scale. After the official part with summing up the results of the year, the guests moved to the hall, where the tables were already set, and the best artists of the country were preparing for the performance. It was Joseph Stalin who introduced the practice of performing not on stage, but next to the festive tables, closer to the viewer.

At the house of Joseph Vissarionovich, a Christmas tree was dressed up. Until 1931, the wife of the leader was engaged in this, after - Alexander Bychenkov, the nanny of Stalin's children. On New Year's Eve, a few invitees came to the leader's house. If at first the holiday took place in a Moscow apartment, then later he moved to a dacha in Volynskoe. Here, the leader's New Year tree was already decorated by guards, while balls and toys were brought directly from the glass-blowing factory to approve their design. Instead of the top, it has become a tradition to crown the New Year's tree with a red star, a copy of the ruby star from the Kremlin's Spasskaya Tower.

At home, gifts were handed out. The leader himself was also gifted, while he was extremely negative about the gifts of imported production. On the leader's table there was certainly Georgian wine, and there were also strong drinks. This despite the fact that Stalin was most often poured from a separate decanter, in which, as a rule, there was water.

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Nikita Khrushchev

At the very beginning of his reign, Nikita Khrushchev gave preference not to large-scale holidays, but to a home meeting in a circle of associates. However, a few years after Stalin's death, it became customary to celebrate the New Year in the Kremlin. The celebration was attended not only by representatives of the party elite with their wives, but also by actors, writers and poets, leaders of production.

There was everything on the tables that one could dream of. At the same time, they drank practically without restrictions, some guests were even taken out by the arms in order to bring them to their senses outside the hall. Khrushchev himself consumed very little alcohol: he used a glass glass with a thick bottom, in which very little alcohol was placed.

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Leonid Brezhnev

The General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee introduced the constant practice of New Year's greetings, addressing the citizens of a large country five minutes before the chimes. True, back in the 1930s, Mikhail Kalinin congratulated the Soviet people several times and once - Klim Voroshilov. And Nikita Khrushchev preferred impersonal congratulations on behalf of the party.

Under him, they stopped celebrating the New Year within the walls of the Kremlin. It was thanks to Leonid Ilyich that the concept of this holiday appeared as a family one. Accordingly, the Secretary General celebrated the New Year at home, with his family and close people. As a rule, friends of Leonid Ilyich from among the party elite were guests at the Brezhnevs' celebration.

Brezhnev's wife Victoria Petrovna personally supervised the preparation of the New Year's holiday. She did not cook herself, but she exercised complete control. I checked how the house is decorated, at what stage is the preparation of dishes. Usually only stuffed fish and a big cake were ordered from the special dining room. We drank a little during the holiday, mostly champagne and Zubrovka. And they didn't have fun until dawn, especially in later years. They often sang military songs, remembered the past, sometimes danced.

Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, who led the country after the death of Leonid Brezhnev, were seriously ill people, so they did not arrange any special celebrations during their reign.

Santa Claus, Snow Maiden, gifts and tangerines. And the tree. Today it is impossible to imagine New Year and Christmas without this fluffy beauty. It would seem that the tree from the very beginning of its existence was a festive winter tree, but this is not so.