The Darkest hour of the Russian Empire 2

@KcindX: The song is nice, but absolutely ahistorical, Rasputin never was the Empress' lover

Rasputin was mad but he wasn't an idiot - for such deeds he would be quickly arrested and executed by friendly guys of Okhranka And he had enough young women who really wanted him, so he didn't need to have sexual intrigues in the royal family.

Anyway, Bolsheviks worked hard to find evidences of sexual relationships of Rasputin and the Empress (to make the monarchy and the royal family disgusting in their propaganda), but they failed to find any

Nice story, I always liked it

Merry Christmas everybody, today I'll post a new special update!​

Russia celebrated Christmas on 25 of December before the Revolution. But after that Lenin changed the calendar and 25 December turned into 7 January

The Darkest hour of the Russian Empire 2​

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Chapter Two: 1930s
Appendix 1: Christmas in Russia​

Merry Christmas and happy New Year, my dear readers. Today is a special day, so today I'll speak a little about Russia Christmas traditions to make something like a present for you

Actually, I'm not a fanatic Christian and don't consider Christmas as only religious event. Personally, I think that it's great holiday and wonderful European tradition with a lot of fun, stories and songs. Also, it's a perfect day to meet all your relatives, so, let's talk about traditional Russian X-Mas!

Christmas in Russia is celebrated on 7 of January, but actually the Church uses old Julian calendar, so original Orthodox Christmas is the same with all other Churches - on 25 of December. Christmas became widely celebrated in 10th century, when the people of Rus' were baptized by St. Duke Vladimir. Traditional Russian Christmas didn't look like Western one, because the Russians added a lot of folk (= pagan) events to the celebration, do the Christmas itself divided into two parts - official Church holiday (with classical Byzantine masses in the churches) and folk holiday (with a lot of songs and games). For Russia it is common to mixture Christian and folklore traditions.


Very soon Christmas became the main winter-time event, because before the Christianity Russians didn't have any holidays in winter - winter was something dark and frightening for them, so Rus' got one more major holiday. Christian authorities and priests weren't so against folk traditions, they were wise to be patient enough, and the people appreciated that. For example, one of folk traditions, that soon became connected directly to Christmastime, was kolyadki, something like folk Christmas carols.


Kolyada was an ancient Slavic winter ritual celebrating the Old New Year. It was later incorporated into Christmas, and was very popular during the centuries. People were dancing and singing all the night, and these songs were called kolyadki. Usually young people enjoyed them very much, because it was something like a giant Christmas party. Dancing and singing people were visiting the houses and asking for some sweets as present. In Ukraine it was usual to give not only sweets, but even some food like pies or sausages, so everyone was happy and satiated.


In Orthodoxy Christmas is always followed with a great beautiful mass in all churches, which lasts all the night from 23 p.m. till 4 a.m. Thousands of Russian citizens visit these masses every year and they're not afraid to stay the whole night in the church (believe me it's not easy, I tried it one or two times ). It's a very unusual mass with a lot of rituals, when everybody shows his happiness about the Jesus' birth. In Imperial Russia the Tsar always visited a church and stayed the whole mass together with usual people (in my AAR Alexis II would do the same ). Imperial government was giving away Christmas presents like sweets and grog to everybody who wanted it. 25 of December was an official state holiday. During the Soviet era Christmas was officially banned, and people who tried to attend church on 7 of January, were arrested as well as the priests who tried to organize a mass. In 1942 Stalin let Christians to celebrate their holiday and ordered to open closed churches (historians don't know why - most of them think that it was because Stalin remembered his young days when he wanted to become a priest, somebody thinks that Stalin believed that God will help him to win the war - the last version seems ridiculous for me), but anyway, when Stalin died, Khruschev closed the churches once again and restricted all Christmas celebrations. Traditional holiday returned only in 1991. In modern Russia Christmas is a non-working day.

Christmas always influenced traditional Russian culture. One of the most famous novels by favorite Russo-Ukrainian writer Nikolai Gogol "The Night before Christmas" was based on Ukrainian Christmastime comedy stories, where the devil stole the moon to prevent Christmas celebrations, but his plan was spoiled. Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov, the most well-known Russian poets, wrote a lot of Christmas poems and rhymes. Leo Tolstoy, Fedor Dostoevsky, Mikhail Bulgakov - all these wonderful writers had their own Christmas stories. Christmastime was also very popular in Russian music, remember Petr Chaikovsky and his The Nutcracker (Schelkunshik) ballet.


Russians also have traditional X-Mas cuisine - sochevo (because of it in Russian Christmas Eve called sochelnik), which means porridge made of wheat and juice, syt' or kut'ya, which is made of nuts, corn and raisins. In Russian families it's also popular to eat a fried goose with apples and drink kisel.

@Deus Eversor: Wow, really In Russia we like pashtet too and call it the same word! Borsch is good, for ushka we've got a Finno-Ugric word "pelemeni" (which means "ears" really). It's like our national food, though actually it's national food of Mordva, a Finno-Ugric people in central Russia (but who cares? ). Gulash, if I'm not mistaken, is Hungarian.
I have no idea what "chvikla or "hshan" means, it's not clear for me
Miodovnik (in Russian it's medovnik, very similar) is a great thing, but quite heavy, I can't eat a lot of it

So, what can I say? Slavs are really brothers, you can see it, paradox fans

When Kievan duke Yaroslav the Wise had a civil war with his brother, his brother had a Polish king as an ally. And when two armies met near the river, soldiers started shouting at each other and mocking each other with rough words. It shows that in 11th century there were no differences between Poles and Russians and their language