The Presidential Library spotlights the history of Maslenitsa celebrations in St. Petersburg

Maslenitsa week, which symbolizes the transition from winter to spring for a secular person, this year will run from March 11 to 17. For Christians, it has a double meaning - it is both a spring holiday and the last week before Lent, when believers are called to repentance and renunciation of earthly pleasures during fasting. One can learn about how one of the brightest holidays in Rus' was celebrated from rare publications, digital copies of which are available on the Presidential Library's portal.

The celebration of Maslenitsa in St. Petersburg is described by Alexander Tereshchenko in the book Life of the Russian People (1848). There is no picture more tempting and delightful than the folk Maslenitsa in St. Petersburg. Here everyone is in a hurry to enjoy the pleasure. In the evening there are balls, masquerades and theaters twice a day.

By Maslenitsa (that is, before fasting), meat products are already excluded from the diet, only dairy products remain - it is no coincidence that Maslenitsa week is called Cheese Week. The main treat for Maslenitsa is pancakes. They are baked all week from buckwheat or wheat flour. Pancakes the size of a tea saucer, thin, light, made from only wheat flour, are called pancakes. Pancakes are served hot everywhere.

Further, the author says that the residents of St. Petersburg have preserved a legend that Maslenitsa comes first to Okhta, then to Yamskaya Sloboda, and then to the city. For this reason, Okhta is called the “original of Maslenitsa”.

Nowhere have they baked or eaten as many pancakes as on Okhta.

At this time, songs and screams were heard everywhere on Okhta. Plates were smashed in the houses, pies, pancakes and pancakes lay on the tables.

Representatives of the St. Petersburg upper class society, tired of boring concerts, had picnics. Noble ladies rode from the ice mountains, which were built especially for them, both during Maslenitsa and on some days of Lent.

The Presidential Library's collections contain numerous materials telling about how Maslenitsa was celebrated at different times. Russian historian, ethnographer and folklorist Ivan Snegirev wrote about Maslenitsa traditions in his book Russian Common Holidays and Superstitious Rituals (1838). The essay by Ivan Bozheryanov How Russian people celebrated and celebrates the Nativity of Christ, the New Year, Epiphany and Maslenitsa, published in 1894, talks about the traditions of Maslenitsa week since the time of Peter I. The publication Notes serving the history of His Imperial Highness the Right-Believing Sovereign Tsarevich and Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich, heir to the Russian throne (1881) describes the celebration of Maslenitsa in St. Petersburg during the time of Catherine II. Catherine will remember the cheerful Maslenitsa festivities until her old age, as the Empress’s Secretary of State Alexander Khrapovitsky mentions in his Memoirs (1862).

The Presidential Library's collections contain archival documents of the Directorate of Imperial Theaters related to the celebration of Maslenitsa in the capital St. Petersburg and Moscow in the 19th – early 20th centuries and testifying to the charitable traditions associated with the period of Lent and Maslenitsa week: these are documents with the highest permission for the entire week Maslenitsa to give morning performances, cases for 1898-1903 on free performances for pupils and pupils of educational institutions; the case of holding an artistic evening or masquerade ball in St. Petersburg - at the Mariinsky Theater and in Moscow - at the Bolshoi Theater on the first day of Maslenitsa, etc.