Destructive processes in the ethnic culture of Ukrainians under the conditions of totalitarianism (based on the material of calendar holidays and rituals)

Author

Stishova Nataliya

candidate of historical sciences, deputy director for scientific work of the M. Rylskyi Institute of Art studies, Folkloristics and Ethnology of the NAS of Ukraine.

Destructive processes in the ethnic culture of Ukrainians under the conditions of totalitarianism (based on the material of calendar holidays and rituals)

Abstract

In a historical perspective, the article presents the processes of formation of Soviet holidays and rites system in Ukraine, their introduction and transformations under the ideology of the totalitarian regime and anti-religious policy of the then current government, as well as significant changes in traditional calendar customary and ritual culture. Via specific facts, it is shown that the Ukrainian national culture in the 1920s to 1950s was in difficult historical conditions. This period is distinguished by: famines (mass extinction of the Ukrainians in 1921–1923, 1932–1933, and 1946–1947, with signs of ethnic cleansing-genocide), alienation of farmers from their lands, estrangement of the Ukrainians from their native language, attack on both Christianity and religious and culture, atheisation of the people, as well as by the war, economic crises and dislocation, repression, political and ideological oppression, unification of culture, and so on. However, during that difficult period, scholars (Ethnographic Commission of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences) initiated a new phase of research into the Ukrainian traditional culture (a programme and instructions for respondents of how to record it were distributed), which was suspended in the early 1930s by one of the forms of repression: the prohibition of research activi- ties and the liquidation of all academic periodicals.

Such an abnormal situation in the life of mankind has led to a forcible interruption in the suc- cession of traditions of the Ukrainian people and a violation of the natural evolution of their cus- tomary and ritual culture. A clear system of centuries-old festive and customary calendar cycles broke up into separate holidays. The continuance of social and public, as well as ecclesiastical and Christian traditions was lost, being remained mainly in the family life, thanks to which the ethnic and local specifics of the calendar customary holidays was preserved.

A kind of blank spots, which existed in the conditions of instability of socio-political and economic life, has formed in the memory of many generations.

Keywords

festive and ritual culture, traditions, religious calendar, Soviet holidays, ideological system, totalitarian regime.

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