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Sunday, 24 May 2015
24 May 2015. Feastday of Ss Kirill and Mefody. Day of Slavic Writing and Culture
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Sunday, 26 May 2013
Festival of Slavic Culture Embraces New Format
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Choir in rehearsal for this event… even though the pro-zapadnik Portal-Credo.ru reposted it, it didn’t originate with them… they’re not original enough to create such, truth be told
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The Festival of Slavic Culture will occur on 24 May, featuring 200 events that will take place in 70 oblasts all over Russia. The Festival of Slavic Culture honours the brothers Ss Kirill and Mefody, the inventors of the Cyrillic alphabet and Christian missionaries. The Church ranks them as равноапостольный (ravnoapostolny: Equal-to-the-Apostles). As before, Moscow will be the focus of the celebrations.
Vladimir Legoida, head of the MP Information Department, said, “This year, the Festival will follow an informal format; it’ll be an event on an unprecedented scale, featuring many events in one day. From year to year, we’ve been doing our best to see to it that the festival strikes a personal note with everyone who happens to attend. Our purpose is to ensure that Kirill and Mefody are household names amongst ordinary people”.
Scholars believe that in the time of Kirill and Mefody, the 9th century AD, Slavs had no difficulty understanding each other. Experts state that Slavic people believed that they spoke the same language, as they shared the same system of sounds. The two brothers developed this system into an alphabet, to translate Greek religious texts into Slavonic. The Cyrillic alphabet became a foundation for creating alphabets for other Slavic languages.
Street signs in Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Serbian, and Macedonian at the Moscow festival will remind visitors of this fact. Many of the festival’s events have the purpose of popularising the Russian language. Moscow professors will give public lectures on Russian, whilst famous performers will read excerpts from Russian classic literature near the statues of Aleksandr Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov, Nikolai Gogol, and Marina Tsvetaeva. Some 30 choirs, comprising at least 3,000 singers, will gather in Red Square for festival’s closing event… a gala concert entitled The Most Loved Songs. The choirs will perform church anthems, along with a large number of folk and pop songs, all to the accompaniment of a combined orchestra. Those willing to join the professionals will be able to follow the songs on large screens installed all over Moscow.
Sofia Apfelbaum of the Ministry of Culture (Minkultury), said, “Moscow has never seen such a large-scale cultural celebration before. We hope that this experiment will be successful. The songs are popular and known by many people. The gala’s repertoire was picked specifically for the purpose of bringing all people together so that the crowd in Red Square could sing along with the performers and so that everyone would know that Russians have a specific cultural standard”.
Fr Pavel Shcherbachyov of the MP Patriarchal Council for Culture, said, “A harmonious combination of the secular and religious adds a particular flavour to the festival. Even though spirituality in the religious sense of the word played no role in Russian society for a long time, these songs’ lyrics reflect the traditions of previous centuries. If we analysed the words of these songs, we’d discover that they reflect the traditions of the past, when there was an alloy of culture and religion”.
The song marathon in Moscow will end with the performance of Glory, Glory, Mother Russia! by Mikhail Glinka (the closing chorus of the opera Жизнь за царя (Zhizn za tsarya: A Life for the Tsar)), followed by a spectacular fireworks display.
23 May 2013
Yelena Andrusenko
Voice of Russia World Service
http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_05_23/Slav-culture-festival-embraces-new-format/
Editor’s Note:
It was also Patriarch Kirill Gundyaev‘s name-day…
на многая лета!
BMD
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Tuesday, 1 May 2012
Patriarch Kirill Acknowledged Bulgaria’s Contributions to Pan-Slavic Culture
Ss Cyril and Methodius
Unknown Artist
19th century
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The visit of Patriarch Kirill Gundyaev of Moscow and all the Russias to Bulgaria has generated a surprisingly high level of public interest. However, the first visit of the First Hierarch of the MP to Bulgaria in recent times is especially remarkable for another reason… His Holiness Patriarch Kirill made an explicit recognition of what’s one of the most important achievements of the Bulgarian nation in global history, namely, Bulgaria’s role in spreading and promoting Greco-Roman Christian civilisation across a huge swath of the Eurasian continent by developing a distinct Bulgarian-Slavic (Western authors style it Greco-Slavic) culture based on Eastern Orthodox Christianity, the Slavonic language, and the Cyrillic alphabet. All the academic and practical disputes about the “Easternness” of the Slavic nations in Eastern Europe (Russia included) aside, the fact of the matter is that it was the work of the Bulgarian scholars and monks (themselves having just learned from the cultural, religious, and academic tradition of New Rome) that brought large parts of Eurasia into European civilisation some 11 centuries ago, with Bulgaria serving as the cultural Piedmont of the Eastern and Southern Slavic nations.
During his meeting with the Bulgarian President, Patriarch Kirill emphasised the fact that Bulgaria and Russia share a common religious and cultural heritage as Eastern Orthodox Slavic nations using the Cyrillic script, developed in the 9th century during the First Bulgarian Empire (681-1018 AD), saying, “The work of the holy brothers Ss Cyril and Methodius laid the foundations for the cultural identity of the Bulgarian, Russian, and other Slavic nations, and the first missionaries to bring new Christian values to Russia were Bulgarian priests”, referring to the key role that Bulgarian clergymen played in the 10th and 11th century during the Christianisation of Kievan Rus, the first medieval Russian state. In late 9th century Bulgaria, St Naum of Preslav and St Kliment of Ohrid, disciples of Ss Cyril and Methodius… the authors of the original Slavic Glagolitic alphabet… created a new Slavic alphabet, named “Cyrillic” in honour of their teacher St Cyril. The common history of the Bulgarian and Russian churches goes further, as, between the 10th and 18th centuries a total of eight Bulgarian clergymen held top positions in the Russian Orthodox Church, such as Bishop Cyprian the Bulgarian of Moscow (ruled 1379-1406), and Bishop Gregory Tsamblak of Kiev (ruled 1413-20). Apparently, up until the late Middle Ages, the Slavic languages in Europe were so mutually-understandable that the nations could freely borrow one another’s educated men.
In Sofia, Patriarch Kirill further declared that these cultural and spiritual ties survived throughout the ages, and motivated the heroism of the Russian soldiers in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, when the Russian Empire liberated Bulgaria from Ottoman rule. The recognition of Bulgaria’s role in the creation of the Eastern Orthodox-Slavic culture might not seem to be a big deal in the age of post-9/11, post-2008 globalisation, as it was in the late 19th century Pan-Slav movement, or the 20th-century Eastern Bloc dominated by (Soviet) Russia. It mightn’t seem particularly impressive for a Western public that often views Russia as an ill-fated autocracy, or for the rising non-Western powers for which the Slavic culture stuff was some regional European matter way too long ago.
Nevertheless, Patriarch Kirill’s recognition of Bulgaria’s civilisational role in international history is still very important. For one thing, it’s the story of great brave men who ventured the creation of an entirely new culture (though a part of the Western civilisation) from scratch, eventually reaching much of the Eurasian continent led by the word of the Christian God recorded in the Cyrillic-Slavic script. For another, Bulgaria hardly ever gets positive international recognition by anybody. Even the Bulgarians’ cousins, the Russians, being the citizens of a great power, are generally reluctant to acknowledge the significance of the once-powerful Bulgarian empire, today, a minor Balkan state, for their history, culture, and identity. So, thank you, Your Holiness Patriarch Kirill, for bringing that up.
1 May 2012
Ivan Dikov
Novinite.com
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Voices from Russia 
Russian House “Rodina” Opens Park of Glory in USA
Tags: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Alexander Nevsky, Cyril and Methodius, History of Russia, Howell NJ, Nikolai Gogol, political commentary, politics, right-wing, ROCOR, Russia, Russian, Russian culture, Russian history, Russian Orthodox Church, Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, Soviet Union, USSR
Monument to Nikolai Gogol in Poltava (Poltava Oblast) THE UKRAINE
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The grand opening of a unique Park of Glory takes place on 26 May in Howell NJ. The park contains 28 monuments to prominent Russian cultural and historical figures:
The park is on the grounds of the Russian House “Rodina”, which came up with the idea for the Park of Glory. Two days before, on 24 May, Russian House “Rodina” launched a two-week-long celebration of Russian culture with a reception devoted to Slavonic Literature and Culture Day in memory of Ss Kirill and Mefody, Equals-to-the-Apostles, Teachers of the Slavic Peoples. Celebrations are set to continue until 8 June.
26 May 2013
Voice of Russia World Service
http://english.ruvr.ru/news/2013_05_26/Russian-House-opens-Park-of-Glory-in-US/
Editor’s Note:
There are NO Soviet figures in this list (save for two “dissidents”)… they should’ve included (at the very least) the rocket pioneer Tsiolkovsky, the leader of the victorious VOV armies Zhukov, the father of cosmonautics Korolyov, the first cosmonaut Gagarin, the writer Simonov, and the composer Shostakovich. If they included Pyotr Veliki, they had an obligation to include Lenin and Stalin, too (none of these three were much to write home about in a religious sense, but all were great figures in Russian history, like it or not). In short, this smells to me of “White Revisionism”… I wonder how many of those linked with this project have family ties to the Vlasovtsy and KONR? Perspirin’ minds wanna know…
I am AGAINST “whitewashed” or “airbrushed” history of any sort, Right or Left… this reeks of such, I’m afraid. This has the ordure of the First Family Lukianov clan about it, too. Give me the whole banana, warts n’ all… otherwise, it’s a lie. Reflect on that one… it’s a meaty bone to gnaw upon.
BMD