25 June 2016. International Day of Slavic Friendship and Unity

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OFFICIAL Greetings of the DNR Peoples Soviet on 25 June…Day of Slavic Friendship and Unity

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OFFICIAL

This festival of Slavic Friendship and Unity comes out of the very roots of the traditions and customs of the Slavic peoples. Slavs are the majority of the population in many countries, there are about 270 million throughout the world. This festival is a clear indication that man-made laws and artificial boundaries can’t divide a culture formed over the centuries. Our memory of and pride in the great past of the founders and creators of our common distinct culture will unite us forever. Every person has the duty to respect their roots and love their motherland… to study and faithfully preserve the centuries-old cultural heritage of the Slavic peoples, to keep our traditions and values, and to care for our antiquities. I extend my greetings to everyone from the fraternal Slavic peoples on this Day of Slavic Friendship and Unity. Together… we have real strength. History shows that you can’t break and destroy the Slavic spirit. Our love will overcome all the walls and boundaries that stand between us. I wish peace and prosperity to all of you!

A E Purgin

Chairman of the DNR Peoples Soviet

25 June 2015

Official website of the DNR Peoples Soviet

http://vk.com/wall-81852855_2719

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

21 November 2012. A Point to Ponder… American Slavonia… It Ain’t Dead Yet

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The tagline is from an old Walt Solek song (he was a Polack polka musician from Meriden CT… great guy and good musician). There’s such a thing as “American Slavonia”… we eat “pierogies” and “galoomkies” and “keelbasies“… hey, I know that’s not what it is in the original, but I’m talking about what American Polacks, Russkies, Hunkies (they’re honorary members of Slavonia in the USA), Ukies, Czechs, Slovaks, and Karpatsky po-nashemu folk really do and say. There’s a gemisch out there… polka music, beer, pierogies, Jimmy Sturr, Who Stole the Keeshka?, and unassuming good cheer. Religiously, we can be Catholics, Orthodox, or Lutheran, but the general social grouping holds.

Despite what some konvertsy believe, the ethnics are still the majority amongst Russian Orthodox here. No… there’s no such thing as “American Orthodoxy”… but there IS Russian Orthodoxy, and you don’t have to be “Russian” to be “Russian Orthodox”. To say, “Russian Orthodoxy” is to acknowledge that our religious roots aren’t in America… that our religion’s ways are rooted in a non-Western civilisational bloc. You don’t have to like pierogies and pivo… but it won’t hurt you if you do. Pass the jug and smile… now, that’s the American Slavonian way!

BMD