How to prepare for the New Year in the USSR

The new year was for us familiar and traditional holiday - the past decade, he says quite monotonous: a well-dressed Christmas tree, festive table and speech the head of state. But the Soviet people it was a completely different holiday: to prepare for it well in advance, literally bit by bit collecting treats and Christmas paraphernalia.

1. From 1918 to 1935, the New Year was not an official state holiday, but most families traditionally celebrate it along with Christmas. Thus, in the first decades of the Soviet Union, the holiday was considered more of a "family".

2. For the first time the holiday is officially celebrated only in late 1936, after articles by prominent Soviet leader Paul Postysheva in the newspaper "Pravda". Here is a small excerpt of her: "Why do we have schools, orphanages, nurseries, clubs, palaces of pioneers deprive children of this wonderful pleasure of working people of the Soviet country? Some, not only as "left" distorters decried this children's entertainment as a bourgeois idea. It is the conviction of the wrong tree, which is great fun for children, to put an end. Members of the Komsomol, the pioneer of workers should make a New Year tree for children collective. In schools, children's homes, in the Palace of Pioneers, in the children's clubs, children's cinema and theater - should always be children's Christmas tree! City councils, chairmen of regional executive committees, village councils, education authorities should help the Soviet device tree for the children of our great socialist motherland. " New Year the government allowed to celebrate, however, remained January 1 working day.

3. 1941, Hall of Columns of the House of Unions.

4 1942, a group of Western Front scouts celebrate the New Year. The samovar is likely alcohol.

5. The famous photographer Emmanuel Evzerihin depicted his family at the Christmas tree, 1954.

6. New Year's performance in the early 1950s.

7. Just after the war started to really develop the tradition of New Year celebrations in the USSR. Began to appear Christmas decorations: first, very modest - from paper, cotton and other materials, and later - a beautiful, bright, made of glass and the like decorating Christmas trees pre-revolutionary times.

8. Of course, the toy could not escape the Soviet symbols - the Christmas tree decorated with various red stars, airships and images of pioneers and October.

9. Prepare for the holidays in the USSR had to be ahead of time. First, purchase the products - that is, "get it", to stand in queues, time to get in grocery orders sprats, eggs, smoked sausage.

10. Be sure to cook was Olivier, aspic, jellied fish, carrot and beet salad, herring under a fur coat, open in the summer harvested pickles and tomatoes, which are due to the lack of seasonal vegetables were an integral part of the festive table.

11. Those who had familiar salesman in a grocery store, could afford to New Year brandy for 4 rubles 12 kopecks, champagne "Soviet" sweet, tangerines.

12. Finished cakes were also deficient, so basically had the furnace itself.

13. Or, for a long time to stand in line, like in this photo.

14. In the second place, it was necessary to ensure the child's ticket for a Christmas tree, gift, costume snowfields of gauze or dress bunny and tangerines. A gift, in which structure there were candy, and apples, and walnuts, provides parents with the trade union. The dream of every child was to get on the main tree of the country - first in the Hall of Columns of the House of Unions, and after 1954 - in the Kremlin Christmas tree.

15. Students in vocational schools came to the Kremlin New Year's holiday in national costumes. Even the ladder tightly packed! 1955.

16. Actress Clara Lucko at the Christmas tree, 1968.

Third, every Soviet woman most certainly needed a new fashionable dress - it could make with their own hands or in the studio, in rare cases - to buy from black marketeers; the store was the last place really was an appropriate occasion to get yourself new clothes.

17. Christmas gifts - another test for Soviet citizens in the process of preparing for the New Year. With any product in the country was napryazhenka and with beautiful goods it was even worse, so our parents went to visit, taking champagne, sausage (preferably "Cervelat"), canned exotic fruits (pineapple), banks with red and black caviar and boxes chocolates.

18. "Nothing decorates a woman as hydrogen peroxide" - this thesis became could not be more relevant on the eve of every New Year's celebrations in the Soviet Union. The phrase "beauty salon" then would not understand most inveterate fashionista. The hairdressers were recorded in a few weeks training hairstyles, makeup and everything, "New Year's appearance" demanded by the Soviet Women's high time, ingenuity and independence - sometimes hairstyles made skilful hands of friends.

19. In a hairdressing Moscow in December 1982.

20. The final stage of preparation - wipe (to repair) TV, which, as claimed by the postman Pechkin, is "the best decoration New Year's table." "Carnival Night", "Irony of Fate", "New Adventures of Masha and Viti," "Blue light", "Jack Frost" - Soviet films, transmission and cartoons in the morning, without which not a single Soviet citizen could not imagine a festive night.