Maslenitsa

• 1. Introduction

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  Maslenitsa arrives once a year, always at a different time, always in the week before the most solemn fast in the Eastern Orthodox calendar. Picture an effigy built from straw, dressed in rags, lashed to a pole, paraded through a community, and finally set ablaze. Her ashes are buried in the snow to fertilize the coming crops. The festival has another name: Butter Week. Or Crepe Week. Or Cheesefare Week. Or simply the Butter Lady herself. Each name points to a different face of the same ancient celebration. Archaeological evidence traces versions of this holiday back to the 2nd century AD, making it possibly the oldest surviving Slavic holiday still observed today. What forces kept it alive through centuries of Christian conversion, through revolution, through official atheism, and through the long bureaucratic twilight of Soviet rule? And what exactly happens on each day of this remarkable week?

• 2. Before the Fast

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  Great Lent in the Eastern Orthodox tradition begins on a Monday, not on the Wednesday of Western Christianity, and the Orthodox date of Easter can differ sharply from the Western Christian date. That calendrical difference means Maslenitsa floats through the late winter calendar each year, always landing in the eighth week before Pascha. The week itself carries a striking tension: Orthodox Christians are already forbidden from eating meat during Maslenitsa, yet dairy products, eggs, fish, and pancakes are still permitted and actively encouraged. Blini fill tables across Russia. Belarusians and Ukrainians cook pierogi and syrniki. The week is described as both a "work-free week" and a "Freedom week," because the disciplines of Lent, including abstinence from parties, secular music, and dancing, have not yet begun. Maslenitsa is the last open door before a long season of introspection closes.

• 3. The Days and Their Rites

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  Monday opens the week with the welcoming of Lady Maslenitsa herself. A community builds her effigy from straw, adorning it with scraps of cloth, and mounts it on a pole that was once known as Kostroma. The first pancakes of the week may be made and given to the poor. Tuesday sends young men out in search of a fiancee, with the understanding that any engagement would lead to a wedding after Lent ends. Wednesday brings sons-in-law to their mothers-in-law, who have prepared pancakes and gathered guests around them. Thursday breaks open into outdoor life: sledding, ice skating, snowball fights, and sleigh rides. The source names these specifically as the day's traditional offerings, a kind of midwinter carnival of movement before the body's appetites are curtailed. Friday reverses Wednesday's visit, with sons-in-law hosting their mothers-in-law for dinner. Saturday gathers young wives with their sisters-in-law to build family bonds between households.

• 4. Kolodiy and Women's Week

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  In Ukraine, Maslenitsa week carried a second identity: Babskyi Tyzhden, which translates as Women's Week, or Kolodiy. During this period, men playfully deferred to women's wishes. Married women gathered in groups to enact a ritual drama with a wooden log called a koloda, staging its symbolic birth, baptism, and burial across the week's days. The sequence mapped onto the stages of marriage and family life. By the end of the week, unmarried men and women who had not yet found a partner before Maslenitsa had logs tied to their legs as a lighthearted penalty. The log became a public marker of their unmarried status. Though this tradition is no longer widely practiced, Kolodiy survives as a cultural memory of the values it once made visible.

• 5. Forgiveness Sunday

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  The final day of Maslenitsa carries a name that stands apart from all the festivity: Forgiveness Sunday, known in Russian as Прощёное воскресенье. Relatives and friends ask one another for forgiveness and exchange small gifts. Then the crowd gathers to strip Lady Maslenitsa of her decorations and burn her in a bonfire. Leftover pancakes go into the fire with her. Her ashes are pressed into the snow. The day following Forgiveness Sunday is called Clean Monday, a name that carries the logic of the whole week: people have confessed, sought forgiveness, and are ready to enter Great Lent with a clear account. At Vespers on Sunday evening, the faithful make a poklon, a bow, before one another and ask once more to be forgiven. Cheesefare Sunday is another name for the same day, marking the last moment dairy products may be eaten until Easter. Fish, wine, and olive oil are also forbidden on most days of the Lenten fast that follows.

• 6. Survival Through Soviet Rule

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  By the turn of the 20th century, large public Maslenitsa celebrations were already in decline across the Russian Empire. The Russian Revolution in 1917 and the state atheism that followed pushed public observance further to the margins. The holiday persisted, but mainly in homes and villages rather than in public squares. A shift came in the 1960s and 1970s, when the USSR began reviving certain folk holidays. Maslenitsa returned to public view, but with what one source describes as "contemporary socialist elements grafted onto it." The secular parts of the celebration were retained; the religious core was set aside. After perestroika and the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1980s and 1990s, the older traditions began to be reclaimed in a modern context. Since 2002, Moscow has staged a yearly Maslenitsa festival beside the Red Square. In 2011, that celebration and others like it drew around 300,000 visitors. With increasing secularization, meat vendors have entered the festivities, though the source notes that "meat still does not play a major role in the festivities."

• 7. Beyond Russia

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  Communities with large numbers of Russian immigrants have adopted Maslenitsa as a way to mark Russian culture even outside its original religious calendar. These diaspora celebrations are typically condensed into a single day and may not fall on the same dates as the religious observance. In 2012, Russian-Canadian composer Airat Ichmouratov wrote an Overture Maslenitsa in response to the holiday. The premiere took place in Chicoutimi, Canada, on the 24th of February 2013, performed by L'Orchestre Symphonique du Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean under French-Canadian conductor Jacques Clement. The effigy, the pancakes, and the bonfire that began in an ancient Slavic spring ritual had found their way into a concert hall on the other side of the world.