Epiphany bathing in Saratov in 1949 and the feuilleton in the newspaper “Pravda”

Legendary images of Epiphany bathing in the Stalin era were printed in the country's main newspaper. In 1949 the feast of the Epiphany in Saratov became the subject of a satirical feuilleton in Pravda; the mocking piece dwells on stories of those who fell ill with pneumonia after plunging into the ice hole, and on the details of the stripping off of clothes down to nakedness.

Yet the very possibility of openly celebrating one of the chief days of the Orthodox calendar, and on so large a scale besides, is astonishing. A procession of the cross set out from the Trinity Cathedral to the Jordan, a great number of believers gathered on the Volga, and hundreds of people immersed themselves in the ice holes. The event carried great political significance for the Orthodox world.

Shortly before Epiphany an instruction had been issued, directing that church services, festive rites and processions of the cross were not to be hindered, so that the only reaction left open to the atheist nomenklatura was to publish a feuilleton of this kind.

My congratulations to all Orthodox believers on the Baptism of the Lord!