UNEASY HISTORY OF NEW YEAR

Over the past 100 years Azerbaijan and Baku have been shaken by political and even cultural catastrophes which, it would seem, have had an impact our daily lives. Even the simple New Year festivals we have become accustomed to have often changed or vanished altogether.

New Year in the empire

To put it bluntly, we Azerbaijanis have not been celebrating the January New Year that we know today. To us, Novruz has been the real New Year festival. It was particularly widely celebrated where the monument to the poet Fizuli stands today and where a square stood at the end of the 19th century. Bonfires blazed, music played and competitions and dances were organized there. The coming of the Russian empire gradually began to exert its influence. From the 1870s a fir-tree was placed on Parapet (now Fountains Square) every year; it was not a New Year tree, but a Christmas tree. Another place for folk festivals - Qubernator Bagi [Governor's Gardens] - appeared in Baku in 1912. The philharmonic building (then a summer public meeting place), which merged splendidly with the local landscape, was built there that year. In the run-up to the New Year a military band always played there. It is quite amazing, but many - the most mundane - traditions have either not altered since then or have come back since the end of the Soviet epoch. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century shops announced sales, and even hotels reduced their prices for visitors from other towns. There was also a tradition at the time of charity events for poor children and orphans. Young people today may find it very difficult to imagine but with no Facebook people of moderate means or who were well off got together and held charity evenings in shelters and other places under state care by placing advertisements in newspapers.

Soviet bans

The first Soviet years were a time of utter despondency as far as entertainment and amusement was concerned for the whole of the former empire and now totalitarian country. How could you have fun when outside there was a war going on with the world bourgeoisie and class enemies! Many festivals were abolished, and in Baku the first to go were the New Year and Novruz. After all, celebrations then were held not on the first day of the New Year, but at Christmas, and Novruz had obviously pagan roots. There was no place for either in a country of militant atheism. 1 and 7 January and 24 December were regarded as working days in 1920. Whereas the pre-revolutionary newspapers in the run-up to the New Year were full of announcements about concerts, parties and balls, the Soviet press was noted for its austere monotony and drabness. It reported victories on all the fronts of the economy and belligerently threatened the West with world revolution and communism throughout the world. The living language was replaced by a stiff, wooden rhetoric, in which there was no place for New Year magic.

Another problem was money. It was difficult to celebrate anything when the country was flooded with paper money printed by all kinds of authorities, and in the famous "Kerenkis" (roubles manufactured by the Kerenskiy government) there was hardly any room for zeroes. Apparently, in "kerenki" in the market in Baku in the New Year of 1921 one egg cost 3,000 roubles, and a loaf of bread in a bakery 5,000 roubles.

In the young USSR it was prohibited to celebrate the New Year even at home. Of course, many people ignored this ban but tried not to advertise it. "In those days the main problem was not so much the ban as the fact that there was nothing to put on the table," says an old Bakuvian, Ismayil Israfilbayov, who was a child at the end of the 1930s. "My father was repressed because he was a bay [chieftain], and if we found something to put on the table, we tried to make sure the neighbours didn't find out. They might grass on us. Yes, we feared a lot for our lives."

At the end of the 1930s, despite the slogan "life has become better, life has become happier!" neither, in fact, was true. In 1935 the state allowed festivals to be celebrated within the family, but there was no money for lavish state events - the country was preparing for war. The New Year newspapers of that time were still full of statements about over-fulfilment of plans, pompous empty speeches by leaders and new promises of the imminent victory of communism. Food in the shops was expensive then. At the end of the 1930s there was real hunger and unemployment, which was not mentioned by any statistics, in the cinema or in the newspapers. Ismail, an old Bakuvian, recalls that he was found a job at the age of nine in 1940. Yes, child labour was practised in those days, especially if the family was a big one and left without a breadwinner. "I used to sell carbonated war at Besmartaba [area in central Baku]," he recalls. "I couldn't reach the counter and stood on an empty bin. And I was very afraid that the older ones would take my money from me."

The New Year, Novruz and the Christian and Jewish Easter were all celebrated in that old multi-ethnic quarter on Vidali Street at the end of the 1930s. In those days the state did not rigidly regulate prices and they would soar by the New Year. But when the Second World War began there was no time for celebrations.

The holiday returns

The party conceived the slow return of the New Year with special intent, as they used to say. And it was only real poverty that prevented this. The average wage in the USSR in 1945 was 400 roubles and this was just enough for one ordinary, not even New Year "bazarliq" (shopping). And so the whole country, following that terrible year, lived on "kartochki" (special coupons for vital foods such as bread, butter, egg powder and sugar).

At the same time, the whole country had shifted to peacetime construction work and soon rationing was abolished. In 1947 the state began to reduce prices and increase wages. That same year 31 December and 1 January were declared non-working days. Several years before this the state had started to think about how to celebrate New Year. First of all, the fir-tree was set up not on 7 January for Christmas, but in December (so no-one was reminded about religion), and the angel on the top was replaced by the red Soviet star. That same year a Snow Maiden was affixed to Grandfather Frost, the same as in the old fairy tale and Rimskiy-Korsakov's opera.

With an average wage of 600 roubles in 1950 prices were as follows - 10 eggs: 9.5 roubles; a litre of milk: 2.4 roubles; sugar: 9 roubles; a kilo of beef: 21 roubles, 20 kopecks. The most important thing was that from the end of the 1940s there were festive dishes to put on the table.

The New Year started to be celebrated openly. New Year notices appeared in the press and new films were premiered in the cinemas for the New Year or there might be a foreign film. In Baku at that time it became a very popular thing to go and see films featuring Raj Kapoor, which were usually shown at the Araz cinema, the same cinema where later, in the 1980s, the first stereo and later 3D films were shown. That was where Bakuvians, often during a warm New Year, would be shown a snowstorm and flying stereo-snowflakes. The then rare American films like "Tarzan", "The Magnificent Seven" and "McKenna's Gold" started to be shown at the New Year. And the gloom of a foggy January in Baku would sometimes be broken by the cries of children racing through the streets pretending to be young Tarzans. As television became more widespread New Year "Blue Lights" began to appear, and the theatres put on special performances for the New Year and organized events for children. In the 1970s and 1980s the Musical Comedy Theatre would rock with a special New Year show.

The 1980s saw the end of the last Soviet decade with fixed prices and unstable stability. Prices no longer went up at the New Year, there was no private business, but with an average wage of 115 roubles (following the denomination of 1961) a dozen eggs cost 1 rouble, a kilo of sugar 84 kopecks, a litre or milk 24 kopecks, and beef 4.5 roubles. 

That, to all intents and purposes, is the history of our New Year: angels on the fir tree, then a ban, secret celebrations at home, then Grandfather Frost, a star instead of a cherubim, Olivier salad, champagne, then the eternal "Irony of Fate" by Eldar Ryazanov [popular film shown at this time of year], and today social and office parties and lavish events.