Celebrating the First Post-War Anniversary of the October Revolution in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

During the Cold War, the superpowers used their ideologies as symbolic capital in the struggle for new spheres of influence. The United States emphasized slogans of freedom and democratic values, and the USSR propagated ideas of socialism. One of the key “messages” exploited by Soviet cultural diplomacy in the post-war world was the image of the October Revolution as a benchmark for the struggle for a just socialist system. The ideas of Great October were most intensively vocalized and reinterpreted during round-number anniversaries. In 1947, officially celebrated for the first time not only in the Soviet Union, the thirtieth anniversary of the October Revolution had witnessed the initial efforts of the USSR to sovietize Central and Eastern European countries’ cultures and ideologies. By exploring this case, the article surveys the mechanisms and ways the Soviet festive activities and rituals were implanted and adjusted to foreign surroundings. Jubilee celebrations are taken here as part of commemorative practices aimed at developing a “socialist” identity in Central and Eastern Europe and their further integration into the Soviet cultural and political space of influence. Reconstructing the general mode of the holiday and the specifics of its functioning in different countries, the article concludes that, in many respects, the first “common” commemoration of the October Revolution abroad represented a “transitional” stage where Soviet ideological messages were relatively fuzzy and imposed rituals had to be variably adjusted to Eastern European social environments.