Yarga swastika under Soviet rule. Part 1

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The People's Commissar of Education, who stood at the origins of the creation of a perverted communist culture, in particular, wrote:

On many decorations and posters on the days of the last festival, as well as on various publications in general, etc., due to a misunderstanding, an ornament called a swastika is constantly used and has this appearance. Since the swastika is a cockade of the deeply counter-revolutionary German organization ORGESH, and has recently acquired the character of a symbolic sign of the entire fascist, reactionary movement, I warn you that in no case should artists use this ornament, which produces, especially for foreigners, deeply negative impression.

People's Commissar for Education A. Lunacharsky

Such a note of an ominously prohibitive nature, and even signed by the omnipotent manager of the cultural life of communist Russia, on the pages of a government publication could well be assessed as an official directive, which was taken into account and executed by contemporaries. But besides the ban, it contains the most valuable historical and cultural information. From the note it follows that at that time the yarga was used in various kinds of visual works along with other revolutionary signs, among which the cross with curved ends was understood as a kind of sign of the new time.

Instead of the thrown down Christian cross, the people of the Soviet country used the folk hooked cross for the gentile cultural identity of the revolutionary people of Russia

The processions in honor of the October events were decorated not only with red flags. The images of the ancient sign of goodness and life - the yargi-cross - were proudly hovering over the columns of those walking.

So, Lunacharsky, in fact, explicitly prohibits the use of the yarga and the swastika. And although the punishment for the violation is not defined in the note, it is appropriate to assume that in reality the case did not become behind him: the revolutionary time was too bloody. Obviously, due to the fact that the government decree never appeared (or has not yet been made public), and A. V. Lunacharsky, despite its directive nature, still did not have legislative status, the swastika gradually disappearedfrom the visual agitation of Soviet everyday life.

The short period of reign of the Provisional Government of Russia was marked by the fact that the oblique yarga adorned its state seal, and was also introduced into the signs of banknotes issued by it into circulation.

Until 1924, it was still used in the sleeve insignia of the Red Army and paints of a number of units; it was depicted on the first Soviet paper money issued by order of V. I. Lenin, until the end of the 1920s. it continued to be studied in the research institutions of the USSR.

The sleeve patch with a yarga was used in a number of units of the Red Army on the South-Eastern Front. Introduced by Order No. 213 for the troops of the South-Eastern Front. Mountains. Saratov November 3, 1919

Award in the Red Army in the 20-30s. The inscription "RSFSR".

Russian banknotes with a slanting yarga: state credit notes of the Provisional Government, issued in 1917.

The first Soviet money in denominations of 10,000 and 5,000 rubles, issued in 1918. Each has three yargs in the middle and on the sides.

After 1930, very rarely in scientific works there is any mention of a hooked cross. This was the time when the occupation of Russian history or the use of the concepts "Russian history", "local history", "Russian folk culture" in articles, books was considered sabotage, and the scientists who used them were considered enemies of the people with all the ensuing consequences.

And in post-war studies directly related to the topic of the yarga, the ban on this sign continued to apply. Scientists in every possible way avoided mentioning the word "swastika", using instead "a cross with bent ends", "solar sign", "hook sign", "vortex rosette", "rotating rosette", etc. This approach of most researchers should be recognized as justified, taking into account the sad fate of the exiled and executed prominent scientists and researchers in Slavic studies, Russian history and ethnology of many peoples of Russia.

T. I. Dronova today describes the general situation in relation to the primordial culture among the Old Believers of Ust-Tsilma, Vyatka land. The persecution began from the time of dispossession, when everything was taken away, including folk clothes. The struggle of the communist government against the primordial one intensified in the 1950s.

Although formally no normative legal documents and decrees prohibiting the wearing of folk clothes existed, everything traditional was perceived by representatives of the rural authorities negatively. Clothes, as outdated, were forbidden to be worn by specialists from state institutions, and sometimes villagers were expelled, who came there in traditional clothes with personal questions.

It is quite obvious that the expulsion of residents in folk clothes from the state institution of the people's state (which the Communist rule dreamed of itself) could only take place at his direction or with his tacit consent.

During field research in 1998, P. I. Kutenkov recorded the story of a peasant woman A. S. Gerasina (born in 1926) about how as a child she happened to be a witness to the obscurantism of the Komsomol members of the village of Ushinka, Penza region in the 30s. 20th century They cordoned off the church in which they were serving Mass on the occasion of the Year's Feast. And when the women left the church in their most beautiful rows, completely covered with yargs, the Komsomol members began to forcefully remove bibs, cuffs, ponies and throw them into the general heap. Having stripped off the clothes with yargs from all the women, they poured kerosene on the heap of clothes and burned them.

Another case, reported by the same A. S. Gerasin, is indicative as an example of the attitude of the authorities in these years to the forbidden sign. A procurement and tax commissioner came to her parents' neighbors. The guest was seated at the table in a place of honor, near the red corner, which had been cleaned for a festive occasion. He calmly ate until he saw an image of a yarga on a towel in the red corner. Then the commissioner choked, threw down the spoon and shouted: "What are these Nazi signs?" - while pointing to the jargic ends of the towels that framed the icons. And only after making sure that the yargs and bow-legged towels adorn the towels in the red corners of all the huts of the village, are depicted on all the clothes of women and women, the zealous boss was forced to abandon the suspicion of his hospitable hosts of espionage in favor of Germany.

A similar case is described by A. Kuznetsov, a teacher and ethnographer from Ust-Pechenga, Totemsky District, Vologda Oblast. On the eve of World War II, an NKVD officer drove into the village of his ancestors, Ihalitsa, and spent the night with the chairman of the collective farm. During dinner, he noticed an ubrus towel hanging on the shrine, in the middle of which a large complex yarga was illuminated by the light of an icon lamp, and along the edges there were patterns of small rhombic crosses with curved ends. The guest's eyes grew furious with indignation. The chairman's old mother, who was lying on the stove, barely managed to calm the raging guest and explained to him that the sign placed in the middle of the trim was not a swastika, but "Shaggy Bright", and that the pattern on the side stripes was "jibs". The next day, the NKVD officer walked around the entire village and made sure that there are "bright" and "jibs" in every peasant house.

In with. Sekirino, Ryazan region a former postman (1970s) said that she was not given the clothes and shoes set for them because she walked in a ponytail. “If you throw off your ponies, we’ll give out the required form,” the postmaster answered her questions.

In the 1960s, in the village. Chernava, where elderly women continue to wear their necks even today, they were frightened by the deportation to the Kolyma, demanding the removal of the ponies.

In the villages of Gory, Mikhailovo, Prusovo, Abakumovo of the Torzhok district of the Tver (Kalinin) region, before the war in the 30s, representatives of the new communist government forced residents to remove platbands, doors and other items containing yargi-loaches from their houses. In particular, on instructions from above, the chairman of the collective farm A. Kalinin was doing this (written down from Nikolai Vasilyevich Yakovlev).

Some of the vicissitudes of the "struggle" with Yarga are well reflected in the materials of the first issue of the magazine "Istochnik" for 1996. Here, in particular, they write that on August 9, 1937, the manager of the Moscow regional office of Metisbyt applied to the Commission of Party Control under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) Comrade Glazko with a sample of a churn made at factory # 29 with blades in the form of a "fascist swastika". During the investigation, the fact of manufacture in 1936-1937 was established. 55763 churns with yarg. The applicant asked to send the case to the NKVD and indicated a number of the names of the “guilty”. He wrote: "I consider the release of churns, the blades of which look like a fascist swastika, to be an enemy business." Two months later, the Bureau of the Party Control Commission under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) decided to transfer the case to the NKVD. At the same time, the obligation of L. M. Kaganovich to remove within a month the blades of the churns, which look like a Nazi swastika, and replace them with others in appearance.

During the Great Patriotic War, the ideological struggle against the yarga-swastika intensified. Workers of the Kargopol Museum of Local Lore destroyed a number of the rarest embroideries containing sun yargs. A similar extermination of museum treasures containing yargu was carried out at that time everywhere, and not only in museums.

The actions of special detachments of the NKVD in the Russian North during the war are known to confiscate and destroy things with Yarg-Suns from the rural population. Lopari (indigenous people of the North) also keep the memory of the 40s to this day. of the last century, when they were forbidden to embroider a cross with curled ends on clothes that originally existed in their culture.

In this formidable wartime, there was an additional pretext for the eradication of a dangerous sign: the yarga was isolated by means of art as a sign of the enemy, it was presented as a sign of savagery and inhumanity. This image of the divine sign continues to exist in the subconscious of several generations who grew up in the USSR.

The founder of the museum "Smolensk Ornaments" V. I. Grushenko, who for thirty years has explored the Smolensk region from edge to edge, where yargi-crosses permeate all aspects of folk culture, told the following incident. In the 80s of the 20th century, being in the Demidov district, he went to the local museum of local lore to the director, whom he found doing an interesting occupation. The director, a middle-aged man, at his workplace pored over the weaving, cutting off the bent-topped crosses from the museum towels with a razor. Not at all embarrassed, he explained that he was uncomfortable in front of visitors and guests, and especially in front of the authorities, for the "fascist swastika" on local gods. An example shows how strong the Bolshevik "anti-yargic vaccination" was among the older generation 60 years after the ban on the cross with curved ends.

N. R. Guseva describes the time of oblivion and suppression of the yargi-swastika in social thought and science of the Soviet era:

In publications, especially in post-war publications, the swastika was expelled from the pages of books, and this attitude can be understood, but difficult to forgive - after all, the description of the ornament is a strict historical source, and such distortions in the transmission of information prevent scientists from coming to the proper conclusions.

She believed that the government's ban on the swastika can be compared with the actions of the mayor of the city of Foolov from the famous work of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, when he burned down the gymnasium upon arrival and banned science. You can write a decree prohibiting the sun, but you cannot prohibit its daily sunrise, which gives light to the Earth.

B. A. Rybakov, in his famous works on the ancient material culture of the Slavs and Russians, on the foundations of their worldview, as a rule, got by with a very limited number of images and mentioning the yarga, while deeply considering its nature and meaning in extensive text constructions. What is the reason for this "modesty" in relation to the well-known sign? The answer for the historical and archaeological sciences today cannot be unambiguous. Its search is complicated by two phenomena. In the work "Paganism of the Ancient Slavs" B. A. Rybakov, relying on the ideas of V. A. Gorodtsov, published a drawing of North-Russian embroidery from his work. This classic in science reference to the fundamental ideas, supported by the same and photographs, conclusively confirms the thoughts of the scientist himself. However, the same drawing by V. A. Gorodtsov and B. A. Rybakov carries a different semantic load. Instead of three yargs as in V. A. Gorodtsov at B. A. Rybakov, equilateral crosses are placed in their places. At the same time, for example, A. K. Ambroz in his article, referring to the same drawing by V. A. Gorodtsov, gave him a cut without distortion, with yargs.

Explanation of the substitution of B. A. Rybakov sees yargi on an oblique cross in the following. The journal "Soviet Archeology" with an article by A. K. Ambrose was published in a small issue intended only for a limited circle of researchers. The work of B. A. Rybakov was published and reprinted in one hundred thousand issues, available to millions of readers who are unaware of such a distortion of scientific truth. Other examples of the pictorial substitution of yargs in the outstanding work of BA Rybakov can also be cited.

The event of the distortion of the Russian pattern by Rybakov, established by us, has recently received an accurate explanation.

But first, let us give an example of a striking phenomenon of the ban on the yargu and the swastika in the works of Russian Soviet scientists. Studying the well-known works of S. V. Zharnikova on Russian folk and Indo-European patterns, we drew attention to her article in the International Collection of 1984. The collection of international scientists was published in Moscow in one of the foreign languages, under the auspices of UNESCO. The article presents a wide range of bright and swastika signs [Zharnikova S., 1984, no. 6, fig. 1-61]. A total of sixty-one yargic and swastika images are shown, they are all numbered. The complexity of translation and interest in the article was so great that we found a copy, repetition of this article in Russian, published in 1985 in the same editorial board [Zharnikova S. V., 1985, no. 8, fig. 1-51]. Imagine our surprise that in the drawings of the article, published in Russian, we did not see exemplary and classical yargs and swastikas. Some of the drawings disappeared without a trace, the other part was replaced by other patterns. Examination of the text showed that there were no torn sheets, no erasures either. Where did the twenty drawings with yargs go from the article? Several years later, already communicating with S. V. Zharnikova, we heard from her the following about this. When the collection was ready for publication, it was read by the corresponding comrades from the Party Central Committee, as was customary. They did not like the yargs who hit in the eyes, which was said by B. A. Rybakov, who was responsible for the content.

S. V. Zharnikova puts it this way:

And so Boris Aleksandrovich calls me at home and says that Svetlana Aleksandrovna, the article needs to be corrected a little. Here are the swastikas, the most like that, it is necessary to remove from the article. I answer him. - Boris Alexandrovich, the article has already been published in Moscow, with these drawings! Rybakov: - So this is for UNESCO, abroad. … The Central Committee asked to remove the swastikas. You see, the 40th anniversary of the Victory over Nazism (the conversation was on the eve of Victory Day). Inconvenient…. In my works, I also have to replace swastikas with oblique crosses.

As a result, the article was cut into two dozen model yargs and swastikas, some of which were replaced with other patterns.

These are drawings with yargs and swastikas removed from scientific work for censorship reasons.

The conversation clarified even more important things. Yarg in the works of B. A. Rybakova disappeared not through an academician's oversight, but at the request of the controlling persons. The case with the works of Zharnikova and Rybakov confirms the existence of a ban on displaying yargic ornamental patterns in the USSR.

The prohibition of tracing and writing is evident in the published image of an earthen vessel found in Samarra and dating back to 4000 BC. In the post-war images of this monument, the middle swastika is usually absent. So, on the back cover of the scientific and educational book by A. L. Mongait's "Archeology and Modernity", the image of the yaggi is half-washed, which creates a false impression about the poor state of preservation of the original.

* On the left is the original, on the right is the image on the cover of the book by A. L. Mongaita.

In 1960, one of the first Soviet works appeared, completely devoted to the meanings of the signs of the cults of heavenly bodies in Ancient Russia. Its writer V. P. Darkevich immediately emphasized the absence of scientific literature on the problem of yargi among the Eastern Slavs. Considering the hooked cross and other solar signs, the scientist neither word nor thought did not question the positive value of yargi and did not put anything negative in its meaning, although for the generation of V. P. Darkevich and his scientific editors The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. remained forever alive for its terrible results. However, the consciousness of contemporaries did not associate the horrors of war with the sign of the yargi.

Yarga, along with other signs - a cross, a circle, a wheel - is a phenomenon "so stable that it has survived as decorative elements in folk patterns (woodcarving, embroidery) to this day."

The scholar emphasizes the continued existence of the yargi-cross in Russian folk culture in the second half of the 20th century.

V. P. Darkevich considered "straight" and "curvilinear" yargs to be ubiquitous in Ancient Russia in the sense of fire and sun. He compiled a table of folk-Orthodox signs of heavenly bodies found in medieval Russian jewelry, where yargic images are also widely represented. Darkevich attributed Yargu and its varieties to the ancient patterns inherent in the spiritual culture of the native faith worldview of the Russians and which have come down to modern times in unchanged forms in Russian folk culture.

For modern public opinion (we separate it from the popular) among our compatriots, a misunderstanding of the historical and cultural significance of the yargi is also characteristic, not only for Russian culture, but also for the cultures of most of the peoples of Russia. Among the peoples of Russia, the yarga and the swastika are also one of the main signs of clothing, symbolic means of rituals and customs. The current legislative ban on Nazi symbolism is difficult to separate from the ban on the use of the yarga, and therefore, in fact, it continues the general cultural policy of the Bolshevik-Leninists of the 1920s and 1930s. 20th century forbidding God, faith and Russian folk culture. Without a doubt, this also applies to other peoples to a certain extent.