When will we go to measure strength?

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

The timing of fist fights and wrestling among the Eastern Slavs in the 19th - early 20th centuries. When and why the Slavs preferred to arrange hand-to-hand competitions.

On the lands of the Eastern Slavs, fistfights began with the onset of winter and usually lasted until mid-summer. They were arranged on Sundays and, mainly, on holidays and had a large (in terms of the number of participants and spectators) scale for:

• Nicholas winter (December 19),
• Christmastide (January 7-18),
• Epiphany (January 19),
• Shrovetide (end of February),
• Easter week (March-April),
• Fomin of the week (first Sunday after Easter),
• Rusal week (late May - early June),
• Ivana Kupala (July 6-7),
• Peter's day (July 8).

At the same time, especially large battles took place, as a rule, on the days of Christmas and Maslenitsa. In general, about two-thirds of fistfights occur in winter and about one-third in spring and summer. Fistfights in the second half of summer and autumn are rare due to the large volume of agricultural work to collect the harvest and prepare the household for the winter. The battles were timed at this time, as a rule, to the local patronal holidays.

They fought most often on Maslenitsa and on spring and summer holidays - on Fomin week, Rusalsky Sunday, which often coincides with the Yarila holiday. The wrestlers competed during this period and on Sundays. Quite rarely fought for the winter holidays. In the summer-autumn period, fights of wrestlers were rarely arranged and were mainly at patronal celebrations. The ratio of messages about wrestling on winter and spring-summer holidays is about 1 to 4. This is largely due to the inconvenience of waging a fight (for example, wrapping the opponent with your arms) in heavy and bulky winter clothing (sheepskin coat, etc.). It is no coincidence that, apparently, most of the evidence about the "winter" competitions of wrestlers comes from the South of Ukraine and Russia.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, fistfights in rural areas were rarely carried out more than 2-3 times a year during major holidays. However, in large industrial centers, where in the last third of the 19th century, masses of former peasants flocked from everywhere, sometimes an artificial reconstruction of a complete or almost complete cycle of competitions took place. Thus, in St. Petersburg, on the outskirts of workers in various parts of the city, battles were staged in winter on all Sundays and holidays, and so on up to and including Trinity Holidays. The same was observed in Moscow.

The timing of the competition was not the same in different places. This was the result of differences in the historical and natural-geographical conditions of life of individual groups of Eastern Slavs in certain regions. For the Russians (North-West, Central Russia), the maximum range of games (both in the number of participants and in the frequency of battles - every day) was at Pancake Week. For Ukrainians, the maximum was on Christmastide. For Belarusians, the climax of the battles was observed on the Christmas and Kupala holidays. In Siberia, there was a significant unevenness both in the time frame and in the timing of the maximum scope of the competition. This is a consequence of the different times of settlement of Siberia by various groups of Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians.

Among the Eastern Slavs, fistfights and wrestling were integral elements of holidays and Sundays. The most ambitious competitions were held on the most important holidays. They fought mainly in the winter, and fought in the spring and summer. In addition to the general "festive" feature, the Eastern Slavs had a number of territorial features in the timing of the duels.