Calendar Chaos and Petrodegradation

The days February 1 through 13, 1918 do not exist in Russian history. This oddity can be traced back to 1582 when Pope Gregory XIII decreed that the Julian calendar in use since the time of Caesar should be replaced with a more accurate one, which required skipping over almost two weeks.  Catholic countries made the change forthwith, Protestants joined the program a century later, but the Russian Orthodox church was not about to let a Catholic pope tell them how to calculate time and in Russia the Julian calendar was used until after the Revolution when atheist Lenin decided to conform to western standards. And so in 1918, the leap was made from January 31 to February 14 and the days between remain blank and untouched.  A further oddity in all of this calendar chaos is that the revolution, which took place on 25 October 1917 in Russia, occurred according to the western calendar on 7 November, and thus, the iconic Great Socialist October Revolution, with the endless parades in Moscow and elsewhere, was always celebrated in November.

Meanwhile, the Russian Orthodox Church still persistently adheres to the Julian calendar, so 6 January is Russian Christmas Eve, and at 9 p.m. Red Kirill gives me a call. Black Max is hosting a small gathering at his apartment in an hour or two and we are both invited. Black Max, is, so to say, the antithesis of Red Kirill. Kirill dashes about, entangled in so many projects and ideas that he can barely focus his high-voltage energy, dressed in red, the color of hope. Max, on the other hand, sleeps. When he does manage to drag himself out of bed, he wears exclusively black. 

It seems that Max's parents, while not wealthy, nonetheless have enough funds on hand to keep Max installed in his comfortable, renovated apartment and to meet all of his rather modest needs, so he doesn't have to toil in the hard world of capitalistic labor. He has no real interests, plans or purpose, gets up around 4 in the afternoon, takes a look out the window, and decides he would rather sleep some more. He lives, says Kirill, a life in despair.  

At least tonight he seems to be in a good mood as he meets us at the Pioneerskaya Metro station and walks us back across ice and snow to his apartment over Restaurant Tokyo.  "Olya is still sleeping, she only gallivanted in a little while ago," says Max, referring with a sigh to his girlfriend, "Ach, she's young, which in itself isn't a disadvantage. She'll grow out of it." 

The other guests arrive shortly thereafter:  Alyoscha and Katya, a brother and sister from Moscow, and Katya's husband, Vitya, a native Petersburgian. These folks from Moscow are so surprisingly wholesome, healthy, and red-cheeked, they seem to have skipped in from the countryside and not the dissolute capital. It's as if they've been edited into Max’s Dostoevskyan despair from a different movie, something along the lines of a Russian „Oklahoma!“ Alyoscha quickly sets to preparing the main course and accoutrements with the speed, skill, and fixation of a professional chef while the rest of us gather around the table, sipping, variously, champagne, amaretto, martini, vodka and balsam.

In the meantime, Olya has woken up and staggers into the kitchen with a hairdo of partial shave/partial dreadlocks and a pet rat crawling around her shoulder. She seems like street cat who has long since understood that you might find free food around the garbage can, but oh God, is life there hard.

Spritely Katya greets her with „Merry Christmas!“

Olya squints, a cigarette drooping from her mouth, „But I’m an atheist.“

„Oh, dear! Well, then, happy holidays.“

Olya dismisses these bothersome formalities and quickly gets to the main business at hand which is to open another botttle as Kirill and Vitya start confirming that „Petrodegradation“ is in full swing – there is no cultural life in Petersburg and there never will be as long as these criminals are in power.

With a Russian Oklahoma flourish, Aloscha breaks into the Petrograd despair, and presents the main meal with a cheery grin.  Merry Russian Christmas!