Festivities and everyday Life of Russian “White” Émigrés in Prague exile in Blending of History and Memories

The study focuses on the history of the Russian white émigrés in the then Czechoslovakia. The author shows that the white émigrés were perceived by the then Czechoslovak government as the future intelligentsia for new free Russia and for independent and free Ukraine. The emigrants were offered the opportunity of completing their studies, continuing their creative activities, or extending their education. The emigrants founded their own professional institutions, organized social life even for the Czech majority to make it familiar with the Russian culture. To the Czech environment, they translocated some of their festivals associated with Orthodoxy and folk tradition. After the Czechoslovak-Soviet Treaty of Alliance was signed (1935), the emigrants´ position got worse. The activity of domestic communists introduced Soviet festivities to Czechoslovakia. After 1945, new Soviet citizens arrived in Czechoslovakia, and the white émigrés became a persecuted group. Some of them were abducted to Soviet forced labour camps (Gulag) by Russian bodies. The domestic communists implanted new Soviet festivals, feasts and ceremonies – Great October Socialist Revolution celebrations, Grandfather Frost and others – with the help of the Association of CzechoslovakSoviet Friendship in Czechoslovakia. In 2001, the Czech Republic officially acknowledged the Russian national minority that got its historical rights as a minority thanks to the Russian white émigrés in the 1920s. Several associations within the minority try to renew original Russian traditions and feasts in the Czech environment.