СОВЕТСКИЕ ПРАЗДНИКИ В 1920–1930-е ГОДЫ КАК ИНСТРУМЕНТ ВНУТРЕННЕЙ ПОЛИТИКИ (на материалах Кольского Севера)
SOVIET HOLIDAYS IN THE 1920s AND 1930s AS AN INSTRUMENT OF DOMESTIC POLICY (a case study of the Kola North)

Summary/Abstract: The article examines the role of Soviet holidays in the Kola North during the 1920s and 1930s as an instrument of the Soviet state’s domestic policy. The relevance of this study is due to the insufficiently studied features of the formation of Soviet holiday culture within this specific region. The study aims to examine Soviet holidays in the Kola North as a controllable instrument for implementing domestic policies during the 1920s and 1930s. To achieve this, the research identifies the main functions of holiday policy, investigates the mechanisms for implementing each of these functions through specific holiday practices, and, through selected examples, traces the evolution of local holiday policy in the 1930s and its relationship with nationwide trends. The novelty of the study lies in its comprehensive systematization and analysis of holiday practices, previously examined only fragmentarily within the Kola North, taking into account their organizational, social, and ideological mechanisms. The study finds that the key objectives of holiday policy in the region during the specified period included securing resources for celebrations, coordinating activities across various departments, engaging the population in regulated forms of collective participation, and promoting ideological directives. The region’s dispersed and multi-ethnic population posed certain challenges for organizing holiday events, especially in the context of anti-religious propaganda during the 1920s. Conversely, the region’s geographical features were effectively utilized as a basis for organizing a major interregional festival first held in 1934. By the late 1930s, Soviet holidays in the Kola North had evolved into an efficient mechanism of state policy, characterized by the consolidation of Stalin’s cult of personality while preserving the region’s revolutionary narrative.

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