“Reassembly” and “replacement” of the calendar ritual practices of the spring-summer cycle in the west Siberian village of the 1950s - mid-1980s through the prism of communication between the society and authorities

Traditional feasts began to be "revived ” in the villages of the Altai Krai in the second half of the 1950s and mid 1960s. Research of the understudied Soviet case of constructing public festivities using traditional elements and their communicative capacity is fostered by the interest of contemporary society in both traditional culture and Soviet heritage. This article analyzes the evidence from the Altai Krai on using the East Slavic calendar ritual elements in constructing "new” feasts of the spring-summer cycle (feasts of Farewell to Winter, of the First Plowing, of the Russian Birch, etc.) as cultural practice of the Soviet village communities and communicative activity between the authorities and society. The article focuses on the process of organizing and celebrating spring and summer festivals in the villages of the Altai Krai in 1953-1985 as well as structure and semantics of new ritual practices, and their connection with the traditional East Slavic ritualism. The study uses an extensive set offi eld, archival, and published sources, including interviews recorded by the authors during many years of work in the villages of the Altai Krai, mainly among the East Slavic population. It is concluded that festivals of Farewell to Winter and Russian Birch had double nature, incorporating a number ofpractices and meanings typical of the rituals on the Cheesefare Week as well as Pentecost and Semik (feast of seventh Thursday after Easter) respectively, such as changing of the season, agricultural fertility, etc. The main meanings of new feasts had the following motif: people as workers of collective production, and agricultural record holders as creators. The construction of alternative feasts fostered a "milder” veriety of communication "from above” with the rural society, which conveyed correct ideological meanings, while village communities would receive a platform for communicating "from below” through participatibg in festivities. The motifs for constructing new festicals were not limited to campaign against religion, and existence of new festivals did not lead to irreversible loss of traditional ritualism which acquired new meanings and became modernized.