Every year, before the onset of the date known to everyone in the post-Soviet space - February 23 - the female part of the population begins to feverishly look for gifts for their dear and beloved men and thinks of what to serve on the table, and the strong half dreams of how to celebrate this day in a friendly circle. Historians and journalists at this time also become more active and argue whether it is worth paying attention to this generally unremarkable date at all. Why is this holiday celebrated?
Instructions
Step 1
Defenders of the Fatherland, military and civilian, former, current and future soldiers and officers deserve congratulations and honors. Perhaps that is why February 23, an exclusively Soviet, fictional date built on a myth, has survived in the minds of most people to this day. Although, in fact, a completely different, historically more justified one should be on the list of significant dates. For Russia, this is, for example, May 6 - the Day of the Russian Army, which was adopted until 1917 in honor of the Day of St. George, who was considered the Patron Saint of all Russian soldiers.
Step 2
And on February 23, she got a start in life with the "light" hand of Soviet leaders. In 1923, in the Resolution of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, this day was named the date when the "workers and peasants' government" proclaimed the need to create armed forces. Later it was formulated as the day when the first newly formed Red Army unit entered the battle with the enemy. But while the direct participants and witnesses of those events were alive, they did not particularly spread about the significant date. And there was a reason.
Step 3
In mid-February 1918, an offensive by German and Austro-Hungarian troops began along the entire Eastern Front. But they did not advance in large military formations, but in flying detachments, consisting of several dozen people, and mainly along the railways. They practically did not meet resistance. Dvinsk was captured by a detachment in which there were not even hundreds of soldiers. The Germans drove to Pskov on motorcycles. And the scattered revolutionary detachments under the command of Warrant Officer Dybenko, not showing a worthy rebuff to the enemy, shamefully fled another 120 kilometers. There was an immediate threat of the capture of Petrograd, and only then, on February 25, was the mass enrollment in the Red Army started. On March 3, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed, in which the Bolsheviks agreed to all the conditions of the Germans. Dybenko was searched for, put on trial, removed from all posts, expelled from the party, but he did not suffer as much as it would have threatened him in 1937.
Step 4
The Red Army was nevertheless created, albeit on completely different days. Even Klim Voroshilov in 1933, at a ceremonial meeting dedicated to the 15th anniversary of the Red Army, admitted that this date was accidental and difficult to explain. But "the process has begun." In 1938, the Pravda newspaper published theses for propagandists, in which it was said that on February 23, 1918, a decisive rebuff was given to the enemy near Narva and Pskov. And in 1942, no longer at all embarrassed, I. Stalin announced that the units of the Red Army completely defeated the invaders in this battle.
Step 5
The myth turned out to be so powerful that in 1945 the British Prime Minister Churchill sent congratulations on this holiday to Stalin in commemoration of the victories of the Soviet army over the enemy.
Step 6
The Soviet army no longer exists, just as there is no Soviet Union, but this date, already as Defender of the Fatherland Day, has been officially celebrated since 1995 in accordance with the Russian Federal Law "On the Days of Military Glory (Victory Days) of Russia."
