Dear bride and groom! So this long-awaited and very exciting day has come …
Every couple who dreams of becoming a social unit hears these words. Some wait for the wedding for months, because in some registry offices there is a huge queue to Hymeneus, they spend a lot of money, relatives come, friends put on their best outfits.
But few people know that they wanted to take this holiday away from Soviet citizens. Until the beginning of the sixties of the last century, there was no registry office with ceremonial halls for celebrations, no bride's veil, no workers registering a marriage with a ribbon over her shoulder. There weren't even bouquets. Until that time, Soviet people married quietly, modestly and boringly.
As usual, the price of the problem was in the ideas of Ilyich and his associates, some of whom were often alien to everything human.
After the revolution, church marriages were canceled. The Bolsheviks announced that they no longer needed to ask their parents for permission to get married, and there was no longer the need to dress up for a wedding and, moreover, to collect a dowry. You could live with anyone you wanted, just like that, at the behest of your heart and without any vows in front of icons. And people did just that: they lived, gave birth to children, without even thinking about registration.
The "fathers of the revolution" themselves, as a rule, were married to their wives. Most of them were married before the seventeenth year, but they justified the marriage in the old fashioned way purely by the interests of the business. For example, the future All-Union headman Kalinin got married in prison. Since the prison laws of the time only allowed wives to visit, he had to marry a woman he didn’t love, but she was a partymate who was supposed to deliver information to him.
Nadezhda Konstantinovna also became Ilyich's wife without unnecessary courtship and meetings. She came once to Shushenskoye with classified information, but she was not allowed to see Vladimir Ulyanov. She had to call herself a bride, but she was told that her first date with her fiancé would take place in church at their wedding. They say that Krupskaya came not alone, but with her mother. They brought a dowry, and on the same day they were married to Vladimir Ilyich.
The first years after the revolution, Moscow and Petrograd lived in a frenzy: a sexual revolution in the midst of complete devastation. Over time, Lenin begins to talk about an excess of sex life and condemn the youth, who, in his words, "went mad."
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On December 18, 1917, the "Decree on civil marriage, children and books on acts of civil status" was issued. A small room in the basement, an uncle in oversleeves gave the newlyweds to sign in the ledger … Since then, the expression “sign” has become popular among the people, that is. officially register your marriage.
The first registry office in Moscow was opened in Maly Uspensky Lane, and its “pioneers” were Sergei Yesenin and Isadora Duncan. They were the first to seal their union with the bonds of Hymen.
In total, it took ten years to create a normal registry office system in the USSR. People joked: “a good deed would not be called a marriage”, so the replacement of the wedding system took root long enough.
Many did not even know that from 1934 to 1956 the registry offices were part of the structure of the NKVD. It was believed that the privacy of citizens should be kept under the hood. If before the revolution there were weddings, christenings, funeral services - events are very solemn, then after that everything was called only Acts of Civil Status, followed by the police, which means that there simply could not be celebrations.
In 1964, by a decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, a law was introduced on the introduction of Soviet rituals into everyday life. People then learned that now the holidays need to be organized according to the scenario suggested "from above". In the registry office, instructions were sent out in which everything was spelled out: what should be the bride's dress, the groom's outfit, what to say to them at registration and even a description of the bouquets required for the wedding.
Culturologists say that Soviet weddings would then turn into an obscene attraction precisely because of the officialdom and these "instructions from above", because the authorities got in here too. Nevertheless, many Christian and even pagan traditions remained in the ceremonies.
In 1961, the first Wedding Palace was opened. New party policy: Soviet citizens must have solemn weddings.
The first "Palaces of Happiness" were not allowed to everyone. Only the most respected citizens with an impeccable reputation were registered, and only their first marriage. For example, in the Griboyedov registry office, one couple was more honorable than the other. Here Magomayev married, many cosmonauts, but the most magnificent and incredible in the Soviet era was the wedding of Tereshkova and Nikolaev. Khrushchev himself was present at the wedding. The government covered all the expenses.
The village relatives of the newlyweds were dressed up at the expense of the state in GUM, the newlyweds were served the government "Seagull", and an impressive banquet for one hundred and eighty people, organized at the Reception House, lasted ten hours. The main speech was pushed by the planted father - Khrushchev.
The authorities wanted to show what important people the cosmonauts were for the country and how great it is when the heroes start their life together so beautifully. But everything turned out the other way around: the poor people did not like the "space" wedding. Seeing a veil on Tereshkova, a member of the Communist Party, people called it philistinism.
In general, the Russian bride's veil has a very interesting story: it appeared during the reign of Peter the Great and was called "pata" - the veil that the girl wore throughout the ceremony. It was believed that when the bride's hair is open, an evil spirit can penetrate into her, which can destroy her soul.
And in the twentieth century, the veil has ceased to be a symbol of innocence - a beautiful accessory, nothing more. But under Khrushchev and quite a bit under Brezhnev, the veil was out of fashion.
At first, marriages were registered by the wives of the limiters and the military, who agreed to work for a meager salary. Therefore, in the books on the registration of marriages of civil status of those years, you can see a lot of gross spelling errors. But soon they began to accept this position only with a higher education and an appropriate appearance. The dress for the receptionist was sewn by the state.
In the sixties of the last century, there were especially many Komsomol weddings. At the same time, active housing construction began in Moscow. And the newlyweds-Komsomol members could already count not on a room in a communal apartment, but on an apartment in "Khrushchev". You couldn't get drunk at Komsomol weddings: there were a lot of protocol speeches. But what can you not endure for the sake of a separate apartment.
For example, the satirist Arkady Inin also had a Komsomol wedding, but the keys to the apartment were not presented to the newlyweds: they were still students, and the warrants were issued to those who worked at some large enterprise. And then the groom and the bride came up with a way out: instead of a gift, they decided to borrow twenty rubles from each guest. Two hundred people were present at their wedding, and of the four thousand rubles they had collected, three thousand six hundred went to the cooperative, and the rest of the young people bought furniture.
In the seventies, three “Bridal Salons” were opened in Moscow - specialized stores where, using coupons received at the registry office when submitting an application, one could buy a dress or suit, bedding or underwear.
Party "bigwigs", children of "tsekhoviks", people's artists and famous athletes could afford really chic outfits. For example, when figure skater Natalya Bestemyanova married her colleague in the workshop Igor Bobrin, the bride's dress was sewn by Slava Zaitsev. They say that when people saw the bride in this dress in front of the Wedding Palace, they were simply amazed: a delightful rumble ran through the crowd. And the groom was wearing a white suit straight from Paris. On the part of the groom, the witness was Bestemyanova's partner Andrei Bukin, and on the part of the bride - Tatyana Tarasova, who did not like Bobrin at all. Apparently, the coach was worried that this marriage would prevent the star couple from achieving great results.
Today the bride can buy any dress: even blue, even red, even with rhinestones, even with feathers, but this is not important for marital happiness. There are many examples of a long and friendly marriage, concluded when the bride and groom both married in quilted jackets. And nothing prevented them from becoming happy.