‘Import Substitution of Holidays’ Running into Difficulties, Arkhipova Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 2 – The unofficial Russian ban on the celebration of Halloween is part of what may be called “the import substitution of holidays” by the Kremlin which seeks to eliminate such events by replacing them with homegrown holidays that are truly Russian, Aleksandr Arkhipova says.

            But this effort which has been gaining in strength over the last several years has run into difficulties as Russians find out that these “Russian” holidays either never existed or have pagan roots at odds with Russian Orthodoxy, the independent Russian anthropologist says (t.me/anthro_fun/3649 and novayagazeta.eu/articles/2025/11/01/spasti-detei-ot-tletvornogo-vliianiia-zapada).

            That pattern is especially true of Moscow’s hope to displace Halloween with a Russian substitute. So far, the center has come up with two, one a supposed fall pumpkin festival that never happened because pumpkins came to Russia much later than they did in Europe and a second with origins in the pagan Slavic custom of remaining in touch with the dead.

            The latter resembles Halloween in some respects although the Western holiday at least has been Christianized while the proposed Russian substitute is completely pagan and thus is even more unacceptable to the Russian Orthodox Church and the Kremlin than is the Christianized version of Halloween most of its celebrants know.

            But that doesn’t mean, Arkhipova and others suggest, the Kremlin will stop this form of “import substitution” than it is likely to do regarding any other. However, if it is going to be successful, it needs to know more about the holidays it wants to use lest the new ones end up creating more problems than foreign imports (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2025/11/01/teper-budet-tolko-novyi-god).