Can two weeks completely disappear from a person's life? Of course, if, for example, he was seriously ill, he was unconscious. But in 1918, two weeks fell from the life of a huge country - Russia. The period from 1 to 13 February 1918 is absent in the Russian calendar, and this is explained very simply. On January 24, 1918, exactly 100 years ago, the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR decided to switch the country to the Gregorian calendar from January 31, 1918, therefore, after January 31, 1918, February 14, 1918 began in the country.
As you know, the Julian calendar was used in the Russian Empire until 1918. This was primarily due to the religious tradition: in the Russian Empire, Orthodoxy was the state religion. The Julian calendar was adopted in the Roman Empire by Julius Caesar, after whom it got its name. Until the late Middle Ages, the whole of Europe lived according to the Julian calendar, but in 1582 Pope Gregory XIII issued a decree on the reform of the calendar. The main reason for the adoption of the new calendar was the shift in relation to the Julian calendar of the day of the vernal equinox. This circumstance created certain difficulties in calculating the date of Easter.
In October 1582, the most conservative Catholic countries, where the Vatican enjoyed tremendous influence, switched to the Gregorian calendar - Spain, Portugal, Rzeczpospolita and the states of Italy. In December 1582 France adopted the Gregorian calendar, and in 1583 Austria, Bavaria, Flanders, Holland and a number of German lands. In many other European states, the transition has been gradual. First of all, the Protestant states of Europe objected to the Gregorian calendar, for which the refusal to use the calendar introduced by the Pope was of fundamental importance. But all the same, even they could not avoid the calendar reform. So, in Great Britain, the Gregorian calendar was adopted only in 1752. A year later, Sweden switched to the Gregorian calendar. Gradually, the countries of Asia also switched to the Gregorian calendar, for example, in 1873 it was introduced in Japan, in 1911 - in China (later, China again abandoned the Gregorian calendar, and then returned to it again).
It should be noted that in many countries the transition to the Gregorian calendar was not painless. For example, in England, which switched to a new calendar in 1752, there were even riots of people dissatisfied with the changes that had taken place. In Russia, on the contrary, in 1700, Peter I, pursuing a policy of modernization, introduced the Julian calendar. It is obvious that for all his striving for a radical reform of social and cultural life, Peter was not ready to go against the Orthodox Church, which was sharply negative about the transition to the Gregorian calendar. In the Russian Empire, the transition to the Gregorian calendar was never made. This entailed numerous difficulties in economic, cultural and political relations with Europe, but the church insisted on preserving the Julian calendar, and the Russian monarchs did not object to its position.
In the first half of the 19th century, the advocates of modernization started talking about the desirability of switching to the Gregorian calendar, especially since by that time the Protestant countries of Europe, including Great Britain, had also switched to it. However, the minister of public education, General Karl Lieven, spoke out against the calendar reform. He was, of course, supported by the Orthodox Church. When, in the second half of the 19th century, Dmitry Mendeleev spoke about the need to switch to a new calendar, he was quickly overlooked by the representatives of the Holy Synod, who declared that the time had not yet come for such a large-scale reform. The church saw no reason to abandon the Julian calendar, since, firstly, it had been used for many centuries in the Orthodox tradition, and secondly, if the Gregorian calendar was switched to the Gregorian calendar, the Liturgical Charter would inevitably be violated, since the date of the celebration of Holy Easter is calculated according to a special lunisolar calendar, which is also closely related to the Julian calendar.
The February Revolution of 1917, which overthrew the monarchy in Russia, became the impetus for a wide variety of large-scale changes in the life of the country. It was during the period when the country was ruled by the Provisional Government that the development of a draft calendar reform began. Its authors believed that there was a need to switch to the Gregorian calendar, since the double spelling of dates in official documents and letters had already been used for a long time, especially if they were dedicated to events in other states or were sent to addressees living in other countries. However, in the period from February to October 1917, it was not possible to carry out a calendar reform in the country - the Provisional Government was not up to it.
The October Revolution of 1917 finally led Russia to change the calendar. Of course, the atheists - the Bolsheviks did not care about religious contradictions between the Orthodox and Catholic churches, they did not think about the history of the creation of the Gregorian calendar. But since "all advanced humanity", as the Bolsheviks liked to say, had by this time switched to the Gregorian calendar, they also wanted to modernize Russia. If you renounce the old world - then in everything, including the calendar. Therefore, the question of calendar reform was of great interest to the Bolsheviks. This is confirmed at least by the fact that already on November 16 (29), 1917, at one of the very first meetings of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR, the question of the need to switch to the Gregorian calendar was raised.
A certain role was played by the "secular" nature of the Gregorian calendar. Although the calendar itself was introduced in Europe at the initiative of the Pope, the Russian Orthodox Church was not going to switch to the Gregorian calendar. On January 23 (February 5), 1918, the Orthodox Church was separated from the state, which finally untied the hands of the new government on the issue of delimiting the secular and church calendars. The Bolsheviks decided to deal another blow to the positions of the Orthodox Church by abandoning the Julian calendar. At the same meeting of the Council of People's Commissars, at which the church was separated from the state, a special commission was created to switch to a new calendar. She presented two possible scenarios for the development of events. The first option assumed a soft and gradual transition to a new calendar - discarding 24 hours every year. In this case, the implementation of the calendar reform would take 13 years, and most importantly, it would be quite suitable for the Russian Orthodox Church. But Vladimir Lenin leaned towards a more radical option, which assumed a one-step and quick transition to the Gregorian calendar.
On January 24 (February 6), 1918, the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR adopted a Decree on the introduction of the Western European calendar in the Russian Republic, and two days later, on January 26 (February 8), 1918, the decree was signed by the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR Vladimir Lenin. In addition to Lenin, the document was signed by Assistant to the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Georgy Chicherin, People's Commissar of Labor Alexander Shlyapnikov, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the RSFSR Grigory Petrovsky, Chairman of the Supreme Council of the National Economy of the RSFSR Valerian Obolensky. The reason for the transition to a new calendar was called the need to establish in Russia the reckoning of time, the same "with almost all cultural peoples."
It was decided to introduce a new calendar after the expiration of January 1918. To this end, the Council of People's Commissars decided to consider the first day after January 31, 1918, not February 1, but February 14, 1918. The decree also emphasized that all obligations under treaties and laws that occurred between February 1 and 14 were postponed to the period from February 14 to February 27 by adding thirteen days to the due date. With the addition of thirteen days, all obligations in the period from February 14 to July 1, 1918 were counted, and the obligations beginning on July 1, 1918 were considered to have occurred already according to the numbers of the new Gregorian calendar. Also, the decree regulated the issues of paying salaries and wages to citizens of the republic. Until July 1, 1918, it was necessary to indicate in brackets the number according to the old calendar in all documents, and from July 1, 1918, only the number according to the Gregorian calendar.
The decision to switch the country to the Gregorian calendar inevitably caused controversy among the clergy and theologians. Already at the end of January 1918, the calendar reform became the subject of discussion at the All-Russian Local Council. There was an interesting discussion in this discussion. Professor Ivan Alekseevich Karabinov said that the Old Believers and other autocephalous churches would not agree with the proposal to switch to the Gregorian calendar and would continue to celebrate church holidays according to the old calendar. This circumstance, in turn, will violate the unity of the Orthodox Churches. Another speaker, Professor Ivan Ivanovich Sokolov, who also drew attention to the lack of the right of the Russian Orthodox Church to independently decide the issue of calendar reform, without coordinating its actions with other autocephalous churches, agreed with this position. Layman Mitrofan Alekseevich Semyonov, a member of the Petrograd Committee on Press Affairs, in turn, proposed not to react at all to the decrees of the Bolsheviks, which would avoid the need to switch to a new calendar.
Professor of the Moscow Theological Academy and a member of the Local Council of the Orthodox Russian Church from higher theological schools Sergei Sergeevich Glagolev emphasized that in the changed conditions of the church it is unlikely that it will be possible to remain on the old calendar, since it is more and more at odds with heaven, but it is not worth taking hasty steps and it is better to take some time to stay on the old, Julian calendar. Moreover, Glagolev noted in his report, such a serious issue can be resolved only with the consent of all autocephalous Orthodox churches.
Ultimately, the department on worship and the department on the legal status of the Church in the state decided throughout 1918 to be guided by the old style. On March 15, 1918, the department on divine services, preaching and the church of the Russian Orthodox Church ruled that from the church-canonical point of view, it was not possible to resolve the issue of calendar reform without coordination with all autocephalous churches. Therefore, it was decided to leave the Russian Orthodox Church on the Julian calendar.
In 1923, when the Soviet Union had already lived according to the new calendar for five years, the church again raised the issue of reforming the calendar. The second Local Council took place in Moscow. Metropolitan Antonin said that the church and believers can quickly and painlessly switch to the Gregorian calendar, and there is nothing sinful in the transition itself, moreover, the reform of the calendar is necessary for the church. As a result, the Local Council adopted a resolution proclaiming the transition of the church to the Gregorian calendar from June 12, 1923. It is interesting that the resolution did not provoke a debate, which testified to the full readiness of the participants in the council for the transition to a new style.
In connection with the current situation, Patriarch Tikhon published his Epistle in the fall of 1923, in which he condemned the decision of the Second Local Council as too hasty, but emphasized the possibility of the church's transition to the Gregorian calendar. Officially, it was planned to transfer the Russian Orthodox Church to the Gregorian calculus from October 2, 1923, but already on November 8, 1923, Patriarch Tikhon abandoned this idea. It is interesting that in the calendars of 1924-1929, church holidays were celebrated as if the transition of the church to the Gregorian calendar had nevertheless been carried out. For example, Christmas was celebrated on December 25 and 26. The church again raised the issue of switching to the Gregorian calendar in 1948, but it was never resolved positively. Despite the active pro-government lobby, most of the church hierarchs still did not want to become “separatists” and accept the Gregorian calendar without coordination with other autocephalous churches.
Of course, Soviet Russia was not the last country to adopt the Gregorian calendar. In 1919, the Gregorian calendar was introduced by Romania and Yugoslavia, in 1924 - by Greece. In 1926, Turkey switched over to the Gregorian calendar while maintaining some specificity, in 1928 - Egypt. Currently, according to the Julian calendar, they continue to live in Ethiopia - one of the oldest Christian states in the world. In addition, the chronology according to the Julian calendar is conducted by the Russian, Georgian, Serbian, Jerusalem, Polish Orthodox churches, the Bessarabian metropolitanate of the Romanian Orthodox Church, as well as the Ukrainian Greek Catholic and Russian Greek Catholic churches. Interestingly, the Polish Orthodox Church returned to the Julian calendar only in 2014, before that for a long time calculating the time according to the New Julian calendar, which coincides with the Gregorian one.
