Happy February 23rd!

This blog (even when it was inactive) has always received a lot of visitors looking for information on this mysterious Feb. 23 Russian holiday. As usual, Wikipedia has what you need.

Greeting card source davno.ru also has a brief history of the holiday (in Russian), as well as these classic cards from the archives. More are available here (they have an English interface here, but it has fewer cards - I guess it's true that you get more out of Russia if you learn the language).

The first card, from 1988, commemorates the Soviet Army's 70th birthday (that's what Feb. 23 marks), with a poem:

You
are stronger and firmer
year to year,
Army
of the Soviet People!

Perhaps the worst possible year in which to be making such a claim, but otherwise a nice valentine to the armed forces.


Davno.ru seems to have repurposed this military poster as a greeting card - the heading says, "Take care of your military equipment, and it won't let you down in battle." If only military equipment were as easily repurposed into civilian kitsch as military posters.


A couple more classics from davno.ru's collection:


"The borders of the Soviet Union are sacred and inviolable!"


"Together we are invincible."

To quote Lou Reed, "yes, those were different times."